We take the temperature of mVAS across Europe, MENA, SSA, APAC and India ahead of World Telemedia Marbella
When Tech Bros go to war
Dario Betti takes a look at how warring AI bigwigs are reshaping telemedia
mVAS: the trillion dollar opportunity
The mVAS sector is huge and booming. Estimates for its value range from $1.09trn to £1.12trn globally and it is set to grow at around 13% CAGR between 2024, when Grand View Research published those figures, and 2033. There are 4.6bn mobile subscribers globally, all of whom can play with mVAS and, while growth in new users is slowing, the potential market for mVAS is enormous.
And the telemedia community plays a strong and growing role in delivering some of this immense revenue to telcos, content and service providers and, of course, the industry itself.
The key to this market is how it is a virtuous circle of content, billing and marketing – each driving the other to make the telemedia sector work. The key mVAS services selling encompass mobile games, short-video/OTT bundles, music, live events and ticketing – all often billed via DCB or wallets, says Deloitte.
Messaging-led services, such as alerts, marketing, 2FA/identity, enterprise CPaaS, and lingering SMS/USSD content in emerging markets is where the strong growth currently
lies, according to Grand View Research, while practical utilities such as cloud storage, security/antivirus, device insurance, roaming/data passes, eSIM travel packs and the like are also a less talked about but equally vital addition. Financial add-ons such as micro-loans/insurance sold in-bundle with airtime/data and DCB for digital purchases where card rails are weak are also on the up.
But the roster of services is also set to grow as more consumers – and SPs and MNOs – see the potential of the DCB ecosystem to market and monetise services globally. Cloud gaming and low-latency bundles that are 5G-optimised with partner revenue share are perhaps the biggest growth area, while ticketing and transport (micro-payments on bill), and creator subscriptions with localised pricing and one-tap DCB checkout are ones to watch.
As World Telemedia Marbella (5-7 October) gears up, the bottom line is that mVAS is a trillion-dollar market growing in the low-teens CAGR and DCB is scaling alongside: tens of billions in annual end-user spend already, set to almost double by 2029 and touching 1.5bn users. Can you afford to miss out?
VIEWPOINT
Meet the people... Alex Sidorenko, Mobibase
mVAS ready for AI discovery
mVAS through TikTok
THE BISCUIT
are staying – so what for mVAS?
X MVAS
mVAS traffic generation gains traction
king of marketing
a force in telemedia
gets busy as content, marketing and MNOs align
payments through AI change the mVAS game
markets and how they drive payments evolution
MNO action on fraud is starting to see results
THE BIG GUY Paul Skeldon paul@telemedia-news.com
ART DIRECTOR Victoria Wren victoria@wr3n.com
CONTRIBUTORS & CONSULTANTS
Anzelle Robertson Jarvis Todd
SALES & MARKETING info@Telemedia-news.com
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WHAT WE’VE BEEN LISTENING TO Ice House, The Creatures Rebellion Song, Charlie Harper
WHAT WE HAVE BEEN READING The Abscence, Budgie
WHAT WE HAVE BEEN AMUSED BY Mandy on BBC iPlayer AUTUMN 2025 WILL BRING… mVAS and sunshine in Marbella
World Telemedia Marbella: at the DCB-content-marketing nexus
World Telemedia Marbella comes at a time when interest in mVAS is at an all-time high. Double-digit growth, DCB user numbers hitting 1.5bn globally and potentially a trillion dollars globally being spent on it shows just how central this market now is within the mobile ecosystem.
Across Europe (see page 4), MENA (page 6), SSA (page 8), SEA (page 10) and India (page 12) the mVAS market is shifting and growing as more consumers turn to mobile to be entertained, informed, educated and more.
No wonder then that the big names of social media and search engine marketing – not least TikTok (page 16) and Google (page 18) are flocking to the sector to play a crucial role in generating traffic for the sector. Even genAI is in on the action – although the rise of AI discovery does mean that how services are marketed, regulated and annotated online has become more crucial than ever (page 13).
At the core of this surging telemedia market is the DCB ecosystem, which is seeing interesting growth across the world (see page 26). DCB has been pivotal in the growth of mVAS in MENA and that has become a massive market for telemedia
companies. But it is also seeing growth in Europe as MNOs and SPs embrace it across a wide range of old and new service offerings – from PSMS driving 21% growth in the French DCB market to German MNOs working together to deliver RCS-DCB bus ticketing and DCB powered bike hire, right through to Turkish operators leveraging DCB for buying insurance and even a hamburgers. This surge in DCB use is partly due to the rise of digital payments as the main way now to pay for anything (see pages 30-33), but it is more than that; suddenly DCB is now an affordable payment tool and one that is taking its place as just one of many options for consumers, depending on what they are looking to buy or engage with and where. As fraud around DCB and mVAS is tackled (see page 38) and with AI now powering every facet of ecommerce (see page 34), the future is bright for telemedia and Marbella is the place to learn what comes next.
telemediaonline.co.uk @telemediaTweets
Paul Skeldon. editor
MVAS REPORT CARD Europe
The European mVAS sector maybe mature, but that doesn’t mean that it is standing still.
Paul Skeldon outlines the key developments across content, distribution, payment, regulation and security
The European mVAS market was where telemedia all started and, while it has matured, it is by no means static. In fact, it is seeing something of a resurgence as new tech such as AI powered content and user acquisition, better regulation and much tighter antifraud capabilities have attracted new, mainstream brands to the market.
CONTENT AND DISTRIBUTION
Sports, short-form video and utility bundles are driving paid engagement, with sportech specialists like Telecoming expanding club and league partnerships across 18 countries and companies like Cookies tying up with NBA, ATP, Lega SerieA and many leading games brands to bring rich sports content to subscription models.
Data-driven acquisition is tightening too, with the likes of Creative Clicks’ ML-powered performance network now sitting behind a growing share of mobile traffic buys for subscription content.
On the supply side, Media Digital Group is widening premium music/video slates for D2C and carrier-billed storefronts, while International Premiums and Lily Mobile add voice and local payment reach in Southern Europe.
Notably, Apple’s DMA-driven alternative iOS app marketplaces and Google’s User Choice/EEA-only billing options are opening fresh distribution and monetisation routes for services that previously struggled with in-app rules. Expect more experimental “off-store” funnels into trials and bundles.
BILLING AND PAYMENT
DCB is growing at 8% CAGR globally and is having a moment in Europe as operators and carriers tighten up partnerships – as seen recently with SLA Digital and Yettel Bulgaria – while major enablers push hybrid stacks: Dynamic Mobile Billing (DMB) for PSMS/DCB/voice; Atlas Digital Group and MBE on subscription tech; and MobiMind, Sam Media, Mobile Arts and MT2 knitting content, traffic and payments into turnkey funnels across EMEA.
Google’s evolving EEA fee schedules for alternative billing, and Apple’s notarised web/marketplace distribution, are nudging more mVAS offers to test card + DCB + A2A mixes.
Another stand out is how DCB is quietly broadening beyond digital goods. DIMOCO, which as extended DCB for physical goods in Austria via Drei Österreich, underscoring
Watch-list for next 12 months
• DMA-driven marketplace distribution seeding new categories and bundles.
• EAA remediation driving uplift in CVR and lower complaints in compliant flows.
• PSD3/PSR final text – implications for licensed DCB PIs and SCA orchestration (including EUDI wallet pilots).
how licensed payment institutions can blend cards, A2A and DCB under one merchant contract.
REGULATORY RESET
The UK completed its long-trailed transfer of phone-paid services regulation to Ofcom on 1 February 2025; Ofcom withdrew approval of the PSA Code and introduced its own PRS Order and enforcement approach. This should open up the UK market to growth in mainstream brands leveraging DCB, as well as prompting MNOs to create a unified brand for DCB payments, as has happened in Germany.
Across the EU, the European Accessibility Act took effect on 28 June 2025, pushing accessibility requirements across ecommerce and digital communications, which in practice means revisiting landing pages, payment flows and receipts. Parallel EU rules – PSD3/PSR – are advancing to tighten fraud reporting, reinforce SCA and harmonise oversight across PI/EMI players. The DSA is also reshaping ad transparency and limiting sensitive-data profiling, influencing acquisition tactics in performance channels.
FRAUD AND SECURITY
Two UK moves defined 2025: Ofcom banned the leasing of SS7 “global titles” that criminals used to intercept OTPs – with existing agreements sunsetted by 22 April 2026 –and tightened mid-contract pricing disclosure, improving consumer trust in telco billing.
On DCB, anti-bot controls and journey forensics are now table stakes, with Evina prominent across MNOs and aggregators.
Vendors report rising social-engineering and phishing across Europe, pushing merchants and carriers to combine ad-verification, pre-authorisation checks and post-charge dispute tooling. Expect more operator-mandated SDKs, risk scoring at click-through and independent monitoring of creatives/flows.
WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE P&L
The commercial centre of gravity is shifting from singlerail DCB to multi-rail monetisation – still leveraging DCB’s conversion in carrier channels, but complemented by cards, A2A/open banking and wallet rails where fee and risk economics make sense.
This mix — plus RCS UP 3.1 improvements that promise richer, more reliable conversational journeys — sets up Q4 pilots where the same user can trial via one rail and retain via another, all under stricter accessibility and compliance norms.
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MVAS REPORT CARD MENA
Ramadan drives spikes in traffic and revenues, but the MENA mVAS sector offers so much more as it moves rapidly from being an emergent market into one that is now quite sophisticated and lucrative, finds Paul Skeldon
The MENA mVAS market goes from strength to strength, forecast to grow at a CAGR of 14.2% from 2025 to 2033, according to Grand View Research and in 2024, revenue was approximately $35.6 million, and by 2033 it is projected to reach $117.9 million. So what does that look like on the ground?
CONTENT AND DISTRIBUTION
Ramadan remains the tent-pole for digital consumption and paid engagement across MENA, streaming and social spikes translating into short-form video, sports, gaming and utility bundles converting well via mobile flows. Research across 2025 shows online viewing and brand interaction hit record levels during Ramadan, underscoring why localised Arabic content and seasonal offers still outperform generic evergreen funnels.
On the supply side, World Telemedia sponsors with deep MENA footprints are actively tapping into this market. Telecoming (sportech monetisation) drives club/ licence content; Media Digital Group expands premium video/music slates; performance player Creative Clicks underpins paid acquisition; and regional platforms MT2, Mobile Arts and MobiMind aggregate traffic, content and carrier routes across the region. Atlas Digital Group does it all. Expect more first-party storefronts and hybrid “off-store” discovery as merchant teams tune funnels to Ramadan and local tastes that expand the market beyond this peak.
BILLING AND PAYMENTS
Direct carrier billing (DCB) remains the conversion engine for under-carded segments, but leading aggregators now pair DCB with cards and wallets to widen acceptance and ARPU. Thought leadership from regional PSPs points to DCB expanding into services beyond pure digital, while operators test richer subscription UX and retention mechanics.
Companies such as Digital Virgo, Infobip’s DCB arm Centilli, SLA Digital, Atlas Digital Group and Boku all bring multi-rail expertise and many are scaling PSMS/ DCB/voice across merchant categories.
Watch-list for next 12 months
• Operator mandates – expect more pre-integrated risk SDKs and creative audits before golive, especially in GCC.
• Saudi and UAE enforcement SMS/telemarketing and content-platform rules tested through penalties and corrective action – build audit trails now.
• Category expansion – DCB + wallets edging into services beyond digital (mobility, ticketing, micro-insurance) via agent or marketplace models; watch PSPs piloting these in KSA/UAE.
• Gaming and sports – continued localisation will drive ARPPU gains – licensing/publishing deals paired with carrier-bundle promos.
REGULATORY RESET
Three regional filings matter most to MENA mVAS teams in 2025:
• Saudi Arabia (regulated by CST) – “Digital Content Platform Services” licensing reached its compliance deadline in Oct 2024 and updated SMS/marketing regulations were refreshed in February 2025. Expect tighter oversight of promotional messaging and clearer obligations on platform licensing and disclosures.
• UAE (regulated by TDRA) – a 2024 telemarketing clamp-down (Cabinet Resolutions 56 & 57) reshaped outbound consent, timing and penalties; TDRA’s broader telecoms framework continues to govern premium services and mobile payments activity. Merchants must align opt-ins, contact windows and audit logs with the new regime.
• Egypt (regulated by NTRA) – explicit rules for mobile value-added services and licensing set advertising, consent and fee transparency standards, with DCB included among licensable VAS. Compliance teams should re-check landing pages, receipts and cancellation flows against NTRA’s guidance.
FRAUD AND SECURITY
Operator-PSP collaboration has stepped up. Ooredoo –across MENA and Asia – partnered with Evina to embed advanced DCB fraud detection and is now a reference model for MENA carriers looking to protect onboarding and post-charge journeys.
Independent studies of UAE and Kuwait show the local fraud mix isn’t uniform: remotely controlled devices, spoofing and bypass fraud dominate, so pre-auth checks, risk scoring at click-through, and creative/journey monitoring are table stakes. Sponsors and exhibitors with regional anti-fraud and compliance tooling are increasingly involved in pre-launch approvals with MNOs.
WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE P&L
As in Europe, the centre of gravity is shifting from single-rail DCB to multi-rail monetisation tuned to local realities. DCB for frictionless first purchase, cards/wallets for higher-ticket renewals and operator-bundled value for stickiness.
With gaming revenue rising across the MENA-3 (KSA/ UAE/Egypt) and Ramadan peaks consistently rewarding Arabic-first experiences, merchants that harmonise rails, compliance and seasonal content are seeing the best unit economics.
Africa
Africa is now a bedrock for mVAS content sales, with games and sports attracting vast numbers of users – but it is perhaps the move beyond digital that is most interesting, finds Paul Skeldon
Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), as distinct from North Africa, is a melting pot of markets, countries and peoples – yet together these disperate markets are all exploding in terms of mVAS use. Sports and games lead the way, but increasingly with mobile as the only online devices in everyones’ hands, a raft of other digital and even nondigital services are appearing – and, while underpinned by M-PESA in many countries, DCB is making inroads.
CONTENT AND DISTRIBUTION
Africa’s paid mobile content mix keeps shifting toward gaming, short-form video and utility bundles, with localised discovery (USSD, web flows, ad networks) still crucial. The gaming upswing is now well-documented: Africa hit $1.8bn in gaming revenue in 2024 – growing six-times faster than the global average, led by Nigeria and South Africa and driven 90% by mobile titles. That’s a strong tailwind for subscription games hubs, esports content and carrier-billed trials across key markets.
Among World Telemedia Marbella 2025 sponsors active in African content and acquisition, Telecoming (sportech), Creative Clicks (performance acquisition) and Media Digital Group (premium video/audio) stand out, supported by regional aggregators such as MT2, Sam Media, Mobile Arts, MobiMind, and distribution/traffic specialists showing on the WTM exhibitors roll.
BILLING AND PAYMENTS
DCB + mobile money = wider baskets. Africa is the world’s mobile-money heartland. GSMA reports 108bn transactions worth $1.68tn globally in 2024, with SubSaharan Africa (SSA) contributing the majority. With Africa processing some 65% of global value, this frames why DCB + wallets is now the default monetisation blend for mVAS.
TPAY Mobile pushes combined carrier billing and wallet coverage across MEA; its 2024/25 papers flag expansion into services beyond pure digital and growing intersections with open banking.
Meanwhile, operator fintechs are scaling: MTN MoMo reached 62m MAU in Q1’25; Airtel Money counted
Watch-list for next 12 months
• Operator fintech deepening – more wallet-DCB hybrids and bundle offers as MoMo/Airtel/ Orange Money expand partner APIs and loyalty hooks.
• South Africa code updates could have regional spillover – WASPA enforcement patterns influencing other regulators’ expectations on consent/UX and ad quality.
• Category expansion – TPAY and others piloting mobility, ticketing, micro-insurance and other beyond-digital services with DCB + wallet checkout.
• Gaming + sports content: local IP and league tie-ups drive ARPPU – expect more carrierbundle promos around tournaments.
44.6m customers with revenue up 30% YoY; Orange Money also reports strong growth – a bigger acceptance base for mVAS recurring payments and bundles.
REGULATORY RESET
VAS teams face a patchwork of national rules, but three hubs illustrate the direction of travel:
• South Africa (self-regulated via WASPA) – the industry code moved through several 2024/25 updates (v17.x), tightening consent, advertising and networkspecific requirements. Compliance uplift has been visible since 2023 and SA’s market maturity often sets the regional benchmark.
• Nigeria (regulated by NCC) – updated VAS licensing and the long-standing VAS/aggregator framework require clearer service categories, opt-in transparency and fee disclosures; due diligence on promoters and short codes is non-negotiable.
• Kenya (KICA & CA) – premium-rate price/recurrence disclosures are embedded in law; short-code and PRS procedures emphasise licensing, audit trails and consumer protection – important for SMS/DCB funnels.
FRAUD AND SECURITY
Bot and remote-control attacks, fake creatives and clickjacking remain prevalent. Carriers and aggregators are leaning into pre-auth risk scoring, creative/journey monitoring, and post-charge dispute tooling. Evina publishes an Africa-specific DCB fraud landscape and has secured multi-market operator partnerships – Ooredoo group; historic deployments with Vodacom SA – while Empello and MCP Insight provide independent ad/journey monitoring and DDRC frameworks widely used in approvals. Expect more operator-mandated SDKs, independent pre-launch audits, and creative whitelisting, especially in SA, Morocco, Egypt and Kenya.
WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE P&L
The playbook is multi-rail by design, so use DCB to maximise first-time conversions in carrier channels, then retain and up-sell via wallets (MoMo, Airtel Money, Orange Money) and cards where ARPPU supports fees. With gaming booming and operators scaling fintech rails, merchants who localise journeys (language, handset tiers), comply with country codes, and harmonise DCB + wallet flows are seeing better unit economics and lower refund rates.
APAC
APAC leads the world in gaming and some markets such as Japan are at the pinnacle of payments, showing just how to make multi-rail really work. Yet other parts of the region are still finding their way, says Paul Skeldon
Japan has long had the image of neon-lit, high-tech future living and, since it has mobile internet and mobile payments longer than anyone else it is no surprise that it leads the world in how this tech is deployed. But the rest of the APAC region is very much a spread of early and late adopters and, so, there is still opportunity across this region for carrier billing and mVAS.
CONTENT AND DISTRIBUTION
APAC remains the world’s gaming powerhouse and a primary driver of mobile-first subscriptions. Newzoo’s 2025 updates point to continued global games growth with APAC as the largest regional contributor; mobile revenues are rising again and underpinning mVAS game hubs and esports content across SEA, India (see page 12) and Japan.
Streaming keeps accelerating too. Media Partners Asia reports steady premium-VOD subscriber gains across Southeast Asia in 2024-25, with Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines leading. Chinese platforms (iQIYI, Tencent/WeTV) are also scaling SEA originals and ad-supported mixes, intensifying competition for local eyeballs and carrier-bundle slots.
BILLING AND PAYMENTS
Outside of Japan and Korea, Indonesia sees heavy use of DCB for Google Play in-app purchases and games, alongside Spotify and other digital content. In the Philippines, DCB is used for Netflix (via Globe) and for Google Play one-offs. Note Google changed its rules in 2024 so new Google Play subscriptions can’t use Globe billing (existing subs unaffected).
Vietnam and Thailand again both sees strong use of DCB for Google Play via Viettel, with Digital Virgo, in Vietnam and with TruemoveH and DOCOMO in Thailand. In Malaysia, DCB is offered by Maxis/Hotlink (app stores, subscriptions, digital content). Market watchers report an active, competitive mVAS + DCB environment.
Singapore – Singtel, StarHub, M1 support Google Play DCB; Singtel also supports Apple carrier billing. Common uses are apps, games, streaming subscriptions. There are also well-established DCB markets for app stores and content in Australia and New Zealand.
Watch-list for next 12 months
• Korea/Japan – more merchants trial alternative app-store billing and richer carrier-payment use cases (including select physical goods).
• Singapore/SEA – stricter sender-ID and anti-scam enforcement → heavier pre-approval of creatives and OTP logistics.
• Operator mandates –broader roll-out of SDK-based risk scoring and independent journey monitoring before DCB go-lives.
REGULATORY RESET
There are three hotspots to watch:
• Singapore – the Full SMS Sender ID Registry (SSIR) regime requires registration of alphanumeric IDs; non-registered traffic is flagged “Likely-SCAM”. This materially changes OTP/marketing hygiene for any APAC merchant messaging SG numbers.
• Indonesia – Kominfo’s PSE registration and the Personal Data Protection Law (transition ended Oct 17, 2024) continue to shape platform compliance, consent, and data handling for digital services and mVAS landing pages hosted in/for ID.
• Australia – Australia’s regulator ACMA also flags 2025-26 enforcement priorities around consumer protection and spam, relevant to premium messaging and subscription disclosures.
FRAUD AND SECURITY
The compliance tide is moving from reactive to “designin” defences. In Singapore, SSIR labelling/blocks reduce brand spoofing, while India’s DLT regime pushes verified headers, templates and URLs – cutting smishing vectors but demanding tighter creative governance.
For carrier billing, APAC operators and aggregators increasingly require pre-authorised risk scoring, journey/ creative monitoring and post-charge dispute tooling.
Evina – a Platinum Marbella sponsor with global deployments – features prominently in DCB anti-fraud across operators, with Empello/MCP-style independent monitoring also common in approvals.
WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE P&L
APAC unit economics reward a multi-rail checkout strategy tuned by market: so it is wise to lean into DCB where carrier channels dominate discovery (Japan/Korea/SEA telcos), pair with A2A where it’s ubiquitous (India UPI), and layer wallets (GrabPay, ShopeePay, GoPay, Dana, PayPay) and cards for higher-ARPPU renewals. With streaming and gaming both expanding in SEA and compliance frameworks hardening, the winners are building country-specific funnels (language, IDV, refunds), instrumenting creative/flows for audits, and routing users to the most cost-efficient rail by lifecycle stage.
value added services MVAS REPORT CARD India
India has its own bespoke digital payment wallet, but that doesn’t mean that mVAS isn’t thriving, nor that DCB doesn’t play a role, finds Paul Skeldon
The Indian mobile market is marked out by UPI, a proprietary digital wallet created by the government and open to all. This has brough millions of consumers into the digital world. This is a boon for mVAS in India and, as the market has grown, payments for content and services has gone multi-rail, drawing in cards, other wallets and DCB.
CONTENT AND DISTRIBUTION
India’s paid mobile content engine is anchored in shortform video, gaming and Hindi/regional OTT. Local firm Hungama rebranded its flagship service to Hungama OTT and announced a 2025 slate of 24 originals aimed at “middle-India”, reinforcing the appetite for vernacular series and audio-first formats that convert in carrier and wallet funnels.
For performance acquisition, Creative Clicks continues to push ML-driven user acquisition at mobile scale, while Media Digital Group supplies premium video/music catalogues used in D2C and carrier-bundled offers.
Expect more country-specific onboarding (language, handset tiers, data-light pages) and stronger coordination between merchants and operators to ride festival peaks (Diwali, cricket windows) with time-boxed promos.
BILLING AND PAYMENTS
Checkouts are decisively multi-rail. The UPI wallet hit an all-time record 20.01 billion transactions in August 2025 (24.85 lakh crore), cementing A2A as the default low-friction rail for trials and renewals alongside DCB and cards.
UPI Autopay keeps expanding subscriptions, typically limited to 15,000 lakh crore per transaction without stepup authorisation, giving subscription mVAS a compliant, low-cost retention path under RBI’s e-mandate regime.
On app stores, Google’s user-choice billing remains available (with alternative billing APIs mandated from March 2024), and India’s litigation around Play billing continues to evolve, so many publishers test card/DCB/ UPI mixes to balance fees and risk.
REGULATORY RESET
2025 brings a tighter compliance frame on two fronts:
• Anti-spam and messaging – On 12 February 2025,
Watch-list for next 12 months
• UPI momentum – continuing records (Aug 2025) and Autopay innovations leads to better subscription retention economics.
• TRAI enforcement – deeper checks on DLT templates, consent logs, URL whitelisting; expect stricter penalties and blacklisting where breaches persist.
• DPDP Rules notification – final text could tighten cross-border transfers and age-gating, impacting CDPs and ad-tech in acquisition funnels.
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) updated the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (TCCCPR) (Second Amendment), 2025, followed by nationwide header-suffix labelling from 6 May 2025 (P/S/T/G) to distinguish promotional, service, transactional and government messages. Operators and senders must align DLT headers, templates, consent artefacts, and auditability.
• CTA whitelisting and template hygiene – From late-2024 into 2025, TRAI directions pushed mandatory whitelisting of URLs/APKs/callbacks within SMS templates on DLT, with strict delivery blocks for non-compliance –material for mVAS acquisition and renewal messaging.
• Data protection (DPDP) – The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 is on deck pending final rule notification; draft DPDP Rules 2025 were out for consultation in Jan-Feb 2025, with ongoing debate around data-transfer/localisation. Plan for consent, retention and children’s data controls to harden once notified.
FRAUD AND SECURITY
Explosive UPI growth coincides with rising digital-payments fraud, with digital frauds making up some 56.5% of all banking fraud cases. Surveys suggest one in five families has faced UPI fraud since 2022.
For mVAS, that translates into stricter pre-auth risk scoring, journey/creative monitoring, device/behavioral checks and post-charge dispute tooling across UPI, cards and DCB. TRAI’s suffix labelling plus CTA whitelisting reduce smishing vectors but force meticulous template governance and real-time suppression of risky links.
On the supply side, Evina leads DCB anti-fraud with operator partners, while independent monitoring vendors frequently sit in pre-launch approvals for Indian flows.
WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE P&L
India’s winners build multi-rail by design to acquire with DCB in operator channels and UPI in web/app flows and retain with UPI Autopay where ARPPU is modest. They use cards (tokenised, e-mandate) for higher-value tiers.
Aligning creative and messaging to TRAI DLT realities –registered headers, suffixes, whitelisted CTAs – and instrument flows for audits. That stack – paired with festivaltimed campaigns and handset-aware UX – drives lower CAC, steadier renewals and fewer chargebacks.
