What is A2P Messaging?
Last reviewed by Moderation API
A2P stands for application-to-person. It covers every text a business sends from software, not from a person typing on a phone: appointment reminders, delivery updates, one-time passcodes, fraud alerts and marketing campaigns. The opposite is P2P (person-to-person), the messages people send each other.
Carriers treat the two differently. P2P traffic is low volume and conversational. A2P traffic can reach thousands of numbers a minute, so it is also where spam, phishing and scams arrive. That is why carriers make A2P senders register, and why they filter A2P traffic more strictly.
Rules for A2P messaging in the US
- Registration: traffic on 10-digit numbers goes through 10DLC brand and campaign registration. Short codes and toll-free numbers have their own processes.
- Consent: recipients have to opt in, and the TCPA sets the legal rules for consent and opt-outs.
- Content: the CTIA Messaging Principles and Best Practices and carrier codes of conduct restrict SHAFT content, phishing and misleading messages.
- Opt-outs: replies such as STOP have to be honoured.
For platforms that send A2P traffic for many businesses, compliance is ongoing work: each message has to stay within what its campaign was approved for.
Moderation API’s 10DLC compliance add-on checks every message against the campaign it was sent under.
