Apple Messages for Business 101: service chats inside the Messages app

• What it is: a way for people with an iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple Watch to chat with a business inside Apple's own Messages app.¹ It launched in 2018 under the name Business Chat.⁹
• Who runs it: Apple. A business connects through an Apple-approved Messaging Service Provider (MSP), the company whose platform carries the conversations to your agents and bots.²
• Reach: only people on Apple devices. Apple reported more than 2.5 billion active devices, across all its products, in January 2026.¹⁷
• Who starts: the customer, always. The business can follow up only inside a conversation the customer opened.²
• What it adds: list pickers, time pickers, Apple Pay, sign-in, forms and custom iMessage apps.⁴
• Privacy: the business receives an anonymous identifier, not the customer's phone number, email address or Apple Account.³
• Price: Apple charges nothing for the service; the MSP charges for its platform.²
• Best for: support, bookings and payments for customers who already found you.
• Avoid for: campaigns, reaching people on Android, or anything you must start yourself.
• As of October 2026.

A customer taps a Messages button. A new conversation opens in the Messages app, under the business's verified name and logo. Apple's service relays the message to the business's MSP, which routes it to a bot or a person, and the reply travels back the same way.

The buttons can sit almost anywhere a customer meets you: your website, your app, an email, a QR code, your Apple Maps listing, a registered phone number (when someone taps it, the phone can suggest messaging instead of calling) and a Wallet pass.² People can also start from Safari, Siri and Search.¹

Privacy by design. Apple creates an "Opaque ID" for each pairing of a customer's Apple Account and a business; the business does not receive the person's phone number, email address or Apple Account details. Messages are encrypted between the device and Apple's servers, decrypted in memory and passed to the business over an encrypted connection (TLS 1.2). Apple does not store conversation history; a message for a device that is offline is held, encrypted, for up to 30 days and then deleted.³ The business may receive a little extra context, such as which branch the customer picked in Maps.²¹

Interactive messages. Apple's interface for providers defines quick replies, list pickers (a menu of items with names, descriptions and images, allowing one or several choices), time pickers (appointment slots that show clashes with the customer's own calendar and can be added to it), Apple Pay requests, authentication (signing in to your own account system), forms and custom iMessage apps. Forms and iMessage apps work only on iPhone and iPad.⁴ Apple Pay needs your own merchant setup, including a merchant identifier and your payment gateway.⁵ There is no time limit for replying in an active conversation, but if the customer deletes the conversation, the business cannot message them until they come back.⁶

How RCS on the iPhone differs

Since iOS 18, released in September 2024, the iPhone also supports RCS (Rich Communication Services, the operators' successor to SMS; see the glossary) for messages to non-Apple phones, in specific markets and where the carrier supports it.¹² In the Messages app, iMessage conversations appear in blue bubbles; RCS and SMS conversations appear in green.¹⁴ RCS also carries business messages: Apple describes them as alerts and updates about orders and transactions, which iPhone users can switch off in Settings.¹³ End-to-end encryption for RCS between iPhone and Android began rolling out in beta with iOS 26.5 in May 2026,¹⁵ built on the GSMA's RCS Universal Profile 3.0, published in March 2025;¹⁶ whether a given chat is encrypted depends on both people's carriers.¹⁴

So the two are different channels that happen to share an app. Apple Messages for Business is Apple's service, started by the customer, with no phone number exchanged. RCS business messaging is the operators' channel, tied to a phone number, which a business can start within consent rules. Read RCS 101 for the operators' channel itself, then what RCS changed and RCS adoption after iOS.

Apple showed Business Chat to developers at its June 2017 conference, as a developer preview.⁷ In January 2018 it previewed iOS 11.3 with Business Chat in beta and named early partners including Discover, Hilton, Lowe's and Wells Fargo.⁸ iOS 11.3 shipped on 29 March 2018, with Business Chat in beta in the United States, reachable from Maps, Safari, Search and Siri; Apple said businesses would not receive personal data by default.⁹ iOS 13, in 2019, added Chat Suggest, which offers messaging when someone taps a business's phone number.¹⁰ The service now carries the name Apple Messages for Business.¹⁸

With iOS 17.4 in 2024, Messages for Business began to deliver opt-in business updates: order status, flight notifications, fraud alerts and other transactions the customer chose to receive.¹¹ iOS 18 added RCS in September 2024.¹² In October 2024, Apple announced Branded Mail, showing a business's name and logo in emails, and said Business Caller ID would follow.²² In March 2026, it announced Apple Business, a single platform replacing Apple Business Connect, Essentials and Manager, available from 14 April 2026 in more than 200 countries and regions.²³ In May 2026, encrypted RCS began rolling out in beta.¹⁵