The silent switch From search-and-scroll to ask-and-act
As more consumers turn to AI to find things, Paul Skeldon unpacks how AI discovery will affect mVAS traffic generation and offers a practical guide to what providers can do, right now, to be discoverable, selectable and convertible inside these AI-led experiences
For more than a decade, mVAS discovery has ridden two big rails: search (paid and organic) and social (paid and creator). Users typed a query, got 10 blue links, or a carousel, clicked to a pre-lander, and – if your funnel was tight – hit a DCB or card paywall. Or they saw a thumb-stopping post, tapped and you took it from there.
That flow is being unpicked by AI discovery. Instead of ‘search and scroll’, more people now ask a conversational agent (see page 30) – on Google, in Perplexity, in Copilot, or inside a chat app – and expect a direct, synthesised answer with one or two actions embedded: try, buy, install, subscribe. AI systems collapse steps, decide what’s relevant and crucially decide who gets the click. For mVAS providers, whose economics depend on low-friction acquisition and precise handoffs, this is a structural change.
WHAT’S CHANGING AND WHY IT MATTERS
It all sounds a bit ‘tech bro’ and possibly doom-mongering, but this move to how people discover and interact has huge implications. So, what’s actually changing in discovery and why does it matters to mVAS?
AI is at the top of search. Google’s AI Overviews, now expanded globally and across many languages, place a synthesised answer above organic and paid blocks for many queries – especially “how to” and product/service intent queries. That alone changes click-through dynamics and what gets visibility.
Answer engines, meanwhile are a destination. Perplex-
ity, for example, routes queries to live sources, cites them and returns a concise plan or list – often with fewer outbound clicks. If you aren’t a source it can cite confidently, you may not appear at all in a user’s abbreviated journey.
Meanwhile, assistants are everywhere. Microsoft is weaving Copilot across Windows and Microsoft 365, letting users ask in situ and get answers/actions without hopping to a browser tab. The intent is the same: compress discovery-to-action.
For mVAS, that could mean a “best call recorder for Android with carrier billing” query starting from a system assistant and ending there unless you’ve instrumented your presence for assistants.
This makes organic traffic patterns volatile. Industry studies show mixed outcomes: some publishers reported minimal impact early on, while later analyses point to lower CTRs on informational queries where AI answers satisfy intent. The lesson isn’t panic – it’s to design for the answer pane and for assistant consumption rather than only for the classic 10-link page.
If that isn’t enough, how consumers interact with search and answer engines is now multimodal. Spoken queries, screenshots, even camera input – “what’s this app and how do I get a similar service?” – are rising. Services that present clear, structured facts such as pricing, eligibility, carriers, regions and short “why choose us” snippets in machine-friendly formats will be paraphrased more accurately – and suggested more often.
marketing & promotion
Twelve-step checklist to tap AI discovery
If you haven’t already looked at this, here are 12 steps you can start this month to start to leverage this AI-inspired shift in how consumers search and discover (and ultimately buy) online.
1. Map 10 to 15 “assistant intents” per market (such as“best [service] with DCB [country]”).
2. Draft a 100-word canonical description and seven-bullet differentiators per service.
3. Build a canonical offer page with tables (price, billing, carriers, trial, cancel, regions, devices).
4. Add structured data where sensible; keep tables clean and literal.
5. Publish a developer-style page describing eligibility/trial link endpoints (even if partneronly).
Today the emerging AI funnel is much more complex:
• User asks the assistant (“Which UK providers offer daily horoscopes with DCB?”).
• Assistant synthesises: mentions two or three providers, shows prices/terms, maybe a comparison tile and offers one or two actions.
• The action could then be open a chat (WhatsApp/ AMB), launch a flow (RCS/WA Flows), open a verified landing with prefilled parameters, or call an API on your side (such as generate a trial link).
• The assistant keeps the user unless a click is necessary, so whatever leaves the assistant must be “conversion-ready.”
The implication of this is huge. The decisive battle moves upstream into how well your service is represented in AI systems. Not just SEO, but AEO (Answer-Engine Optimisation) and Assistant Readiness are now very much a thing.
HOW TO MAKE MVAS ‘ASSISTANT-READY’
So, how do you make your services AEO ready? Think of this as AEO + Actionability; you’re not leaving SEO behind, you’re adding the layers AI systems reward by following these steps.
First, publish assistant-grade facts (and mark them up):
• One canonical “offer” page per product, with plan names, price (with currency), renewal cadence, included features, free trial terms, cancellation steps, carriers/regions, device requirements, messaging channels supported (SMS, RCS, WhatsApp, AMB),
support hours and a plain-English one-liner descriptor;
• Use structured data where appropriate. Even when there’s no perfect schema type, tables with machine-parsable headings (“Price,” “Billing period,” “Networks,” “Trial,” “Cancel”);
• Maintain change logs on the page. When AI systems reconcile conflicting info, freshness and consistency win.
Second, write the two things models actually quote:
• A 50-120-word explainer (“[Service] is a [category] that …”) with specifically who it’s for and why it’s different;
• A 5-7 bullet “Why choose us” block with distinctive, checkable benefits (not fluff).
Third, build assistant-friendly deep links and flows:
• Smart deep links that carry UTM-like parameters and query-string flags for country/carrier/device, and fail gracefully to a country selector if unknown;
• Single-use trial links that expire; return a tidy status code to an assistant that wants to verify success.
• Where possible, offer messaging handoffs (WhatsApp Flow URL, RCS suggested action, AMB entry point). Your deep link is your AI landing page.
Fourth, create agent-specific landing variants:
• For Google AI surfaces, have a lightweight page that mirrors the overview copy and tables; keep it fast and transparent (no heavy interstitials);
• For Perplexity, ensure your page answers the exact question it tends to ask (“Is there a free trial?”) with a yes/no + terms sentence high on the page. Models love explicitness.
Fifth and finally, make your compliance visible (and quotable):
• Prominent opt-in/opt-out statements (STOP/HELP syntax), refund/complaint routes, and countryspecific disclaimers. Assistants are increasingly risk-averse; clear compliance increases your chances of being recommended.
PLUGGING AI DISCOVERY INTO YOUR CHANNELS
Most mVAS companies are already deeply entrenched in traffic gen strategies across search, social, PR and marketing; this AI optimisation is just another means of discovery. However, in the short-term it needs to work alongside those other channels – and they alongside it –and, longer-term today’s traditional channels will have to evolve to operate in this AI world.
Here’s how that might look:
• Paid search and social seeds consent for messaging – AI is compressing mid-funnel browsing so you need to use classic ads to push users into first-party channels such as WhatsApp or SMS opt-ins, AMB Message Suggest, RCS promoter cards – then let messaging handle conversion and lifecycle.
• Content and PR to earn citations – Answer engines value credible, citable sources. Invest in telco
partner pages, neutral explainers on reputable sites and transparent support docs. A glowing affiliate page with thin content won’t carry as much weight as a carrier marketplace listing or a press mention with hard facts.
• Affiliates can upgrade to assistant-grade assets – Give top affiliates fact boxes – JSON snippets, CSVs, or Airtable views – that they can embed, ensuring consistency across the web. The more identical, verifiable copies of your key facts, the more likely an agent will trust and repeat them accurately.
• Messaging will be the “action” the agent chooses – If an assistant can trigger WhatsApp Flows or RCS actions that complete sign-up, those routes are favoured because they reduce drop-off. Treat messaging endpoints as primary destinations for AI-referred users, not just CRM tools.
WHAT TO TRACK IN AN AI WORLD
As with all marketing, measurement and attribution underpin AI mVAS traffic gen. Knowing what works and what doesn’t, as well as indicating what kind of ROI , or in this case return on ad investment (ROAS), is key to creating an SEO strategy. It also allows you to compare it to how your other channels are performing and, crucially, how that might be changing as consumer habits evolve. So, what do you measure and why?
• “AI-referred” sessions – Identify assistant-origin paths (referers will often be opaque). Use landing variants and link tokens to segment traffic likely arriving from AI surfaces.
• Assistant-to-action rate – Of users who open your assistant-targeted link, how many reach OTP or Pay?
• Answer share – In manual tests, how often are you named in assistant responses for your core intents (“daily horoscope UK DCB,” “football SMS alerts NG,” “kids learning BR weekly”)? Track quarterly.
• Citations earned – Count high-quality mentions on carrier sites, credible tech media and docs.
• Flow completion from messaging handoffs – If AI opens a chat, does the Flow outperform web paywalls? Expect higher completion when the assistant pre-qualifies intent.
RISKS AND HOW TO MITIGATE THEM
Naturally, there are risks with this new world of mVAS marketing and traffic generation that you very much need to be aware of. It is also worth noting that this is so new, many of the risks are yet to become apparent. However, from what we have seen of the emerging world of AI discovery, there are some things to watch out for and tactics to adopt:
• Don’t paraphrase into non-compliance – things like trial terms can be misstated or other facets of what you do and how you remain compliant may be missed off. This can be mitigated by putting the canonical statement high on page, in simple sentences, and keep it consistent everywhere.
• Disappearing from answers after a pricing or carrier change – any changes to what you or your carriers and partners make can also upset the process, so keep last updated stamps and change logs; publish a versioned “plans” table so models trust freshness.
• Assistants prefer “free” over “paid” – so lean into free trial clarity, show value props beyond price, and highlight safety (no ads, curated for kids, licensed content).
• AI hallucinating carrier support you don’t have –always provide a single authoritative carriers list, and get telco-hosted pages (or marketplaces) referencing the same list.
WILL AI DISCOVERY INCREASE OR DECREASE MVAS TRAFFIC?
This is the big question and, right now, the answer is yet to be determined. However, initial analysis – by asking AI itself no less – is that it will do both, depending on your readiness. If you rely on generic listicles, thin affiliates and opaque pricing, expect loss of visibility as assistants prefer clearer, cited sources.
If you publish assistant-grade facts, offer actionable endpoints, and route to messaging flows that convert, you can gain share – because assistants love frictionless, verifiable actions (and users love fewer steps).
In short, then, AI compresses the funnel. The providers who pre-package their value (and their actions) for assistants will see higher intent density in the clicks they do get and more conversions via messaging handoffs.
In conclusion, AI isn’t killing search or social, it’s re-wiring the route to intent. For mVAS, that’s an opportunity. The shortest path to a subscription, a trial, or a purchase is a well-structured answer plus a clean action — ideally in messaging, where conversion friction is lowest. Optimise for the answer. Expose the action. Make messaging the default handoff. Do those three things, and AI will become a new top-of-funnel and mid-funnel rolled into one — on your terms.
Playbooks by mVAS category
Here are some ways that you can adapt your marketing to meet the AI discovery challenge across a range of key mVAS sectors.
Content clubs (music, video, wallpapers):
• Build a comparison table versus free alternatives clarifying legal/licensed angles, offline access and billing transparency.
• Offer a one-tap messaging start (“Try 3 days free on WhatsApp”) with age gate and consent in-chat. Horoscopes and spirituality:
• Publish methodology (unique selling point) and daily sample content so assistants can summarise style.
• Provide a trial link API; assistants can offer “start a 7-day trial now” safely. Sports alerts and tips (SMS/RCS):
• RCS suggested actions for subscription changes; assistants favor verified senders for trust.
Utilities and security (call blockers, antivirus, storage):
• Clear device requirements, battery impact and data handling.
• Provide DCB versus card options; assistants often mention both—make the landing detect and adapt.
marketing & promotion
Ticking the TikTok box
Social media plays an increasingly important role in traffic generation for mVAS and TikTok is starting to become a force to be reckoned with. Paul Skeldon takes a look at how TikTok has conquered social commerce and what what means for mVAS
TikTok is dominating the social shopping scene, with its in-app checkout and viral discovery model outpacing Instagram and redefining how micro-brands sell – and it has some big implications for telemedia.
In the UK alone, the social commerce market is set to hit £38.4 billion by 2025 and TikTok is taking the lead among younger shoppers. According to Businessmagnet, 40% of Gen Z consumers in the UK have already made a purchase via TikTok Shop this year. This picture is similar in most other developed markets: it is strong in South East Asia, the US and many European countries and is set to be emergent across MENA. Only China is it not a force to be reckoned with, its sister site Douyin having that honour.
By contrast, Instagram still redirects users to external websites to check out: a user experience that creates friction and costs brands valuable conversions. TikTok’s key advantage? It turns product discovery into entertainment and eliminates all barriers to purchase, says Business Advisor, Daniel French from Businessmagnet.
This is great for digital commerce brands looking to sell on TikTok – not least because it is where all those GenZers are – but it also shows the power of TikTok as a traffic generation medium. While it is a grey area as to whether ads for mVAS on TikTok need native TikTok checkout, what it does prove is that TikTok is the place to be to be seen by target audiences in the UK and beyond.
With GenZ – and increasingly their older siblings and even parents – increasingly turning to TikTok for entertainment, marketing here is vital. The level of engagement already shown on the platform is huge. As more users get more used to buying through it, so it becomes not just the key sales channel online, but they main place to be seen.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR MVAS?
TikTok already has much to offer mVAS service providers. Its video-centric, entertainment-first approach is particu-
larly effective for promoting online and mobile entertainment services, making it easier to tell stories, showcase features and demonstrate value in a way that feels native and non-intrusive to users.
mVAS providers can use a variety of engaging ad types – including in-feed videos, Spark Ads (which boost viral organic content), TopView ads (guaranteed premium placement), live streams and branded hashtag challenges – to increase discovery, interaction, and conversion rates.
