Why Google Paused RCS in India in 2022 — And What's Different Now

The Day Google Pulled the Plug on RCS in India

On June 4, 2022, something unusual happened in the Indian messaging ecosystem: Google quietly disabled RCS business messaging across the country.

Not globally. Not in other markets. Just India.

TechCrunch reported it first: "Google is disabling RCS ads in India following rampant spam by businesses." AndroidPolice followed: "RCS spam is so bad in India, Google had to just shut all advertisements down." Medianama described it as "Google forced to pause RCS standard in India on account of spammy ads."

For anyone who had been watching India's RCS rollout with excitement, it was a gut punch. For businesses that had legitimately invested in RCS campaigns — coaching institutes sending admission alerts, hospitals sending appointment reminders — it created real disruption overnight.

What happened? Who was responsible? And most importantly: is it safe to build a business on RCS in 2026?

This article answers all three questions honestly.

What Actually Happened in June 2022

India was, at that point, Google's largest RCS market by user count. Hundreds of millions of Android devices running Google Messages had RCS enabled. The "verified business sender" badge — showing a brand logo and blue tick inside the native messaging app — was a powerful trust signal.

Some companies abused it at scale.

The main offenders were Indian banks, lending platforms, and gambling apps. They used RCS's verified sender status to send unsolicited promotional messages — loan offers, credit card pitches, and betting promotions — to millions of users who had never opted in.

Because RCS messages arrived in the same inbox as personal messages (unlike email or WhatsApp notifications), users had no obvious way to block them. The volume was relentless. Multiple RCS blasts per day from financial services companies that had gotten through Google's sender verification process.

Google's official statement: "Some businesses are abusing our anti-spam policies to send promotional messages to users in India. We are working with the industry to improve the user experience."

The "improvement" was a full pause of A2P (application-to-person) RCS business messaging in India. Existing campaigns stopped. New onboarding was frozen. The channel went dark overnight.

Why India Specifically?

India's regulatory environment for SMS had DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) compliance — a TRAI-mandated framework that requires pre-registration of sender IDs and message templates, with consent logging. SMS A2P was tightly controlled.

RCS, in 2022, operated outside the DLT framework. There were no pre-registered template requirements. Google's own sender verification was the only gate — and that verification, designed primarily for brand authentication rather than consent management, was not equipped to prevent promotional blasts to users who had never asked to receive them.

The 2022 shutdown was not a story of bad technology. It was a story of a trust mechanism being exploited in a market where regulatory safeguards had not yet caught up to the channel's capabilities.

What Changed Between 2022 and 2026

Four significant things changed in the three years following the shutdown.

1. Carrier-level spam filtering was integrated

The Airtel-Google RCS partnership, which deepened significantly post-2022, integrated carrier-level spam filtering directly into the Jibe Cloud infrastructure that powers RCS in India. Promotional messages now pass through an additional filtering layer at the carrier level before delivery — something that did not exist in 2022.

2. The sender verification process tightened substantially

Pre-2022, Google's RCS business sender verification focused primarily on brand legitimacy — confirming the company existed. Post-2022, the process added consent verification requirements, opt-out mechanism mandates, and category-specific reviews for financial services and gambling categories.

3. Volume controls and rate limits were introduced

The 2022 abuse was partly enabled by unlimited send rates through verified sender profiles. Post-restart, aggregator-level volume controls limit the rate at which any single verified business sender can push messages into the network, making mass unsolicited blasting far less viable.

4. The Indian RCS ecosystem matured dramatically

By 2024, Infobip reported that RCS interactions in India had grown 850% year-on-year, driven by the restart of business messaging under the new controls. The recovery was real and documented — not a marketing claim.

What Protecting Recipients Now Looks Like

For a business to send RCS messages in India in 2026, the journey to first message looks like this:

Step 1 — Aggregator verification: You cannot go directly to Google's Jibe Cloud. You work through an authorized RCS aggregator (like Scalify Labs) who has completed their own vetting process with Google. Step 2 — Brand review: Your business profile — logo, display name, website, category — is reviewed by Google. Financial services categories receive additional scrutiny. Step 3 — Sender ID creation: A unique RCS sender ID is created, tied to your verified profile. Recipients see your logo and name, not a number. This ID cannot be spoofed by other senders. Step 4 — Template approval: For transactional messages (OTP, alerts), templates must be approved before use. Promotional messages require opt-in documentation. Step 5 — Opt-out enforcement: Every RCS campaign must include a functional opt-out mechanism. Senders who generate opt-outs above threshold thresholds are reviewed automatically.

None of this existed at scale in 2022.

What This Means If You Are Considering RCS in 2026

The 2022 pause happened because a new, powerful channel arrived in a market before the guardrails were in place. The businesses that abused it are largely the same categories now under the strictest controls — financial services, lending, gambling.

If your business is a coaching institute running admission campaigns, a hospital sending appointment reminders, a retail brand sending sale alerts, or an NBFC sending EMI reminders — you are in the categories that were not the abusers in 2022, and you benefit from the protections put in place since.

RCS in 2026 is not the Wild West it was in 2022. The verification process is slower and more thorough (5–7 working days for brand approval) precisely because Google learned from what happened.

The strongest argument that the channel is trustworthy: recipients in India are opting into RCS conversations with businesses. The 850% growth figure represents real interactions, real responses to real messages — not passive delivery counts.

The Bottom Line

Google did the right thing in June 2022. Shutting down a channel that was being abused protected millions of Indian users from spam. The restart, done carefully and with new controls, reflects a channel that now has infrastructure to match its reach.

For businesses evaluating RCS in 2026, the question is not "is RCS safe after the ban?" The question is: "Does my use case — and my aggregator — meet the standards that prevent another 2022?"

If you work with a verified aggregator, use opted-in contact lists, and operate in a non-abusive category, the answer is yes.

Ready to start an RCS campaign with verified, compliant delivery?