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Unwanted SMS messages have become a part of everyday life. Fraud levels are increasing, and scams are becoming harder to recognise. With this, there is a growing priority within the industry to mitigate fraudulent activity and restore trust in the channel.
Across the messaging industry, SMS trust levels are continuing to fall, with over 50% of service providers expecting SMS to experience an increase in fraud in 2025, according to a recent report. At the same time, less than a third anticipate that SMS will become a cleaner channel within the same period. When looking at the reasons behind this, one significant type of fraud shaping these findings isArtificial Inflation of Traffic (AIT).
AIT occurs when fraudsters exploit online services to create fake traffic to send out large numbers of one-time passcodes (OTP) or multi-factor authentication (MFA) requests to generate revenue. This represents a growing challenge and critical threat to the future of SMS.
Restoring confidence in SMS is now a vital concern for the global communications ecosystem. This is driving the need for dedicated anti-fraud solutions to screen messaging traffic to establish its origin, and whether it is legitimate or fraudulent.
Over recent years, harmful traffic and associated activities have blighted the SMS landscape, eroding trust in communications and making users hesitant to engage with legitimate messages. This lack of trust in the channel is leading to more organisations exploring alternatives, threatening the long-term future of SMS.
As a result, the SMS industry is now entering a period of decline, with the slowdown in domestic traffic growth no longer offsetting the drop in international traffic. AIT fraud is flooding organisations with fraudulent premium A2P requests that are routed through international or premium rate numbers, increasing costs to organisations whilst damaging trust.
At the same time, the average cost to send an international SMS leapt by over 85% from 2020 to 2024, according to the findings of the XConnect and Mobilesquared report. Over-monetisation and price increases are both damaging A2P SMS and its reputation as a reliable and affordable communications channel.
The combination of both fraud and over-monetisation leave the future of SMS in the balance. Without dedicated solutions in place to counter these challenges, the industry will continue to be impacted by:
Despite these challenges, SMS is still the business messaging channel of choice and continues to be the platform upon which brands are building their rich messaging offerings for the long term. From the delivery of multifactor authentication to transactional alerts, it remains a strong choice for time-sensitive messaging.
To safeguard the future of the channel and leverage these benefits, organisations need insights from intelligent datasets to help uncover fraud and maximise their communications.
Addressing AIT and rising costs is essential for protecting the sustainability and reputation of the global A2P SMS ecosystem. To achieve this, the telecoms industry is increasingly having to come up with ways to try and stay ahead of fraudsters.
Across the industry, we’re seeing efforts from dedicated working groups like Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF), i3Forum and GSMA. These efforts are helping the industry take significant steps targeted around sharing of known fraudulent numbers and enabling a collaborative approach between industry and regulators to implement the most viable solutions and tools.
Beyond this, rising SMS fraud also needs to be addressed through easily available datasets. This is where deploying real-time numbering intelligence can help.
By identifying high-risk destinations and applying simple real-time checks, organisations can guarantee the safe passage of their traffic. They gain insight into whether a number is valid, ported and allocated to indicate signs of AIT fraud.
With dedicated datasets designed to tackle AIT in place, organisations benefit from:
Despite the rising challenges present within the A2P SMS landscape, there are
precautions that can be taken to limit harm to revenue streams and trust in the channel.
Arming your organisation with real-time numbering intelligence provides you with a simple and easy to manage solution that strengthens your communications, reduces risk, and supports the industry’s mission to secure the future of SMS. With the right data deployed, enterprises, operators and CPaaS providers gain new levels of security, efficiency and profitability.
The views expressed in this article belong solely to the author and do not represent The Fast Mode. While information provided in this post is obtained from sources believed by The Fast Mode to be reliable, The Fast Mode is not liable for any losses or damages arising from any information limitations, changes, inaccuracies, misrepresentations, omissions or errors contained therein. The heading is for ease of reference and shall not be deemed to influence the information presented.
Kristina Ristovska joined XConnect as Head of Product to serve the evolving needs of voice, messaging, and identity & verification (ID&V) markets. Kristina supports growth by defining product strategy and developing new solutions for customers. She oversees existing products as well as exploring gaps for new products to be introduced.
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