In addition, TikTok’s creator ecosystem allows mVAS brands to partner with relevant influencers and creators, tapping into established communities for authentic, trusted recommendations; a proven traffic driver for entertainment services.
TikTok itself offers some really key tools for mVAS providers too. It has sophisticated targeting options based on interests, behaviours and demographics, with robust analytics to track conversions, measure ROI and optimise campaigns in real-time.
The platform’s algorithm can also propel new or unknown brands into viral cycles even with modest follower counts, while engagement features such as polls and challenges foster user participation and organic growth.
But above all, TikTok supports direct traffic generation by redirecting to mobile sites, app stores, or in-app offers through clickable links in ads, live streams and bio sections, making it easy to nudge users toward subscription or download actions.
This all adds up to some interesting ecomomics in using TikTok to generate traffic. TikTok data suggests it drives an average of 60% lower cost per install for entertainment apps and a 79% higher paying user rate compared to other media sources, which directly benefits traffic generation and monetisation efforts for mVAS offerings.
Combining all this with the fact that so many people are now heading to TikTok to buy things and it is clear that we are soon going to see a whole lot of mVAS business being done through and because of this site.
WHAT MVAS BUSINESSES SHOULD DO?
So, armed with this information, what should mVAS merchants and anyone else looking to leverage TikTok as a traffic generator do to get the most from the social site?
As seen, TikTok has myriad advantages over other social sites and is rapidly becoming the place for discovery of everything, including mVAS services. Being directly linkable and agnostic of business or brand size is a real boon, but there are still tactics that need to be followed to make the most of the site.
According to our experts, these include:
• Prioritise TikTok Shop optimisation – Set up a professional storefront. Link products to videos and ensure a fast, mobile-friendly checkout process. Use product bundles to increase average order value.
• Prepare for instant demand – Sync your stock system, CRM and fulfilment tools before launching content. TikTok virality happens fast, and brands must be ready to scale overnight.
• Plan viral-worthy content – Showcase your product in short, authentic clips under 60 seconds. Demonstrations, transformations, and real customer reactions work best.
• Leverage live selling – Use TikTok Live to sell in real time. It builds trust, encourages interaction, and drives immediate sales, especially when paired with exclusive deals or limited-time offers.
• Expand search presence – Don’t depend solely on TikTok. Optimise content for Instagram Reels, Google Shopping, and even YouTube Shorts and Pinterest to diversify your audience funnel.
• Use TikTok’s Creator Marketplace – Partner with micro-influencers in your niche. Their followers are often more engaged, and cost less than celebrity endorsements.
• Retain post-viral shoppers – Use in-app email capture. Follow up with discounts or bundle offers, and retarget through email, SMS, and even Instagram ads. The goal isn’t just one-off sales, but brand loyalty.
“TikTok has flipped the traditional online shopping funnel on its head. Discovery, engagement and purchase now happen in a single app session. That’s why products under £25 sell out overnight because there’s no friction,” says French. “Instagram still sends users away to buy, but Tik-
Tok lets them shop while being entertained. For GenZ and Millennials, it’s second nature. But you’ve got to be ready. Virality is a flash flood. You need inventory, automation, and a strategy for capturing and converting that attention long after the initial spike.”
What TikTok does differently and what brands should do
With this in mind, what should brands and merchants looking to leverage TikTok for sales and traffic generation do? According to Business Advisor, Daniel French from Businessmagnet, there are some key advantages that TikTok offers and that then shapes what anyone looking to engage or sell through it should do.
What TikTok does differently
• TikTok Shop allows users to discover, explore and purchase: all within the app. TikTok’s ‘For You’ page combines entertainment and shopping in one fluid feed.
• The algorithm doesn’t care how big your
brand is. A single engaging video from a small business can reach millions.
• Livestream shopping is normalised on TikTok, where influencers demo products, engage audiences, and offer exclusive flash deals. Instagram is still catching up.
• Users trust reviews and demos from relatable creators more than glossy ads.
• In-app purchases reduce hesitation, driving quick decisions, especially for affordable products under £25.
• TikTok doesn’t just showcase products, it turns them into must-haves via cultural viralit.
marketing & promotion
Taking the biscuit Google’s cookie retreat and what it means for mVAS
As Google postpones dunking cookies for good, Shamim Samadi takes a look at what that means for independent AdTech and the marketing and traffic generation market as a whole
In a move that surprised few but still reverberated across the industry, Google has once again delayed the deprecation of third-party cookies, with no firm deadline in sight. While the company cites regulatory concerns, many see it as further proof that meaningful privacy reform is much harder to implement than announced. It’s also a clear signal that the industry can’t afford to wait for one company’s timeline to shape the future of digital advertising.
GOOGLE’S REALITY CHECK
Google’s original plan to block third-party cookies in Chrome was hailed as a watershed moment for online privacy and the ad tech industry. But after years of delays and growing resistance from regulators and advertisers, Google’s commitment to the timeline has eroded.
What this means in practice for mVAS
In short, Google’s change of tack on cookies is a stay of execution, not a reset, writes Paul Skeldon. For mVAS companies this keeps a lot of their mobile-web acquisition, retargeting, capping and affiliate attribution intact – especially in Chrome-heavy geos – while nothing changes on Safari and Firefox, which are already cookieless, or in-app, where Android Privacy Sandbox still marches on. So, what does it mean specifically for mVAS?
• UA and retargeting on mobile web through Chrome – Your cookie-based remarketing, suppression lists and frequency caps keep working. That’s big where Chrome dominates mobile share (globally 69% of mobile browsing; India 91%). But in the US (Safari 48%, Chrome 44% on mobile/tablet) you still can’t rely on cookies for half the traffic.
• Affiliate and aggregator tracking – Post-click flows that used third-party cookies across pre-lander to offer to DCB remain viable on Chrome. Do not roll back your cookieless/S2S postback setup; you still need it for Safari/Firefox and for resilience.
• Fraud controls and geotargeting – Chrome keeps cookies, but Incognito will add IP Protection in Q3-2025 that masks IPs for third-party contexts on a “masked domain list”. Expect reduced reliability of IP-based geo/carrier inference and some fingerprinting signals in Incognito sessions; It would be wise to build fallbacks (first-party data, server-side signals and consent-backed methods). Regular (non-Incognito) sessions are unchanged.
• Compliance and consent: GDPR/ePrivacy and telco consent rules are unaffected.
In July 2024, Anthony Chavez, VP of Privacy Sandbox, signalled a partial retreat by announcing that Chrome users would be given a choice: opt into the Privacy Sandbox or continue allowing third-party cookies – a move that may have been aimed at mitigating potential repercussions from the antitrust trial.
Now, even that compromise has been shelved after Google cited the emergence of “privacy-enhancing technologies,” the potential for AI to bolster user privacy, and a shifting regulatory environment in its most recent blog post.
But it’s probable that the verdict from the antitrust case, where a federal judge recently ruled that the company unlawfully monopolised two critical segments in ad tech markets for publisher ad servers and ad exchanges, played a role in Google’s decision-making process.
This back-and-forth underscores why advertisers can’t hinge their strategies on a single provider. Futureready solutions must work regardless of one company’s roadmap.
Keep your CMP and TCF flows; Chrome’s decision doesn’t relax proof-of-consent needs. Incognito still blocks third-party cookies by default.
• In-app mVAS buying – Unchanged by web cookies. Android Privacy Sandbox continues; so plan your SDK/measurement migrations there.
Practical next steps to make this happen include:
1. Run dual measurement – keep third-party cookie setups for Chrome and maintain cookieless S2S/click-ID attribution for everything else.
2. Test Incognito impact early – measure conversion deltas with masked IP (such as GEO detection, fraud rules) and adjust models before wider rollout.
3. Budget by browser/GEO – lean into Chrome retargeting where it’s dominant such as in India and many APAC/MEA markets, but expect thinner returns in iOS-heavy markets like the US.
4. Harden fraud defences – reduce reliance on IP alone and use server-side checks, consented first-party signals and carrier/aggregator risk feeds.
5. Keep your Android in-app roadmap – adopt Sandbox APIs via your ad SDKs; separate web vs app measurement plans.
Bottom line: Chrome keeps the lights on for cookie-based mVAS growth, but the industry is still bifurcated across Safari, Firefox and web versus Android in-app, so treat Google’s retreat as breathing room, not a reason to unwind your cookieless and server-side investments.
THE INDUSTRY CAN’T AFFORD TO RETREAT
For many across the industry, Google’s reversal is frustrating. Ad tech companies, publishers and marketers have invested significant time and resources into preparing for
integrating with and enhancing the continuously evolving identity ecosystem. Any strategy beholden to a single signal, partner, or strategy will fail in the long run. Advertisers deserve to choose where and how they invest without fear of bias or hidden incentives. A healthy, sustainable advertising ecosystem depends on it.
THE FUTURE IS OPEN, INTELLIGENT, INDEPENDENT
The media landscape is shifting as advertisers demand more control, transparency, and flexibility in how they manage their investments. Big tech platforms are no longer the only path forward. The recent antitrust ruling, for example, is about more than just one lawsuit. It’s about charting a better future for advertising and the industry is embracing a more open and diversified ecosystem.
We’ve long believed that the future of advertising is not dependent on third-party cookies – a belief that stands firm even despite Google’s U-turn. The marketers who embrace this shift now will lead tomorrow’s media economy. Future-proof your media strategies by leaning into first-party data, exploring privacy-first solutions, and working with independent partners who can bring transparency, interoperability, scale, and measurable outcomes to every impression.
Shamim Samadi is Head of Product Strategy, Innovid
Messaging x mVAS Doing the maths on how messaging will drive traffic
Messaging is becoming richer and is increasingly being used for marketing – so what impact will it have on mVAS traffic generation? Paul Skeldon offers a practical view of what works, what doesn’t and the trade-offs that will see it grow
For years, mVAS growth has been fuelled by search and social. But with privacy headwinds and Google rowing back (for now) on killing third-party cookies (see page 18), something interesting is happening: consented, conversational channels are becoming the most reliable way to generate traffic and convert it. In other words, messaging – SMS, RCS, WhatsApp and iMessage – is moving from “nice-to-have CRM” to front-line acquisition and performance media.
Why? Because messaging lands where mVAS lives: on the handset, next to the dialler, the wallet and the app that handles the one-time password. It’s fast, first-party and measurable without cookies. SMS still offers unmatched reach for cold starts and mass announcements. RCS adds verified branding, buttons and carousels that behave like a mini-landing page inside the inbox. WhatsApp now delivers complete chat-topurchase journeys – click-to-WhatsApp ads, Flows, even payments in some markets – making it a powerhouse in India, Brazil, Latam and MENA. And Apple Messages for Business gives iOS users a premium, customer-initiated path that’s perfect for high-intent assistance and Apple Pay checkout.
Critically, this isn’t theory. We’re seeing caller-tunes and content clubs scaled via SMS (albeit when consent is watertight), RCS “mini-storefronts” are outperforming SMS for digital add-ons and click-to-WhatsApp journeys are turning social clicks into billable subscriptions or DCB flows – often with less leak than a traditional landing page.
So, how can mVAS providers use each messaging rail for traffic generation, what are the benefits and challenges to expect – and how does messaging stack up against search, social and affiliates – is the shortest path to conversion a conversation?
SMS: UBIQUITOUSLY USEFUL
Let’s start by looking at good old SMS. It drives traffic in two ways. First, broadcast A2P SMS pushes to opted-in lists short links to pre-landers and DCB flows, MO keywords – such as “TEXT WIN to 12345” – to trigger journeys. Secondly, there are two-way conversations such as quizzes, daily tips and service pickers that capture
consent and preferences, then hand-off to web or call. These both have ubiquitous reach, working on any handset and have predictable delivery via operator rails and work even with poor data coverage.
There are heavy compliance challenges, however. For example, India requires DLT registration of sender IDs and templates and anti-spam suffix labelling is tightening enforcement. There are also, globally, filtering and cost pressure for promos and short links face trust issues. There is also a perceived fraud risk through smishing and so SMS traffic gen demands strict brand safety.
But it is working: caller tunes and content clubs promoted via bulk SMS have succeeded in multiple markets, although there has been and the backlash when consent is weak, as Nigerian carrier MTN Nigeria can attest.
RCS: RICH AND ENGAGING
RCS, often billed as SMS 2.0 offers a similar, although much richer experience for traffic generation. Cards and carousels, suggested replies and actions – such as “Start 7-day game pass”, or “Try astrology” – can be delivered with verified sender and branding. As a result, it converts like a mini-landing page in the inbox, then deeplinks to web/DCB or completes flows inside chat.
Living up to its SMS 2.0 moniker, RCS delivers higher CTR/conversion than SMS in telco campaigns, with Telekom Deutschland seeing RCS outperformed SMS by a factor of two, according to the carrier, which worked with Infobip to deliver a Spotify Premium free trial campaign. It also saw 26% higher open rate, 66% higher engagement and 120% higher conversion.
