Short Message Service (SMS)

Description

SMS is a fast, inexpensive way to send short text messages to anyone with a mobile phone. On GSM networks, messages can be up to 160 characters in length if the default character encoding is used or 70 characters if UCS is used. (UCS, the Unicode Character Set, supports non-Latin languages such as Chinese and Arabic.)

SMS can be interactive: a customer can respond to a message sent by the Messaging Platform or send a message directly to the Platform. Since text messages are fairly time consuming to compose on most phones, such customer-sent messages should be kept short; for example, a message sent by SMS to the customer could contain a menu such as:

Respond with a number showing how you want info sent 1-email 2-fax 3-postal mail

Usage

The Messaging Platform can push messages via SMS or allow customers to pull messages via SMS, making it an interactive channel. Messages can be pushed at a certain day and time or when a certain event occurs. A bank might send account information to customers according to a regular schedule; it might also send an unscheduled message when the balance of an account drops below some threshold. The bank might also allow customers to request account information on demand by sending an SMS (e.g., "BAL") to the platform.

It is possible to use SMS for commercial transactions but not recommended since SMS has no guaranteed delivery timeliness. A customer sending an order via SMS could have the transaction delayed at the operator's side (i.e., the SMSC) without realizing it. For important transactions, we recommend using interactive voice.