Europe Mobile Value Added Services (MVAS) Market

UK mobile users sent 4.51 billion SMS and MMS messages in the second quarter of 2026, down 0.93 billion or 17.1% on a year earlier, according to the Ofcom Telecommunications Market Data Update last revised on 14 October 2026; person-to-person texting is fading while business messages, fraud checks and carrier billing take its place. The Europe mobile value added services (MVAS) market covers the paid services that ride on a European mobile subscription beyond voice and data access: application-to-person (A2P) and business messaging, direct carrier billing, consumer SMS and MMS bundles, location and network application programming interface (API) services, mobile infotainment and premium-rate content, and mobile payments and wallet fees. Douglas Insights sizes Europe MVAS at USD 30.8 billion in 2025, from 521 million unique mobile subscribers at USD 59.02 of MVAS revenue each, and at USD 49.1 billion in 2035, a revenue CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 4.80%. The figures match the Europe row of our global Mobile Value Added Services (MVAS) Market report. The study sits in our telecom and networks coverage and every figure follows the Douglas Insights research methodology.

Which Europe MVAS line earns most: A2P messaging, carrier billing, SMS bundles or network APIs?

A2P and business messaging earns most in Europe MVAS: USD 12.6 billion, 41.0% of 2025 value, because banks, retailers and apps pay per message for passcodes and alerts. Location and network API services grow fastest, 10.8% a year.

A2P and business messaging, USD 12.6 billion, leads because European enterprises still default to SMS for one-time passcodes (OTPs) and delivery alerts, and every message pays a termination fee to the receiving operator. It grows 5.70% a year to USD 21.9 billion as rich communication services (RCS) business messages, priced above plain text, take a larger share of the mix. Direct carrier billing, USD 5.23 billion, holds 17.0% because app stores, streaming and gaming services let European users charge digital purchases to the phone bill; it grows only 3.80% as card wallets compete for the same checkout.

Consumer SMS and MMS bundles, USD 4.61 billion, shrink 4.80% a year to USD 2.82 billion as chat apps replace texting. Location and network API services, USD 3.23 billion, triple to USD 9.00 billion by 2035 because banks pay per call to check whether a SIM card was just swapped. Mobile infotainment and premium-rate content, USD 2.92 billion, is nearly flat at 0.90% a year, while mobile payments and wallet fees, USD 2.15 billion, grow 7.20% a year on transit, parking and peer-to-peer payment fees billed through operators. Segment values for 2035 sum to USD 48.9 billion, 0.55% below the headline.

Why are passcodes, RCS and fraud APIs driving Europe MVAS demand?

Spend per subscriber drives Europe MVAS: it rises 4.54% a year, while unique subscribers grow only 0.25%, from 521 million in 2025 to about 534 million in 2035. Four drivers add 5.30 points to spend.

The subscriber base is close to its ceiling. GSMA counted 520 million unique mobile subscribers in Europe in 2024, 88% of the population, and expects 527 million by 2030, at 89% penetration, in The Mobile Economy Europe 2025. Volume therefore adds only 0.25 points a year; nearly all Europe MVAS growth must come from each subscriber, and each enterprise behind that subscriber, buying more services.

A2P messaging and RCS: 2.10 points

Business messaging adds 2.10 points. All Tier 1 operators in France, Germany, Spain and the UK now support RCS business messaging, and KPN, VodafoneZiggo and Odido launched it in the Netherlands on 1 April 2026, the Mobile Ecosystem Forum reported on 3 March 2026. In France 421 brands used RCS in the fourth quarter of 2025, up 144.8% from 172 a year earlier, and campaign volumes rose 75%. A branded RCS message sells at up to 2.3 times the price of an SMS segment, so a shift in mix lifts value even where message counts flatten.

Network APIs for fraud checks: 1.50 points

Network APIs add 1.50 points. Deutsche Telekom, O2 Telefónica and Vodafone launched Number Verify commercially in Germany through Vonage, part of Ericsson, with Vinted as an early user, GSMA announced. GSMA reports that Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone launched SIM Swap and Number Verification in Spain, and that Vodafone UK’s Scam Signal API helps banks stop fraudulent transfers in real time. European operators hold more than 20% of GSMA Open Gateway commitments with about 10% of global connections.

Carrier billing and wallets: 1.70 points

Direct carrier billing adds 0.95 points and mobile payments 0.75 points. Boku, a London-listed carrier billing aggregator, earned USD 70.4 million of direct carrier billing revenue in 2025, up 9%, and its monthly active users reached 114.4 million in December 2025, up 31%, according to its full-year results of 17 March 2026. Streaming bundles and mobile game top-ups keep the phone bill a convenient checkout for subscribers who prefer not to enter a card.