The addition of RCS to Apple’s iOS18 has expanded the reachable base and RCS is surging – so we’ll be seeing more of these kinds of campaigns. However, coverage still varies by carrier and region and RCS needs a certified provider and template approval and rich creative takes more build time.
In the mVAS space there have been a few trials of using RCS to drive traffic. In Brazil, a MNO working with Upstream has adopted a multi-year RCS programme as a core acquisition channel – and campaigns beat SMS performance showing a 19% increase in campaign performance and 137% higher CTR for RCS over SMS outreach.
WHATSAPP: DOING THE BUSINESS
Meta-owned WhatsApp is an interesting one: it piggybacks on the MNOs networks, but MNOs make little from
it – and it has grown in popularity as am engagement channel between businesses and consumers since the pandemic. No surprise then that it also drives traffic.
It does this through Click-to-WhatsApp (CTWA) ads from sister companies Facebook and Instagram to immediate chat. Flows add “app-like” forms and menus in-chat, as well as featuring catalogues, reminders and, in some markets, payments – all of which push to purchase.
Using WhatsApp has huge benefits. The service has immense reach, especially in India, Latam – notably Brazil – and MENA, where it already delivers interactive journeys without a website and works brilliantly for assisted conversion to DCB or local payments. Template marketing is also now permitted with opt-in, while pricing was refreshed in July 2025.
And it works. Travel firm TUI, as a non-entertainent example, saw a seven-fold increase in engagement compared to email. A number of campaigns for telcos and digital services run by Infobip, Sinch and Gupshup have also yielded strong results. But there are challenges with WhatsApp. Strict opt-ins, frequency caps by best practice, template approvals and new spam controls shift power to users and make it very easy for them to blank campaigns after one attempt. Payments UX also varies wildly by country.
APPLE MESSAGES FOR BUSINESS
iMessage is something of a walled garden and often thought of as a niche messaging channel. But what it lacks in reach it makes up for in consumer spending and so Apple Business Messaging has started to also gain traction – not least as a key way to reach all those iPhone users out there.
It is best for assist and conversion support once the customer initiates via Message Suggest from Maps, Safari or Search, or from the business’s site. It is also great for Apple Pay checkouts on supportable services.
It offers a premium experience on iOS: forms, pickers, secure payments all make it superb for high-intent journeys and upsell within an existing consented thread.
However, customer-initiated by design; outbound promos require explicit opt-in and are tightly policed—not a cold acquisition channel.
HOW DOES MESSAGING STACK UP?
Where messaging wins is where it can offer lower leak than landing pages and where conversation keeps users in-channel. It is also coming into its own where there is falling or cookie dependence as it is resilient to ad-tracking headwinds. It is also very much first-party. It also offers faster feedback loops through buttons and replies, enabling real-time eligibility checks before you pay for a click.
messaging & engagement
Blast from the past How SMS is still a marketing force to be reckoned with
With messaging becoming a traffic driver and marketers wanting deeper, two-way engagement, look no further than good old SMS for reach, says Sergii Diachenko
In a digital landscape saturated with marketing noise, SMS remains one of the most direct and effective channels for reaching customers. It already has a key role to play in mVAS (see page 20) and SMS marketing now serves as a fundamental business strategy for brands that aim to engage customers through immediate delivery. With near-instant delivery and open rates that far outpace email, SMS marketing has demonstrated its strong position as an effective marketing channel.
And SMS marketing is experiencing major developments in 2025. Corporate adoption of SMS marketing has increased to the point where companies use it as a fundamental digital strategy element instead of an additional tool. This trend spans across multiple industries, not just one. With the current boom of AI technology, we can expect hyper-personalised features to come to SMS marketing, which will undoubtedly change the game.
According a DecisionTelecom study of 546 marketing professionals, some 80.4% of businesses are actively using SMS marketing, with an average SMS marketing budget of around 18.76% of the total budget. The adoption rate of SMS marketing differs by company size. With medium-sized companies (51–250 employees) leading at 35.8%, followed by small businesses (1–50 employees) at 32.8%, and large enterprises (251+ employees) at 31.4%. It is clear that SMS marketing extends to all business sizes, and organisations are favouring immediate reach.
Retail companies have established themselves as the leaders in SMS marketing adoption as they require both fast promotions and effective customer interactions, driving a 19.8% adoption rate. The technology industry stands as the second biggest industry using SMS marketing, with 17.5%, followed by finance with 12.3%, education with 11.6%, along with e-commerce at 8.9%, and healthcare with 8.7%.
AI EVERYWHERE
Of these many users of SMS marketing, one in every six companies (60.4%) is actively using AI in their SMS campaigns, with ChatGPT leading the market for chatbot integration in large-scale SMS interactions, with 69.8% of companies reporting its use.
More than half of the companies (64.5%) are planning to increase their budget for SMS marketing in the next year, with 78.5% of them allocating a heavier invest-
ment in AI integration.Personalisation and optimisation are the top aspects for AI implementation. The most common use cases are automated segmentation and targeting (31.3%), content personalisation (27.2%), and handling customer replies (26.4%).
AI has successfully produced substantial results: conversion rates increased by an average of 26.6%; engagement metrics rose by 25.8%; and cost efficiency improved by 24.6%
The most common gain is around the 11-25% range, leaving room for even bigger improvement in the future. Some of the outliers (13.2%) report over a 50% increase in conversion, while a considerable number of businesses (25.7%) are experiencing around a 26-50% boost.
ANTICIPATED CHALLENGES
However, around 5.3-5.7% of the participants are not witnessing any changes, revealing some potential misalignment between the user and the technology.
Even though it has achieved popularity recently, SMS marketing is still facing fierce competition from email and social media, which have proven their effectiveness over a long period, accounting for 72.9% of non-adopters’ choice of alternative platforms.
These traditional digital marketing tools continue to dominate marketing campaigns, as many industries require comprehensive content types that are not accessible with SMS marketing technology.
Sergii Diachenko is CEO at DecisionTelecom www.decisiontele.com
IPRN: Still going strong
The IPRN market is a long-established and oft-overlooked part of the telemedia world yet sitting at the nexus of engagement and payments it continues to generate significant revenues and has even found new use cases and new markets. Paul Skeldon reports
The international premium rate number (IPRN) market, alongside the broader premium messaging sector, exhibits considerable value and growth potential, especially within particular regions and use cases. While precise, segregated financial data specifically for IPRNs can be difficult to pinpoint, their role within the larger premium messaging and telecommunications service market can provide a useful context for understanding their economic footprint and growth drivers.
The global premium messaging market reached a size of $80.6 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow to $120.2 billion by 2033, CAGR of 4.31% from 2025 to 2033.
To give a sense of scale, the established premium messaging market in the UK alone is projected to reach $1.5 billion in 2025 and could hit $6.8 billion by 2032.
However, it is in emerging markets where IPRN is not only growing super-fast, but is also carving out new use cases and showcasing how this long-established payment technology continues to generate significant traffic and revenues.
In these markets IPRN is focussed on micropayments for a wide array of digital and interactive content. This is a response to evolving media consumption habits and regulatory changes in specific regions. Typically, this sees IPRNs used to monetise a variety of digital media, including music, videos, and subscription-based services, through a direct charge to the phone bill. It is also still seeing extensive use in all regions as part of TV and radio interaction, with viewers and listeners participating in polls, competition, and quizzes by calling or texting a premium rate number.
IPRNs are also popular micropayment method for virtual goods and services, such as live chat, interactive entertainment such as games, quizzes and gambling, helplines and charity donations.
MARKETS AND COUNTRIES OF SIGNIFICANCE
Africa represents a high-growth market for IPRN services due to its developing mobile infrastructure. IPRNs offer a secure, real-time payment system that bypasses the need for traditional banking, credit cards, or online accounts, which are less prevalent in many regions. With a large consumer base and a strong appetite for premium content, APAC is a major market for IPRNs.
Marketers report a significant proportion of “premium buyers” who are highly engaged with interactive media. Similar to APAC, the MENA region has a market of “premium buyers” and an appetite for luxury goods. The telecommunications infrastructure and consumer spending habits make it a valuable target for IPRN services.
Russia and Central Europe also sees service providers actively deploying and finding strong growth in IPRN. Interestingly, while highly regulated, the EU remains a consistent market for premium rate services, particularly for content and interactive media. Some providers use IPRNs for customer service, though consumer protection rules often mandate transparency.
REASONS FOR IPRN USAGE
The enduring relevance of IPRNs, especially in certain markets, is driven by several key factors. IPRN as a microbilling tool enables easy and immediate transactions for small amounts of money, providing an efficient alternative to more complex online payment gateways or credit card systems and is great for the unbanked. It is also accessible to anyone with a phone, reaching populations that may not have bank accounts or internet access. This is a particularly strong driver in emerging economies. The use of IPRNs also offers providers a secure and reliable real-time payment system that is less prone to fraud than some online payment methods. For media companies in these markets, IPRNs generate revenue directly from audience interaction. As media landscapes shift, IPRNs provide a steady revenue stream that can supplement or replace declining advertising income.
Although a decades-old technology, IPRNs have been successfully integrated with modern technologies like Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and digital content platforms, keeping them relevant in the modern marketplace.
Carry on carrier billing Why DCB is still a winning payment tool around the world
Once seen as an expensive and fringe payment tool, the digital economy has thrust DCB back into the limelight –globally. Paul Skeldon takes a look at how this market has come back to life and where it is going next
Direct carrier billing underpins the telemedia sector and, while it has had its ups and downs over the years, currently it is seeing something of a boom. But it is just one of many payment tools and, as the market moves towards a multi-rail future, where does DCB fit in?
In the age of digital convenience, carrier billing has become a key payment tool for snackable, mobile content, longer form content and increasingly returning to subscriptions. It is among the most frictionless payment methods and one that can be used, in theory at least, by anyone with a mobile phone. This is why it has surged in use in the past decade.
This surge is cresting currently, with DCB registering 8% CAGR across the globe between 2023 and 2024, according to figures from MEF and seeing a surprising amount of growth in France, which has seen its
DCB market expand by a staggering 21% across the same period, according to Amelia Newsome-Davies of Orange France.
WHAT IS DRIVING DCB?
So, what is behind this surge in DCB use across the world? The reasons behind it are complex, but can be boiled down into a few factors. First off, there is a boom in branded content from leading organisations such as NBA, ATP, Lega Serie A, games companies and more. These companies use carrier billing as part of a plethora of payment tools – a multi-rail approach –and being increasingly sophisticated about how each is deployed and used. Carrier billing can be an on-ramp that leads to card or wallet payments down the line. It can also be a subscription tool or just an easy option.
In some instances, the mobile operator’s network is the billing intermediary, the cost is added to the billing & payments
Where the DCB market is getting interesting is the role it plays at the heart of the virtuous circle of content marketing, traffic generation and ecommerce. “
Carrier billing, certainly in Europe, is also finding its way into new markets driven by new business models. The standouts are how it is being used for taking payment for things like ebike and scooter rental or EV charging. In some markets, such as Turkey, it is also being used a range of hitherto non-mVAS services such as insurance – again this can be linked to bike and scooter hire – as well as to being used to pay for Burger King takeout. This roll-out of DCB into new mVAS sectors not only broadens its reach but also shows that many more business channels are taking it more seriously.
The adoption of new business models is also driving uptake of DCB, certainly in European markets. The move to a payment agent model in Germany and Austria by DIMOCO is well documented and its importance can’t be understated. Here, the network operators are made payment agents for DIMOCO and as such have more freedom as to how DCB is then used.
This has been part of the German swing towards using DCB for all sorts of things, including buying from vending machines. It has also been part of the coming together of German operators to bring DCB to the market under one brand – Zahl einfach per Handyrechnung (which translates to “Pay Simply with Your Mobile Phone Bill”) – and which sees more than 150 million transactions a year. Adopting a brand name may also be about to happen in the UK, but more of that later… (see regulation section below).
One drawback in Europe is that DCB has always been viewed as a minor part of the MNOs portfolio of revenue generators. In fact, data from MEF suggests that European MNOs are still underinvesting in DCB infrastructure, “happy for it to just tick along…” according one analyst.
This is a mistake – a mistake that some MNOs in Europe are now starting to correct. DCB is a minor part of MNOs bottom lines, but as voice and messaging have become almost totally commoditised within data bundles, payments could well be a life saver for them.
While there is talk that these very commoditised bundles will also kill DCB – people not in effect having
a phone bill to put charges on, just a data package – a move towards payments in general, perhaps even ‘finserve lite’ could be a winner for MNOs.
No, the payments won’t make them hugely more money, but using payments to create value added service packages for MNO customers could. MNOs as the first (perhaps only) port of call for finding games, content, paying for your eScooter, buying a bus ticket and sorting out your insurance could well be a very sticky service. This is a lesson that MNOs in Europe and other mature markets could well learn from MENA and SSA markets (see pages 6 and 8).
NEW GEOS
While DCB is having something of a renaissance in Europe, it is perhaps other more emergent markets where it is seeing considerably growth and where it has true latent potential. It is here that DCB has powered the rapid and sustained growth of mVAS and which has created a very different DCB market.
Take MENA as an example. It is now the world’s most promising DCB market, with 427 million unique users in 2023, projected to hit 803 million by 2027, according to TPay. This large pool of users is already generating significant DCB use, with Boku reporting 7% growth in DCB payments and some 50% growth in DCB bundling in 2024.
