A headline-making fine that woke everyone up

In December 2024 Brazilian operator TIM Brasil racked up a R$ 2.2 million penalty for pushing promotional texts to people who had already opted out—one of the largest SMS-related fines ever issued in the country.

If you run a CPaaS or fintech platform, that headline should feel uncomfortably close. Regulators everywhere now have the tools (and the political will) to do the same.

The big rules you cannot ignore

GDPR – Consent you can prove

The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)  sets the gold standard for permission. Under GDPR, you must record how, when and why each person opted in, keep that proof handy, and wipe it the moment the user asks. Reclaimed (re-cycled) numbers require fresh consent—no grandfather clauses.

TCPA – Quiet hours and sky-high damages

The US Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) makes “prior written consent” mandatory for any marketing text. It also establishes quiet hours—no SMS before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. local time. Break the rule and each rogue message can cost up to $1,500 in statutory damages.

India’s DLT regulations – Template or bust

India introduced Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to stop spam. Every sender ID and every template must be pre-registered on the carrier-run portal. Skip that step and the platform blocks your traffic outright.

Global carrier filtering – The silent wall

Even when regulators stay quiet, carriers act. Mobile networks worldwide scan A2P traffic for forbidden keywords and unauthorized sender IDs. In the US alone, AT&T’s ActiveArmor blocked more than one billion spam texts in July 2023. Twilio documents the most common SMS error codes and filter triggers.

PSD2 / SCA – Real-time, tamper-proof authentication

For 2-factor and payment flows, Europe’s PSD2 strong-customer-authentication rules demand that one-time passwords arrive in real time, come from an authenticated source, and leave an auditable trail. In other words: if your OTP is late, spoofable or poorly logged, you are non-compliant.

Three hidden pitfalls that trip up even seasoned teams

1. Shadow opt-outs are still opt-outs
   Users reply with “unsubscribe,” “no más,” or just 🚫. Carriers interpret any clear refusal as STOP. Miss those variants and you instantly violate GDPR and TCPA.
2. Template drift sneaks in marketing fluff
   Compliance teams register: “Your verification code is 123456.” Weeks later, marketing adds “Unlock 10 % off!” The extra line voids the template on India’s DLT and many Middle-East gateways—result: blanket blocking.
3. Single-cloud choke points kill OTPs
   Remember the 2021 AWS US-EAST-1 outage? Average OTP latency jumped from two seconds to thirty. Auth flows timed out, help-desks lit up, and internal risk teams asked uncomfortable questions.

Compliance as a service — what RGTN brings to the table

• Consent ledger & quiet-hour guardrails
  Every opt-in/out event is hashed and stored; sends are automatically throttled outside allowable windows.
• Pre-flight template & sender-ID checks
  Our gateway validates each message against local DLT, TRA, and carrier registriesbefore we accept it, preventing last-mile blocks.
• Dual-cloud, dual-continent POPs
  Traffic takes the fastest of our Amsterdam or NYC hubs. If one cloud wobbles, fail-over is instant—your OTP never notices. (Read more about our approach to SMS routing and latency)
• Regulator-ready audit trail
  Full chain-of-custody logs, cryptographically signed, so you can hand auditors a tidy ZIP file instead of a week of screenshots.
• Hands-on compliance desk
  Need to launch in Brazil, register in India, or update GDPR language? We handle the paperwork while your engineers keep shipping features.

The bottom line

SMS compliance isn’t a legal footnote; it’s an operational reality that decides whether your messages reach customers or regulators reach for their fine ledger. Offload the rule-tracking, template policing, and multi-cloud routing to RGTN, and focus on building the experiences your users actually remember.

Have questions about SMS compliance? Contact us today to find out how we can help make sure your messaging meets all regulatory requirements.