New Snap kit might change the future of the A2P SMS market

The multimedia social messaging application Snapchat developed by Snap. Inc. has been looking to grow its network through new features. Snap kit allows developers to integrate some of Snapchat’s best features across their platforms. The company announced a move that might change the future of A2P SMS. Rather than tapping to an external service, the new “Login Kit” will handle it all.

Snap has been working for a year on this new feature available for use starting June 23, 2020. Whether on Android, IOS, or Web, the feature is available for users if they already authenticated their phone numbers with Snapchat. If they did, Snap will verify their numbers.

The company has published a video on their YouTube channel for marketing purposes. “SMS cost you. Verify with Snapchat brings that cost to zero” states the company. Snap introduced a new kit called “verify” saying that the company aims to help mobile-first developers to reduce cash spending on verifying user phone numbers.

For security purposes, applications use A2P SMS, which consists of sending a mobile message from an application to a mobile user. The so-called enterprise or professional SMS is used for two step verification on messaging apps. Tech giants have many users that need to verify their identity. Thus, they spend a lot of money to verify text messages. Global A2P SMS market was valued at USD 53.07 billion in 2013 and is expected to reach USD 82.50 billion by 2025, according to the Global Application-To-Person (A2P) SMS Market Research Report (2020-2025). However, according to the Snap Kit website “Whether you want to verify a few hundred SMS messages or a few billion, Verify with Snapchat is free to use”.

Rather than sending a verification code through a third party, Snap will handle all this in a package. Partick Mandia, Snap kit lead, said, “The kit aims to create an easy private way to verify a phone number at no cost to developers”.

In fact, Phone number verification is already a core part of the multimedia application. However, for the Login Kit SDK, if the user has already verified his number with Snap in the past, the company will approve the verification. Still, those who did not verify their numbers will be redirected to Snap. Once it is confirmed, they will be redirected to the login/OAuth modal. After authorization, users will return to the 3PA connected and verified, according to the Snap Kit website.

Recently, Snap announced that it has 800 developers now on its Snap Kit platform that collectively reach 150 million users on a monthly basis.