The four drivers total 2.10 + 1.50 + 0.95 + 0.75 = 5.30 points of spend growth before restraints. Douglas Insights estimates that enterprises pay for 51.5% of Europe MVAS value in 2025 through A2P messages and API calls, and consumers the remaining 48.5% through bills, bundles and content, and that the enterprise share passes 63% by 2035.

What holds back Europe MVAS as chat apps and SMS fraud spread?

Two restraints take 0.76 points off Europe MVAS spend growth, leaving 4.54% a year. Chat-app substitution of consumer texting removes 0.45 points; OTP displacement and artificially inflated traffic remove 0.31 points.

Substitution is the largest brake. Ofcom’s Q2 2026 count of 4.51 billion UK messages, down 17.1% in a year, shows how quickly European consumers are moving to over-the-top (OTT) chat apps, and every text not sent shrinks the bundle value operators can charge for. Douglas Insights books the consumer SMS and MMS segment at -4.80% a year in value, slower than the volume fall because unlimited texting is priced into plans rather than billed per message.

The second restraint comes from inside A2P itself. Network-based checks such as Number Verify confirm a user silently, without sending an OTP, so each API call can replace several billed messages; Douglas Insights treats about 0.20 points of lost A2P growth as the cost of that switch, partly recovered in the network API segment. Artificially inflated traffic, in which fraudsters trigger OTPs to premium-rate numbers, removes another 0.11 points as operators and senders spend on SMS firewalls and block whole number ranges. Business texting platforms are sized globally in our A2P SMS and CPaaS Market report.

Which country leads Europe MVAS spending, and where does it grow fastest?

Germany leads Europe MVAS by country, USD 5.38 billion or 17.5% of 2025 value. The Rest of Europe group, led by Poland and the Netherlands, grows fastest, 5.45% a year to USD 13.6 billion by 2035.

Germany leads because it has the largest subscriber base and an early commercial three-operator API launch, so banks and marketplaces there buy both OTPs and Number Verify. The United Kingdom, USD 5.07 billion, has 91.5 million mobile subscriptions excluding machine-to-machine lines at the end of Q2 2026, Ofcom reports, and a 17.1% annual fall in consumer texting, which is why it grows a little slower than France despite heavy RCS and fraud API activity.

France, USD 4.31 billion, grows 4.60% a year on the RCS brand count above. Spain, USD 2.61 billion, is the fastest single country at 5.20% because Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone already offer SIM Swap there. Italy, USD 3.23 billion, grows slowest at 4.10% as premium-rate content shrinks. The Rest of Europe, USD 8.00 billion, grows fastest because Polish, Dutch and Central European banks are moving alerts to verified messaging later than Western markets. In the data table the row labelled Global holds the Europe total, USD 30.8 billion in 2025.

Who earns Europe MVAS revenue: operators, CPaaS platforms or billing aggregators?

Mobile operators keep most Europe MVAS revenue because they own the subscriber and the terminating network. Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom and Orange together hold about 23.5% of 2025 value, Douglas Insights estimates.

Sinch reported 2025 net sales of SEK 27.08 billion and adjusted EBITDA of SEK 3.61 billion in its results of 17 February 2026, with the Americas at 63% of fourth-quarter gross profit, so our European estimate is about 27% of its sales. LINK Mobility reported 2025 revenue of NOK 7.1 billion and EBITDA of NOK 821 million in its annual report of 28 April 2026. Infobip is private, and the operator shares are Douglas Insights estimates of the MVAS revenue each group keeps.

Europe MVAS is fragmented below the operators: no platform holds more than 3% of value, because large senders split traffic across several aggregators for resilience and price.

What does Europe MVAS cost per subscriber, per message and per purchase?

A European subscriber carried USD 59.02 of MVAS revenue in 2025, about USD 4.92 a month, Douglas Insights estimates. Spend per subscriber rises 4.54% a year to USD 92.00 by 2035.

Twilio lists outbound UK SMS at USD 0.056 per segment, RCS Basic at USD 0.056 and RCS Single at USD 0.1288 on its UK pricing page, 2.3 times the SMS rate. Large banks pay well below list, and Douglas Insights values the average realised European A2P SMS price at about USD 0.035 per message in 2025, including the termination fee. Carrier billing is priced as a revenue share between merchant, aggregator and operator, within the limits that Directive (EU) 2015/2366 (PSD2) sets for purchases charged to a phone bill outside payment licensing.

Spend per subscriber rises because enterprise traffic grows faster than consumer bundles shrink. Douglas Insights projects USD 61.70 per subscriber in 2026 and USD 92.00 by 2035, when enterprises pay most of it.

Which rules govern Europe MVAS: the PSR, PSD2 and Ofcom phone-paid services regulation?

Three rule sets shape Europe MVAS: the EU Payment Services Regulation agreed on 27 November 2025, the PSD2 carrier billing exclusion, and Ofcom’s direct regulation of UK phone-paid services since 1 February 2025.

