# Shared consent (RCS & SMS)

Why RCS has no consent of its own: it shares the SMS marketing preference and suppression in both directions. What that means for STOP, suppression, the contact profile and the activity record.

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RCS and SMS share one and the same consent. RCS carries **no marketing preference and no
suppression of its own** — it reads and writes the SMS state. That's why an opt-out on either
channel applies to both, in both directions. And it makes sense: to the contact, both messages
arrive at the **same number, in the same inbox**, so a single STOP should silence both. In
short: for consent purposes, think of RCS and SMS as one conversation.

## One consent, both channels

The [subscription attributes](/platform/en/consent/subscription-attributes) for SMS —
`_accepts_marketing_sms` and `_is_subscribed_sms` — govern RCS as well. There is no
`_accepts_marketing_rcs` and no `_is_subscribed_rcs`. Concretely:

- A contact who replies **STOP over RCS** is recorded as having declined SMS marketing — and
  the opt-out applies to SMS too.
- A contact who replies **STOP over SMS** is equally opted out of RCS.
- **Suppressing SMS** blocks both channels. There's no way to be subscribed on one and
  suppressed on the other.

The escalation and reactivation rules are the SMS ones, applied once for both channels — see
[Opt-outs & reactivation](/platform/en/consent/opt-outs-reactivation).

## How it looks on the profile

Because the two channels share one consent, the **Channel preferences** card on the contact
[profile](/platform/en/audience/contacts-profiles#channel-preferences) shows them as a
**single row — SMS / RCS** — with one **Subscribed** checkbox and one **Accepts marketing**
value for the pair. Editing either one changes the shared state for both channels: there is no
separate RCS row to set.

![The Channel preferences card showing SMS and RCS as a single SMS / RCS row with one Subscribed and one Accepts marketing value](/platform/en/consent/images/rcs-sms-shared-consent--1-sms-rcs-row.png)
*SMS and RCS appear as one row — they share the same consent.*

## In the activity record

When a contact opts in or out, Instasent logs the change against the **SMS** channel, even
when the action happened over RCS — because there's a single underlying consent. The record
keeps the origin in the method: a keyword reply over RCS is logged as an SMS-channel opt-out
with an `rcs:` method, an SMS one with an `sms:` method. So the consent is shared, but you
can still tell from the activity timeline which channel the contact used.

> **Note**: There is **no case where SMS and RCS consent diverge** — they are the same state by design.
> If you need different reachability per channel, that's a matter of channel
> [availability](/platform/en/channels), not consent: a contact may simply not be reachable
> by RCS (device, carrier, country) while still receiving SMS.

The per-channel scope of opt-outs (and why SMS and RCS always move together) is also covered
in [Compliance](/platform/en/channels/compliance-defaults).

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