The reach of Apple Messages for Business is simply the share of your customers who use Apple devices. Apple counted more than 2.5 billion active devices in January 2026, a figure that covers all its products and is not a count of people.¹⁷ It launched in the United States in 2018,⁹ and Apple's public guidance does not list the countries where it is now offered; providers arrange availability, and Apple asks for a single commercial account per business that covers its territories.²

• Americas. The first market, with launch partners in retail, finance and hospitality.⁹
• Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia-Pacific. Usefulness varies by country with the share of Apple devices among your customers. Before investing, look at your own website and app analytics: what share of your visitors use iOS or macOS?
• Audiences. Customers who already know your brand and come to you: shoppers, bank customers, travellers, guests and subscribers.

Apple describes the service as a way for customers to get help, schedule appointments and complete purchases with Apple Pay, without leaving Messages.¹⁸

• Support. Answers and handovers from a bot to a person, with the conversation kept on the customer's device. See customer support and chatbots and AI agents, and the glossary entry for a chatbot.
• Bookings. A time picker offers slots and adds the chosen one to the customer's calendar. See appointment booking.
• Payments and sales. A list picker shows products; Apple Pay completes the order. See selling inside the conversation.
• Account tasks. Sign-in through authentication lets an agent see the right account without asking for passwords.
• Updates the customer opted into. Order status, flight changes and fraud alerts.¹¹ See notifications.

Apple provides Apple Messages for Business free of charge; the MSP may charge for its services, and an MSP is required.² Apple's service terms say a business may not charge its own customers for access to the channel, and that Apple reserves the right to charge fees in the future.²⁰ There is therefore no Apple rate card to quote.

In practice the cost comes from three places:

• The provider. MSPs usually price their platform per agent seat, per conversation or per month; ask for the model in writing.
• Building the experience. List pickers, time pickers, authentication and payments need integration with your catalogue, calendar, account system and payment gateway.⁵
• Payments. Apple Pay in the conversation goes through your own payment gateway, so the usual processing fees of your payment provider apply.⁵

This is a summary, not legal advice. Two layers apply: Apple's own platform rules, and the data-protection law where you and your customers are.

Apple's rules. A business must work through an Apple-approved MSP and register at Apple Business Register.² Before customers can see the button, each account must pass Apple's Experience Review, which checks, for example, that the privacy policy and terms of use are sent as rich links and that the product is named correctly.¹⁹ Proactive messages may go only to customers who have already started a conversation, and only when they are in the customer's direct interest, such as order updates or appointment reminders; promotional content needs the customer's explicit request; and when a customer ends a conversation, the business must stop until the customer starts a new one.²

Data protection. The anonymous ID does not take a conversation outside privacy law. Under the EU's GDPR, an online identifier that relates to a person is personal data, and this matters most once a customer signs in and you link the conversation to an account.²⁴ Treat messages like any other customer record: a purpose, a retention period and access controls. Similar laws apply in many other countries.

• Apple devices only. Everyone else needs another channel, so plan a web chat or a messaging app alongside it.
• No outreach. You cannot start a conversation, run campaigns or message a list.²
• Buttons do the work. If customers never see a Messages button, nothing happens. Place entry points where people already look for help.
• Deleted conversations. When the customer deletes the conversation, you cannot reach them there until they return.⁶
• Not everything works everywhere. Forms and iMessage apps are limited to iPhone and iPad.⁴
• Two identities. The anonymous ID is not linked to your customer record until the customer signs in; design for that.
• Confusion with RCS. Business messages in green bubbles are RCS, a different channel with different rules and prices.¹³¹⁴
• One more queue. Without a unified inbox, Apple conversations become a separate silo.

Only announcements and published changes are listed here.

• Brand tools in one place. Apple Business, launched in April 2026, brings Apple's brand-management tools together; Apple's announcement does not describe changes to Messages for Business itself.²³
• Branded email and calls. Apple announced Branded Mail in October 2024 and said Business Caller ID would follow.²²
• Encrypted RCS. End-to-end encrypted RCS is rolling out in beta from iOS 26.5, with supported carriers.¹⁵¹³
• No public roadmap. Apple updates its developer documentation for the service but has not published a feature roadmap.¹⁸

• By need. Choose it for support, bookings and payments started by the customer; not for codes, alerts to people who never wrote, or marketing.
• By location. Worth most where Apple devices are common among your customers; check your own analytics country by country.
• By audience. Consumer brands with an app or busy website gain most; for business-to-business work, email and meetings usually matter more.

See the Apple Messages for Business channel page for providers, and which channel for which need to compare it with every other channel.