The Council and Parliament reached provisional agreement on the Payment Services Regulation (PSR) and a revised Payment Services Directive (PSD3) on 27 November 2025, with a transitional period expected to be about 21 months, Taylor Wessing reported. Connect Europe and GSMA welcomed the deal the same day, noting its focus on collaboration between payment service providers and electronic communication service providers and the Fraud Prevention Coordination Platform in Article 59, and citing SIM swap detection through GSMA Open Gateway. Douglas Insights reads the PSR as a demand driver for fraud APIs.

In the UK, Ofcom took over day-to-day regulation of premium-rate and phone-paid services from the Phone-paid Services Authority on 1 February 2025, replacing Code 15 with new requirements. Data protection rules under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) apply to every location API call, which is why European operators sell consent-based checks rather than raw location data.

What if RCS and fraud APIs scale faster: where does Europe MVAS land in 2035?

Europe MVAS ends 2035 between USD 41.3 billion and USD 57.9 billion across our three cases, around a base of USD 49.1 billion. The speed of OTP-to-API migration sets most of the spread.

In the slower case chat apps take most bank alerts, the PSR fraud platform relies on bank-side tools, and network APIs stay a niche. In the faster case the PSR makes SIM swap checks a default step in EU payments and RCS reaches iPhone users in every large market. Subscriber count is the smaller lever: one extra point of yearly subscriber growth adds USD 5.13 billion to 2035 Europe MVAS value.

Douglas Exclusive: the Europe Message-to-API Migration Ledger

The Europe Message-to-API Migration Ledger is a Douglas Insights model, estimated from 10 sourced inputs: 3 company filings, 3 regulatory acts, 2 GSMA publications, 1 statistics release and 1 trade report.

The finding, a Douglas Insights estimate: A2P messaging and network APIs hold 51.5% of 2025 Europe MVAS value but supply 83.4% of the USD 18.1 billion that segments add by 2035, USD 9.34 billion and USD 5.78 billion. Consumer SMS loses USD 1.79 billion over the same years. Europe MVAS is becoming an enterprise trust business sold through the operator’s network.

How does the methodology turn 521 million subscribers into USD 30.8 billion of Europe MVAS?

Our methodology multiplies 521 million unique European mobile subscribers in 2025 by USD 59.02 of MVAS revenue per subscriber to reach USD 30.8 billion. Subscribers follow GSMA; spend comes from six service segments.

The model covers 6 countries and 1 sub-region, 6 service segments and 2 payer types, and uses 64 data points, 10 sourced and 54 modelled. Arithmetic: 521 million x USD 59.02 = USD 30,750 million; 30,750 x (1.0025 x 1.0454)^10 = USD 49,143 million, or USD 49.1 billion. Subscribers reach 522 million in 2026 and 534 million in 2035.

Three cross-checks agree. First, 521 million subscribers sit between GSMA’s 520 million for 2024 and 527 million for 2030. Second, our Sinch estimate is about 27% of its net sales, consistent with the Americas taking 63% of its fourth-quarter gross profit. Third, consumer SMS value falls 4.80% a year against a 17.1% fall in UK message volume, because most texting is already bundled into flat-rate plans.

Sources

1. Ofcom Telecommunications Market Data Update (2026)
2. GSMA The Mobile Economy Europe 2025 (2025)
3. GSMA GSMA Open Gateway launch in Germany (2024)
4. Sinch Sinch reports fourth quarter and full year 2025 results (2026)
5. LINK Mobility LINK Mobility Annual Report 2025 (2026)
6. Boku / RNS Boku 2025 Full Year Results (2026)
7. Ofcom The future regulation of phone-paid services: General Conditions statement (2025)
8. EUR-Lex Directive (EU) 2015/2366 (PSD2) (2015)
9. Connect Europe Telecoms welcome PSR (2025)
10. Taylor Wessing EU lawmakers strike a deal on payments reforms (2025)
11. Mobile Ecosystem Forum KPN Netherlands launch sees universal domestic reach of RCS spreading across Europe (2026)
12. Twilio Twilio SMS and RCS pricing, United Kingdom (2026)

What counts in the Europe MVAS market, and what is excluded?

The Europe MVAS market counts paid services sold over European mobile subscriptions beyond voice and data access, including the enterprise fees for messages and API calls. Plan fees, handsets, app store margins and payment face value stay out.

The by-service split covers A2P and business messaging; direct carrier billing; consumer SMS and MMS bundles; location and network API services; mobile infotainment and premium-rate content; and mobile payments and wallet fees. The by-payer split covers enterprises and consumers. The by-country split covers Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, the Nordics and the Rest of Europe. Carrier billing counts at the fee retained by operators and aggregators, not the gross purchase value. A comparable build for American subscribers, with device protection and family safety in scope, appears in our U.S. Mobile Value Added Services (MVAS) Market report.