With DCB helping consumers in ‘card light’ markets engage in streamed games, streamed content and, in the case of Turkey, buying a burger or car insurance, the region is a powerhouse for carrier billing. It is also becoming prominent in sub-Saharan Africa for similar reasons. However, across Africa we see M-PESA, an operator run mobile wallet, dominating the market. This is both a threat and bonus for DCB. M-PESA has seen large swathes of the SSA market becoming used to using digital money via a mobile to pay for pretty much everything for more than a decade. Does DCB have a role? Well yes, but it is more limited, although TPay is looking at how to use DCB to top up wallets, while many content and mVAS providers are also looking at adding DCB to the payment options on services to try and entice those that don’t use M-PESA to also play in the digital economy.
In some cases, app stores or digital content providers allow the user to choose “Pay with M-PESA” or similar. That means instead of charging via a phone bill or operator credit, the cost is debited from the user’s mobile money wallet. Because many people have mobile money wallets, this is functionally very similar to DCB (in the sense that it’s non-card, non-bank payment) though technically different.
For example, Huawei AppGallery in Kenya supports purchases using M-PESA via Direct Carrier Billing. Apps, in-game purchases, etc., can be paid via M-PESA from user mobile credit and/or balance.
mobile bill or deducted from prepaid credit. Mobile money might be used to top up credit. Alternatively, mobile money and DCB systems may be used in parallel, where some purchases go via mobile money, others via DCB – depending on what the merchant supports and what payment methods the user has enabled.
For example, Google Play in Kenya includes “M-PESA Xpress” as a payment method. That means users can pay via mobile money, through M-PESA, when making Google Play purchases, which is a kind of hybrid model – some DCB-style billing but via mobile money.
However, for DCB to work well alongside mobile money, you need APIs, consent flows, often authentication, possibly integration for refunds/disputes. Telcos or operators need billing relationships with content providers; mobile money platforms need to be able to handle digital micro-payments efficiently. Fraud prevention is also important.
BETTER REGULATION AND CLOSER COOPERATION
Improved regulation and fraud control has been a huge boon to DCB in recent years. As consumer and merchant interest in it has grown – especially in MENA – regulation has been forced to keep pace. In Europe, improved and often simplified regulation has led to more efficient, stable and reliable markets and, hence, has seen the creating of new services and offerings as mentioned above.
The German market has been particularly well served by MNO and aggregator co-operation, which has allowed for consistent flows, clearer Ts and Cs and, as said, the creation of a brand name for DCB across all networks, turning it into a payment type that consumers recognise.
In the UK, a similar approach is also now a possibility. With carrier billing and premium rate services coming under the aegis of overall media and communications regulator Ofcom, a new regulatory framework has been introduced that is both wider in scope and more simple to understand.
While MNOs here wrestle to align their codes of practice with this change, the prospect of them all working together to create a branded, universal DCB payment tool looks ever more likely. Although we have been here before – Payforit, anyone? – this time it looks like the stars of regulation, cooperation and consumer demand are all aligned and the UK market could be a blueprint for regulation in other regions.
COMING TOGETHER
Where the DCB market is getting interesting is the role it plays in the increasingly converged worlds of content, marketing and traffic generation and monetisation. When looking at the exhibitors and delegates at World Telemedia Marbella – the likes of Atlas Digital Group, Sam Media, MT2, MobiMind, MobileArts, Mo-
bile Business Engine and more – it is easy to see how the market has shifted towards a set of busniesses that offer the whole set up: content, billing and marketing. They of course work with all the other providers – the MeshAds, the Dynamic Mobile Billings et al – to provide these services, but today the mVAS market is very much one that links content, payments and traffic gen in a virtuous circle.
This has huge benefits for the sector, but from a billing point of view it creates challenges. There is, for example, a tension between MNOs billing rules and the way Google assesses whether services are fit to be advertised. With Google largely approaching this using AI to crawl through services Ts and Cs, if they haven’t been written in a precise way by the MNOs they won’t be surfaced – regardless of whether they are OK or not. This tension can also be found when trying to market through social too and it is very much the same situation faced by telemedia services when AI discovery is trying to find things for consumers (see page 13).
While these issues are largely a question of wording on websites and eminently addressable, it does leave the way open to other forms of traffic generation. In Germany, RCS and DCB have been linked in an experimental bus ticket ordering service that allows for bus tickets to be brought seamlessly from an RCS message using carrier billing. There are similar plans being looked at by Orange France to build on the French market’s love of PSMS interaction to leverage DCB through RCS messages.
It is indeed an exciting time for carrier billing across the world and this nexus of services is what underpins the telemedia market and is increasingly the thrust of the World Telemedia show. Where else can you see all these players in one place and where else can you leverage the power of them all working in harmony?
billing & payments
Zero clicks given How agentic commerce changes everything
Plans by OpenAI to embed payments in ChatGPT is just the latest move towards Agentic Commerce, where AI finds, chooses and pays for goods and services. So what does that mean for mVAS, wonders Paul Skeldon?
ChatGPT operator OpenAI is to integrate payments into a checkout system embedded in its ChatGPT AI platform, changing the face of ecommerce as we know it, initiating the inception of Agentic Commerce – and potentially having a massive impact on mVAS.
Earlier this year ChatGPT and ecommerce platform Shopify partnered to upgrade the shopping element of ChatGPT, allowing it to display prices and reviews of goods that ChatGPT recommended to searchers, as well as then feeding them off to the relevant site to buy stuff. Now, with this latest development, shoppers will be able to complete their transaction on the ChatGPT platform itself.
The move comes hot on heals of rival AI platform Perplexity announcing that Perplexity Pro subscribers would be able to make one-click payments directly within its AI interface, through PayPal or Venmo.
In addition, both Visa and Mastercard have also rolled out agentic commerce platforms that let the AI search, evaluate and then actually buy goods for consumers based on their prompts – an agentic AI shopping assistant that can do it all.
And it seems consumers want these services. Data from Salesforce shows that four in ten (39%) consumers are already comfortable with AI agents scheduling ap-
Examples of agentic commerce in practice
It may seem that agentic commerce is very much at the theoretical stage, but there are one or two early examples of it in action – and you should take heed because all-things AI move very quickly and these early adopters herald what is to come for your business.
• Amazon “Buy for Me” – This beta feature allows AI agents to purchase products from Amazon and third-party websites on the user’s behalf.
• Google AI Mode – This experimental feature tracks product prices and can automatically purchase an item when it drops to a user-defined target price.
• OpenAI’s Operator – An autonomous agent that can navigate websites like Instacart and DoorDash to perform shopping tasks and complete purchases.
• Visa Intelligent Commerce and Mastercard Agent Pay – These platforms provide the tokenised payment infrastructure and secure APIs needed for AI agents to make authorized transactions.
• PayPal Agent Toolkit – This toolkit allows AI agents to process payments, manage subscriptions, and handle invoices.
• Enterprise automation – Businesses are deploying internal AI agents to automate procurement, manage inventory levels, and negotiate with suppliers based on real-time data.
pointments, while a quarter (24%) are comfortable with AI agents doing their shopping – rising to nearly a third among Gen Z.
Debra Aho Williamson, Founder and chief analyst, Sonata Insights, meanwhile, says: “Soon, consumers will not even need to go to an AI platform to do what they do today. Instead, they will have an AI agent perform a task on their behalf, and the results will be delivered to them.”
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR MVAS
We have already seen how AI is impacting search and how that delivers consumers to mVAS services (see page 13) and this move also now shakes up how, once they find the content or service they are looking for, they pay for it. While this has clear privacy, security and other issues, it does mark a shift in how AI is being seen within commerce and that has a big impact on mVAS and payments.
From an ecommerce standpoint, this is clearly a game changer: the age of agentic commerce is upon us and shoppers looking to find things to buy now have some powerful new tools at their fingertips. They can search by simply asking AI or they can get an AI shopping agent to take care of the whole process. But what does this mean for mVAS?
mVAS providers of everything from ringtones to content subscriptions to add-on insurance and even custom digital services have traditionally relied on telco portals, SMS, or apps. With agentic checkout, such services could be bundled, recommended, or sold directly in AI-centric search, chat and voice interfaces – bypassing conventional app stores or telco channels.
It also ushers in new embedded commerce opportunities. Internal APIs or integrations can let these services surface as purchase recommendations or cross-sells during relevant AI-driven conversations – such as, say, a travel insurance upsell when booking a flight via chat – with instant checkout. This will likely force VAS providers to reconsider their distribution strategy around integration with leading AI platforms, rather than only telecom or app channels.
Agentic commerce also does much to create almost totally frictionless payments and personalisation. Since agentic commerce heavily leverages zero-party and historical data, mobile VAS can be much more deeply tailored, offering device-specific services, localised content, or subscription add-ons based on precise, AI-understood user needs and context, improving conversion.
Meanwhile, frictionless, one-click payment through PayPal, stored cards, even potentially DCB could reduce drop-off and boost conversion rates for impulse or recurring purchases.
WHAT IT MEANS FOR TELCOS
There are also major implications for telcos and their content and billing ecosystems. If users increasingly shop and subscribe via AI interfaces on mobile, traffic to app stores and VAS portals is likely to fall –well human traffic that responds to all the orompts and marketing investment already made on these stores. AI agents acting “on your behalf” could even automate or batch-buy multiple services, seamlessly managing renewals and cancellations. Imagine what it would do to subscription services if AI agents were looking at what their ‘master’ was paying for and what they were or weren’t using and then cancelling services. This would decimate the subs-service business – or it could well usher in an era of subscription services being well-run, content heavy offerings that were true value for money.
Either way, this agentic commerce world – and the payments that go with it –will instigate a massive change in ecosystem and revenue models across the telemedia value chain. Major AI platforms such as OpenAI, Google and Perplexity, along with payment providers, will likely take a commission on these in-AI transactions, shifting margins across the mobile VAS value chain. VAS companies will need strong partnerships and technical integration with these AI commerce hubs to maintain relevance and revenue share.
TENSIONS AND OPEN QUESTIONS
There are, of course, a lot of tensions across the value chain – not least because so much of what might happen with Agentic Commerce and AI payments remains at the time of writing an unknown. But there are several issues that will need resolving, or at least thinking about right now before it is too late.
• Security and trust: Giving AI purchase authority could raise concerns about payment security, user consent, and fraud.
• Discovery & differentiation: With AI agents mediating purchase choices, how VAS providers compete for visibility in the recommendation/AI shopping layer is critical.
• Regulatory compliance: Especially for carrier billing or subscription services, agentic flows will need to meet mobile payment and consumer protection standards.
The arrival of agentic ecommerce with embedded checkout in AI platforms will erode traditional VAS channels on mobile and create a new battleground for embedded digital services. To stay relevant, VAS providers must adapt to this AI-first distribution model, focusing on deep integrations, enhanced personalisation and frictionless payments within the AI commerce ecosystem.
billing & payments
Brave new world How emerging markets are driving payments
Emerging markets are key to all things telemedia, but they are particularly important to the development of digital commerce and, as a result, payments. Paul Skeldon reports
Digital commerce – whereby goods and services are selected and paid for online without human intervention – is one of the most rapidly growing parts of the general ecommerce market and it is driving everything from marketing and merchandising to technology and above all payments. However, in developed markets, both ecommerce and digital commerce are saturated markets. While there are a wealth of payment tools in these markets, innovation can only go so far: consumers here expect to be able to pay how they want when they want, so the onus is on the merchant to offer as many payment tools as possible. Emerging markets, however, are a very different story. Here ecommerce, digital commerce and payments are all very much in that exciting stage of coming of age – and are doing so rapidly and really quite innovatively. Innovations that are impact those staid developed markets.
THE GLOBAL MARKET
The health of the global digital commerce market is what really underpins the health and development of the global payment industry. Without online stuff to buy – and mVAS is a large part of that – payments evolution largely stagnates.
So, what does the digital commerce market look like and what does that mean for payments?
According to Juniper Research, global digital commerce spend will reach $34 trillion in 2029, and will grow by 65% between 2024 and 2029, from $23 trillion in 2024. This growth will be driven by Latin America and Asia Pacific, two regions which are seeing increasing access to ecommerce as infrastructure develops, supported by the growing availability of local payment methods.
Achieving success in these emerging markets is vital to global growth for international digital commerce platforms, as ecommerce in developed countries is increasingly saturated like its counterpart in the developed world. In particular, the rate of growth in value will be 241% higher in Latin America than in North America between 2024 and 2029, representing a major opportunity.
To capitalise on this, digital commerce platforms must support more local payment methods, such as local digital wallets and account to account (A2A) payments, rather than solely relying on card payments. This will enable platforms to tap into emerging markets growth specifically, as this is heavily tied to enabling access to large populations that lack access to cards.
Cards have powered the emergence and establishment of the digital commerce sector in key developed markets, but international merchants must look beyond cards to capitalise on this next phase of growth in both new, devel-
Even Europeans are willing to change how they pay
New payment tools aren’t confined to emerging markets, even European consumers are on the look out for new ways to pay. Europeans are increasingly willing to switch online payment methods to access speed, convenience and security when shopping, according to research from European financial technology provider, payabl.
