Beginning September 1, Telcos to stop SMS from unregistered templates

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has reportedly advised telecommunications service providers to stop sending all types of service and transactional messages from banks and financial institutions if their message template is not registered. This is in step with TRAI's approach to reducing spam messages in India. This will go into effect on 1st September, 2024.

Customers become victims of scammers as a result of spam, and they frequently miss out on essential messages. According to the TRAI directive, SMS containing URLs, OTT links, APKs, or call back numbers that have not been whitelisted by telcos would not be transmitted to customers.

This implies that banks, financial institutions, and other organizations will need to take proactive efforts to register their message templates and content by September 1, 2024. Otherwise, their SMS messages will not be delivered to clients. Currently, the telecoms receive the headers and templates from the enterprises. Nevertheless, they will now ask that the content be submitted. This will be verified by the telcos before being communicated to customers.

In this case, when a bank sends an SMS for funds debit or credit, it includes a call back number. If this is not registered and whitelisted with the telcos, the messages from these banks will be halted. This will hurt both the banks and their customers.

It remains to be seen whether this will result in an additional cost layer for telecoms and corporations. This means that any content or links that are not whitelisted by the telecoms will be prohibited and not provided to subscribers.