More than half (53%) of consumers are open to switching to newer payment methods, with nearly a third (30%) willing to do so for a faster checkout process. However, while convenience and speed are major drivers for the take-up of new payment methods, the findings show that security and trust remain essential for European shoppers when deciding how to pay.
Consumers overwhelmingly cited speed (46%), convenience (44%) and security (41%) as the top reasons for choosing a payment method, more so than habit (21%) or widespread acceptance (29%). This suggests consumers are actively choosing their payment methods, not just sticking with what they know. Moreover, consumers are also switching payment methods depending on the context; 62% say the value of a purchase influences their choice, with 44% turning to credit cards for high-ticket items, often for the added protection (58%).
For businesses, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity: offer the right mix of localised options or risk losing the sale, but also consider promoting new methods, as 53% of consumers say they’re open to trying alternatives, especially when incentivised with cashback, discounts or loyalty rewards.
The findings, part of payabl.’s latest report – The State of European Checkouts – show that e-commerce is now essential for many European shoppers, with 48% shopping online weekly, spending an average of £53 per transaction.
Ugne Buraciene, Group CEO of payabl, explains: “Online shopping has become second nature for consumers, but how they choose to pay is far more intentional than many businesses realise. Our research shows people are open to new ways to pay, but only if it makes their lives easier and feels secure.
“This presents a challenge for retailers, but also a real opportunity. The checkout isn’t just a final step – it’s a critical moment to build trust, encourage repeat purchases, and differentiate from competitors. Businesses that can offer both speed and safety, with payment options that reflect local preferences, will be the ones that win customer loyalty and drive growth.”
oping markets and across the developed regions – even developed markets look to implement A2A payments within ecommerce, embracing local payment methods must be a clear priority in all markets.
THINKING LOCAL, THINKING PSPS
This need for ‘local’ drives the development of payments. According to Juniper’s research, merchants the world over have to offer customers payments in their local currency or they won’t use those payment tools. Who wants to interrupt their purchase of a game or a clip to work out the currency conversion?
Traditionally, says Juniper, this has meant forming multiple partnerships with acquirers and necessitates multiple integrations. However, businesses today can now integrate one service to handle all of their local payments, thanks to the developments made in alternative payments as a service – developments powered by solving this very problem.
This new world of payments providers that are plugged into – and regularly add-to and update payment tools –has been a boon to the market. One advantage to the merchant of local acquiring is higher authorisation rates. This is due to the transaction occurring in a familiar environment for the issuing bank, which increases their chances of both regulatory compliance and authorisation. The insider knowledge leveraged by the local acquirer allows them to more accurately assess the legitimacy of purchases, reducing the chance of false declines.
Additional benefits of this include being able to leverage domestic licences to lower payment costs on cross-border connections. Transactions are also less likely to incur currency conversion charges and cross-border fees, benefitting the merchant. For emerging markets, local payment methods allow users who do not have access to cards
or bank accounts to participate in the digital economy via agent networks, wallet services or other alternatives, broadening the markets merchants can serve.
THE TROUBLE WITH SUBSCRIPTIONS
Of course, there are challenges. For mVAS in particular, but increasingly for ecommerce generally, subscriptions and recurring payments are becoming a key business case. This can be a challenge in the new world of payments for a number of reasons.
When taking recurring payments, ecommerce retailers must store customer payment data for extended periods of time, which opens them up to risk in the event of a data breach and makes them subject to data protection regulations. To avoid this, businesses can use tokenisation. This generates a unique token which represents the payment data of the customer and can be reused for subscription payments. This is also useful for returning customers, as they do not need to refill their information for each new purchase.
Tokenisation is beneficial for aiding retailers in adhering to the PCI DSS regulations, which require that online retailers protect stored account data and also that this data is encrypted and protected during transmission.
Integration with Payment Support Providers (PSPs) that support reusable payments sources is essential for ecommerce and mVAS retailers who wish to expand into subscriptions.
These PSPs often have APIs which trigger alerts in the case of non-payments; for example, if the stored card in the account expires and a payment fails then this can send a call to the card networks to request updated information. Another option is to integrate an API into communications channels, so that the failure of a payment will result in direct notification of the customer.
telecoms & network operators
When tech bros go to war Telcos are the ones to score
As AI big wigs wage a war of words, Dario Betti takes a look at how AI has reshaped the app market, the telecoms market and is likely to become even more significant now it is the key way consumers interact with all-things online
In November 2022, OpenAI quietly released ChatGPT to the world. Within five days it had amassed one million users; this feat took Netflix three and a half years to achieve. But the real story wasn’t just about user adoption; it was about what would happen when this AI phenomenon went mobile.
Fast-forward to August 2025, and ChatGPT has achieved something many doubted: $2 billion in consumer spending since its mobile launch. Mobile users are paying for the premium version of the app. To put this in perspective, that’s more revenue than many established tech companies generate annually. The chatbot now sits comfortably at the number one position on Apple’s App Store, a digital throne that has attracted both admirers and enemies.
Among those enemies is Elon Musk, whose own AI venture, Grok, languishes at number five on the App Store despite his massive social media following. This disparity has sparked what might be the most high-profile tech feud of 2025 and it may reshape how we think about AI app distribution.
THE MOBILE AI REVOLUTION UNFOLDS
This isn’t just about ChatGPT’s success, it’s about a fundamental shift in how consumers interact with artificial intelligence. Where desktop computing once ruled, mobile
has become the primary battleground for AI supremacy. Users aren’t just downloading these apps, they’re paying for them, subscribing to premium tiers and integrating AI assistants into their daily routines in ways that seemed impossible just two years ago.
ChatGPT dominates with its $2 billion war chest, built on a foundation of first-mover advantage and a premium subscription model that users embrace. Its success story reads like the blueprint in mobile monetisation in the short history of AI chatbots.
Claude, Anthropic’s offering, has carved out a respectable $100 million to-$200 million revenue stream by focusing on enterprise customers and emphasising AI safety – a positioning that resonates with corporate buyers wary of AI risks.
Grok, Musk’s controversial creation, only generates an estimated $50 million to $100 million despite its integration with X (formerly Twitter) and its willingness to engage with topics other AI systems avoid.
Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini struggle with the mobile-first reality, their revenues bundled into larger enterprise offerings or lost in the complexity of search integration.
It is worth pointing out again, that this only refers to the mobile app monetisation, these companies are monetising
via web as well for specific enterprise API based solution. OpenAI’s revenues are reportedly about $12 billion per year.
WHEN TITANS CLASH: THE MUSK-APPLE SHOWDOWN
The drama began unfolding in August 2025, when Elon Musk took to his platform X with a series of explosive accusations. Apple, he claimed, was “behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach number one in the App Store.” He called it an “unequivocal antitrust violation” and threatened legal action against the world’s most valuable company.
Musk’s timing seemed curious. His complaints emerged just as OpenAI was crowned as the dominant force in Mobile AI chatbots, dwarfing Grok revenues. And at the same time Apple faced mounting regulatory pressure: a €500 million EU fine for App Store restrictions here, a US Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit there. Talking about another antitrust violation must hurt a bit at Cupertino. Was this a legitimate grievance or opportunistic pile-on?
The evidence suggests the latter. Let’s point at some facts challenging Musk’s claims: the Chinese AI app DeepSeek had reached number one in January 2025 in the same category, while Perplexity topped India’s App Store in July, with both achievements occurring after Apple’s OpenAI partnership began in June 2024.
Apple’s response was swift and uncompromising. A company spokesperson stated that “the App Store is designed to be fair and free of bias” and features “thousands of apps through charts, algorithmic recommendations, and curated lists selected by experts using objective criteria”.
But it was Sam Altman’s counterattack that truly escalated the conflict. The OpenAI CEO didn’t just defend his company, he went on the offensive. “This is a remarkable claim given what I have heard alleged that Elon does to manipulate X to benefit himself and his own companies and harm his competitors,” Altman fired back, referencing reports that Musk had created special systems to prioritise his own tweets on X.
The feud, industry observers noted, seemed less about antitrust law and more about a personal vendetta dating back to 2018, when Musk left OpenAI’s board following disagreements about the company’s direction.
THE RIPPLE EFFECTS ACROSS MOBILE ECOSYSTEMS
While tech billionaires traded barbs on social media, the implications of ChatGPT’s mobile success were reverberating throughout the telecoms industry. MNOs, traditionally focused on voice and data services, suddenly found themselves at the centre of an AI revolution they hadn’t anticipated.
AI apps consume significant bandwidth as they are driving not just text but increasingly audio and video files. They require low-latency processing, creating demand for edge computing services. They generate massive amounts of data, opening new monetisation opportunities.
Payment service providers faced their own transformation. ChatGPT’s success validated subscription-based models for AI services, but it also highlighted the global nature of AI app adoption. Cross-border payments, micro-transactions for AI services, and new fraud patterns emerged as AI apps scaled internationally. And let’s not forget that ChatGPT also now has embedded payments (see page 30).
AI is good news for mobile, even the old fashioned (by now) mobile apps are finding themselves energised by mobile chatbots. Potentially SME and Large Enterprise could be next in finding a mobile version of the AI chatbots. MNOs, App Stores and payments providers could consider bundles and specific vertical solutions too.
THE ROAD AHEAD: LESSONS FROM A $2BN SUCCESS STORY
As 2025 progresses, the ChatGPT phenomenon offers crucial lessons for the mobile industry. First, consumers will pay for AI services, but only if they deliver genuine value. ChatGPT’s success wasn’t just about being first to market; it was about creating an experience users found indispensable.
Second, platform relationships matter more than ever. The Musk-Apple controversy, regardless of its merits, highlighted how app store policies can make or break AI companies. Success in the AI mobile era requires not just great technology, but strategic platform partnerships.
Third, the mobile-first approach isn’t optional, it’s essential. Desktop AI tools might capture headlines, but mobile apps capture multiple billion-dollar revenues. The companies that understand this distinction will thrive even more. Looking forward, the industry faces several inflection points. Things might change considerably by then. Subscription fatigue may force AI companies to find new monetisation models. Platform integration will deepen, and AI might be part of your mobile phone – such as its operating software – just like the Apple-OpenAI blueprint. Specialised AI apps might also emerge for specific industries and use cases.
But perhaps most importantly, the success of ChatGPT’s mobile strategy has proven that artificial intelligence isn’t just a technology trend, it’s a fundamental shift in how humans interact with computers. The $2 billion milestone isn’t just OpenAI’s achievement: it’s validation of a new era in mobile computing.
As Musk and Altman continue their public feud, and as Apple navigates regulatory challenges, the real winners may be the millions of users who have discovered that AI assistants in their pockets aren’t just convenient, they’re transformative. The mobile AI revolution has only just begun, and ChatGPT’s $2 billion success story is merely the opening chapter.
Dario Betti is CEO of MEF (Mobile Ecosystem Forum) a global trade body established in 2000 and headquartered in the UK with members across the world. mobileecosystemforum.com www.linkedin.com/company/mobile-ecosystem-forum
telecoms & network operators
XR in the 6G driving seat
Extended reality (XR) is starting to garner interest and, as it grows so too will pressure on bandwidth. Paul Skeldon takes a look at how new services will drive the deployment of 6G, which in turn will drive the evolution of new services
The exponential growth in immersive content consumption is set to put a major strain on today’s wireless infrastruc ture and make way for new enabling innovation, according to data from InterDigital, a mobile and video technology research and development company and market research firm Futuresource Consulting.
The report reveals that as immersive and extended real ity (XR) content becomes more accessible, current network architecture must evolve to cope with the demand.
The research – “Media over Wireless: Networks for Ubiq uitous Video – explores the escalating demands and trends around consumer behaviour for video and immersive experiences over wireless networks. XR applications are placing new demands on wireless networks which, in their current form, will be unable to handle the next generation of immersive entertainment.
NEXT GEN NETWORKS TO THE RESCUE
Today, demand for entertainment over wireless is voracious, whereby video accounts for 69% of all data traffic over the internet and, on smartphones, 74% of data consumption is video, driven by social media clips, embedded video and streaming platforms. More than a quarter (26%) of consumers watch SVoD services, such as Netflix and Prime Video, on their smartphone, compared to 41% on TVs and gaming is really pushing network limits. By the end of 2024, mobile gaming revenues reached $85 billion.
However, the XR market is growing rapidly and, by 2031, it is expected that the number of XR devices shipped will increase four-fold over 2025 levels, to reach 83 million units globally.
Without significant upgrades to the network, the market risks facing stalled adoption of immersive devices — especially given that 40% of consumers today report dissatisfaction with network performance, where video demands are not as intensive as XR.
“The high demand for more immersive entertainment cannot be ignored. As XR devices become more accessible, we’ll move from simply watching video to stepping inside it—and future wireless systems need to be prepared for this staggering change,” explains Milind Kulkarni, Head of Wireless Labs at InterDigital. “XR is a stress test for wireless networks, where the throughput and latency demands make it the defining use case for 6G and next-gen video codecs.”
So, what is the answer? 5G-Advanced and forthcoming 6G architectures will be essential to unlocking the full potential of immersive and XR content. Futuresource predicts that 6G deployment will coincide with the projected maturity of XR hardware and software ecosystems, which is expected to take place between 2028 and 2032.
For telcos the investment is not only essential to ‘keep the lights on’, but could be very lucrative considering how big the XR market is set to become – big enough to justify the enormous investment needed to make 6G a reality.
According to data, the XR market is projected to hit 130 million 6G-enabled devices by 2037, up from near-zero today. By 2030, XR is expected to become the second major category (after smartphones) to integrate 6G capabilities. As a result, new experiences will reach the market, with immersive experiences on the go such as city tours, live events and public transport entertainment all set to be big business.
“The XR market is entering a pivotal phase, where immersive content is no longer a niche. As we get closer to 2030 and the release of the first 6G standards, XR entertainment is going to become an expectation, where we will see interactive digital sports venues to real-time augmented city guides and digital twins,” says Lionel Oisel, Head of Video Labs, at InterDigital. “But the success of these experiences will hinge entirely on quality of experience— whereby ultra-low latency, responsive interactivity, and consistent media synchronisation which are all essential to unlocking XR’s full potential.”
cyber security & fraud
How telcos are leading the
Fraud is rife across all online business, with scammers using AI in new and inventive ways to hit consumers and businesses. But in the mVAS sector, telcos are leading the fight back. Paul Skeldon explains
Those pesky AI-fraudsters continue to rake it in with robocalling scams, fleecing some $80bn out of consumers and businesses in 2025, research predicts. But this is just one of a growing wave of frauds impacting telcos as they look at new voice and messaging revenue streams. These new streams are so important that telcos are vigorously fighting back, not just across fraudulent voice calls, but across B2B networks and rich business messaging.
Telcos are facing a rough ride, with consumer voice and data services now highly commoditised into all-you-can-eat plans. To drive growth, telcos must look at other ways to make money, which increasingly means offering contact services to businesses looking to reach consumers.
And big business it is too. The global business messaging market – covering A2P, RCS, SMS and chat platforms – is estimated to be worth around $54.bn in 2025, up from approximately $47.7bn in 2024. Within the CPaaS market, which encompasses A2P messaging, voice and more, voice services made up about 3% of revenue in 2022, expected to grow to around 8% by 2027. With the A2P messaging segment alone valued at $71.5bn in 2024 , applying that 8% voice share would suggest roughly $5bn to $6bn annually for voice services in this ecosystem. That’s a lot of money and a clear incentive for telcos to not have it ruined by fraud.
ARE WE AT PEAK FRAUDULENT ROBOCALLS?
Fraudulent robocalls, often impersonating government agencies, banks, or legitimate businesses, aim to deceive recipients into divulging sensitive information or making financial transactions. As these scams become more sophisticated, the ability to identify and prevent them in real time has become increasingly difficult.
For telcos, robocalling fraud erodes consumer trust in voice services, reducing call answer rates and customer satisfaction. When subscribers receive repeated scam calls, they may choose to abandon traditional voice calls altogether, negatively impacting the telco’s revenues and brand image. Additionally, regulators are putting pressure on providers to adopt better safeguards, increasing compliance costs.
Businesses are also vulnerable. Scammers can spoof the caller ID of legitimate companies, damaging their brand reputation and customer relationships. For example, if a consumer receives a fraudulent call appearing to come from their bank or a service provider, the trust in that organization can be severely undermined — even if the business had no direct involvement.
Consumers, the ultimate targets, are increasingly at risk of financial loss, identity theft and emotional distress. With advances in caller ID spoofing, it has become nearly impossible for recipients to determine which calls are legitimate and which are scams, making them more susceptible to manipulation.
However, this year may well be ‘peak robocalling’; data from Juniper Research suggests that initiatives such as STIR/ SHAKEN and other – AI-powered – tools are seeing quite a fight back from within the industry… a fight back that hopefully will see robocall fraud start to fall. Although, make no mistake it will still be a multi-billion-dollar problem.
The STIR/SHAKEN framework was developed — Secure Telephone Identity Revisited (STIR) and Signature-based Handling of Asserted Information Using toKENs (SHAKEN). These complementary protocols work together to authenticate and verify the caller ID information in IP-based voice calls.
STIR/SHAKEN uses digital certificates based on public key infrastructure (PKI) to “sign” calls with a level of attestation. When a call is initiated, the originating carrier assigns a trust level and attaches a token verifying the legitimacy of the caller ID. The terminating carrier then uses this information to validate the call’s authenticity and inform the recipient, often via a “caller verified” notification. By ensuring that caller ID information is accurate and verifiable, STIR/SHAKEN significantly reduces the ability of scammers to spoof numbers and deceive recipients. Though not a complete solution, widespread implementation is a major step forward in restoring trust in voice communications and curbing the rising tide of robocall fraud.
fightback against fraud
GROWING ARRAY OF B2B TELECOM FRAUDS
However, robocalling fraud is just one of a growing number of fraud problems dogging the telecoms industry – and it is eroding both the telco-consumer relationship and the burgeoning B2B telecoms market.
Telcos increasingly need to diversify beyond traditional voice and data services, and running secure B2B networks for sectors like medical, legal, and finance presents a valuable opportunity. These industries require highly secure, compliant, and reliable communications infrastructure— areas where telcos can leverage their technical expertise and scale. With declining revenues from consumer services due to commoditization and OTT (over-the-top) competition, enterprise-grade connectivity offers a critical new revenue stream.
In particular, medical, legal and financial institutions face stringent regulations – such as HIPAA, GDPR, PCI-DSS – and demand guaranteed data integrity, privacy and uptime. Telcos can build tailored, private networks or offer managed services to meet these needs, positioning themselves as trusted infrastructure partners in these high-value verticals. However, operating these sensitive B2B networks also raises the stakes in terms of fraud and cybersecurity. These industries are prime targets for phishing, spoofing, and data exfiltration attacks. Any breach—such as unauthorized access to patient records or financial transactions—could lead to significant legal liabilities and reputational damage for both the client and the telco.
This means telcos must invest heavily in threat detection, end-to-end encryption, and robust identity verification tools to secure their networks and maintain trust in these mission-critical environments.
In fact, according to a separate study, telcos are investing more than $17bn in AI-based security across their networks to protect their relatively nascent new business of servicing verticals with bespoke networks. These, often to be found in medical and financial companies, are a prime target for fraudsters and hackers and to get this business line off the ground telcos have to invest.
MESSAGING FRAUD TOO
Similarly, the rise of rich business messaging such as RCS is only going to work if it is secure.
As we have seen on pages 22 to 27, Rich Business Messaging (RBM) — which includes channels like RCS (Rich Communication Services), WhatsApp Business, and branded SMS — is becoming a favoured customer engagement tool for enterprises due to its multimedia capabilities and high engagement rates. However, this success has also attracted fraudsters who exploit these channels to impersonate brands, deliver phishing links, or harvest sensitive customer data.
As RBM evolves to include logos, verified sender IDs, and
interactive features, it becomes harder for users to distinguish between genuine and malicious messages. Fraudsters can mimic branded messages with alarming accuracy, eroding customer trust and leading to reduced open rates, engagement, and even reputational damage for legitimate businesses. This undermines the value of customer contact solutions, which rely on secure and trusted communication.
Telcos and businesses are responding in several ways. First, they’re deploying stronger verification frameworks, including sender ID registration and digital certificates to authenticate message origins. AI-driven fraud detection is also being used to flag suspicious messaging patterns in real time. Additionally, ecosystem-wide initiatives—like verified sender programs and industry collaboration on message authentication—are gaining traction.
Ultimately, safeguarding rich messaging channels is now critical for telcos and enterprises alike as they seek to maintain consumer trust and maximize the effectiveness of digital customer engagement.
WhatsApp has stolen something of a march on RCS in this field and comes with end-to-end encryption. Now messaging firms, if they want to capitalise on the massive RCS/rich comms opportunity, have to make sure all services are secure – just as we are seeing with Orange France and Twilio, who have partnered to bring secure RCS business messaging to the rapidly expanding French RBM market.
Payment fraud
As already touched on on page 28, payment fraud is also growing. As the mVAS sector grows and DCB usage expands, so too does payment fraud. With key players such as Evina and MCP Insight leading the fight, payment fraud evolves and constantly needs new tools and approaches.
A prime example has been how operator Ooredoo in MENA is working with Evina to leverage AI in the fight against the rise of automated fraud in the region. Through this partnership, digital service merchants using Ooredoo’s carrier billing will have access to Evina’s advanced fraud detection and prevention system, allowing them to proactively detect and block fraudulent transactions in real time. This ensures a more secure digital experience for customers, protecting them from unauthorised charges.
Rene Werner, Group Chief Strategy Officer, Ooredoo, said: “Security and trust are the foundations of customer satisfaction in general and of any successful digital payments ecosystem in particular. At Ooredoo, we are committed to lead in customer experience across our markets. By partnering with Evina, we are reinforcing our defenses against evolving threats and ensuring that our customers can transact with confidence. This initiative prevents fraud and enables a seamless, secure, and scalable digital payments experience that fuels growth for businesses and empowers millions of users across our markets.”
David Lotfi, CEO of Evina, added: “Fraud is the biggest challenge in the mobile payment industry, and Ooredoo has taken decisive action to further protect its customers and build a trusted digital ecosystem across the MEA region and Asia. With its unwavering commitment to security and innovation, Ooredoo is setting new standards for a safer digital economy. We are extremely proud to support this vision and to kick off this partnership with them.”
viewpoint
Alex Sidorenko Sales & Business Development Lead, Mobidea
What does your company do?
Mobidea is a global leader in CPA affiliate marketing, connecting advertisers and publishers across 200+ countries since 2011. We’ve built a thriving ecosystem with over 1,500 active advertisers, 9,000+ high-converting offers, and a community of 130,000+ successful affiliates. We specialise in mobile value-added services (mVAS) and provide enhanced tools including Smartlinks for intelligent traffic routing and Mobidea.Push which delivers high-quality quality traffic.
Mobidea Academy, meanwhile, serves as our awardwinning educational hub, offering comprehensive lessons, expert guides, and proven strategies that help affiliates master the industry and scale their success.
Our expanded ecosystem includes: Traffic.Bar – a specialised advertising network with deep expertise in the Dating vertical; Exclusive by Mobidea – a premium affiliate network focused on high-value CC-submit and Nutra offers, customised for discerning clients
We’re rapidly expanding our international presence with offices in Cyprus and Montreal, plus remote teams spanning multiple regions. Our growing media buying, sales, and affiliate operations teams strengthen our ability to serve clients worldwide. They also help expand reach into new markets, particularly North America.
Which countries or regions do you feel represent the greatest opportunity for your telemedia services in 2025, and why?
In 2025, we see strong opportunities in Africa and Asia. On the African side, key growth markets include Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, and Nigeria. Mobile penetration, mVAS adoption, and digital payment solutions are expanding rapidly in these locations. In Asia, there’s significant potential in countries like Thailand, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. It’s all thanks to fast-growing mobile-first populations and increasing demand for localized content and services. We’re also monitoring MENA and LatAm. While some markets in these regions present operational challenges, they can be strong revenue drivers. We’re planning to expand in Latin America, with countries such as Brazil, Colombia, and Chile on our radar for the coming months.
Which specific VAS verticals are you expecting to have a great year and why?
I would bet on Financial Services, thanks to the increasing adoption of mobile wallets and digital payment solutions. HealthCare is also looking good, with mHealth Services for applications such as telemedicine, remote diagnostics, and AI-powered health monitoring. Mobile Entertainment follows closely. With the rollout of 5G, users can access
high-definition content and immersive gaming experiences, driving growth in this vertical.
How might you answer that same question in five years’ time?
I’d expect mobile subscriptions and value-added services to still be strong – the platforms evolve, the tech evolves, but the demand remains.
The big difference? By 2030, most (or all) of the content will likely be AI-generated, from chat to entertainment. So the verticals will be familiar, but the “creators” behind them might not be human anymore!
What impact is AI going to have on marketing telemedia services in 2024 and beyond – and on your marketing/ engagement strategy in particular?
For our side, AI won’t drastically change our core marketing model, but it’s already making a difference in how we operate. Our SmartLink technology is a good example – it uses AI-driven optimization to match users with the most relevant offers in real time. Beyond that, we use AI internally to improve efficiency across operations: from quickly resolving client-specific issues to strengthening cybersecurity. In short, it’s a tool that makes us faster, more precise, and more adaptive.
In the next 12 months what key technical developments or innovations do you feel will have the most positive impact your business?
Over the next year, the biggest impact will come from the integration of AI with mVAS services. We’re already seeing AI-driven offerings emerging, like personalized content, language learning, or AI companions (“AI girlfriends”), which enhance user engagement and retention. AI allows us to deliver more relevant, localized, and interactive experiences, while also improving internal efficiency in operations and support. These innovations are set to make mobile subscriptions, payments, and marketing more dynamic and tailored than ever before.
Your words of wisdom: what is the most inspiring piece of advice that has seen you through a life in business?
I learned it in my very first digital job, when a small group of us built our product from scratch. The phrase was: “Build the plane in the air.” It means don’t get stuck in endless planning or trying to make things perfect before you start. Test your ideas in real conditions, see how they perform, and adapt fast. There will always be mistakes and adjustments along the way — the key is to take off, keep moving, and refine as you fly. That mindset has helped me move faster, stay adaptable, and turn concepts into reality.
