OPINION: What to watch in 2026 mobile transformation

Across the Mobile Ecosystem Forum’s (MEF) events, research and member dialogues, one theme stood out in 2025: mobile is being rebuilt around trust, automation and richer user experiences.

In 2026, these trends will deepen, changing how networks are exposed, how brands engage customers, and how people pay, prove their identity and stay safe.

Digital identity goes mainstream: from pilots to policy

Authentication and digital identity moved from incremental tweaks to structural change. At MEF Connects: ID & Wallets in London, industry leaders agreed that decentralised identity and national wallets are shifting from pilots to policy, with the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) wallet expected to catalyse adoption and set standards in 2026.

The conversation was frank about new threats—deepfake-enabled account takeovers—and equally clear on the response: stronger biometrics with liveness detection and network-based signals that bind a digital identity to a real user.

Beyond MEF, US policy forums tracked efforts to modernise authentication, introduce passkeys, and improve proofing across public and private services, signalling that identity is now treated as national infrastructure rather than a niche IT problem.

The key challenge for 2026: monetisation. Identity solutions will only scale if the industry agrees how to fund them.

Network APIs: software-based connectivity takes off, slowly

Network APIs moved from hype to commercial reality. Authentication remains the main monetised market, but demonstrations by Orange and Colt in 2025 showed applications requesting “quality on demand” and programming network behaviour in real time across mobile and fixed domains.

Could this be the new commercial interface for telecoms, enabling AI workloads, cloud gaming and tele-robotics to negotiate latency and throughput rather than accept “best effort” service? Possibly, but demand remains cautious. Traditional telco charging models—single authentication fees—do not align well with SaaS-style subscription or volume-based models.

The Open Gateway programme now covers nearly 80% of global mobile subscribers and is diversifying from fraud-centric APIs to performance and compute. Monetisation and channel partnerships will remain crucial in 2026.

A2P messaging: RCS rises, WhatsApp grows, SMS struggles

Business messaging experienced its most consequential year in a decade. Apple’s iOS 18 rollout flipped the default cross-platform messaging to RCS, pushing the US to roughly a billion RCS person-to-person messages per day and enabling richer chat and media between iPhone and Android users.

For enterprises, this sets the stage for verified, branded conversations via RCS Business Messaging. WhatsApp continues its global ascent as an A2P engine, with Meta signalling multi-billion-dollar run rates. MEF analysis tempers the most exuberant projections, but the outcome is clear: 2026 will see a genuine messaging mix. RCS offers carrier-aligned experiences at scale (from a small base), WhatsApp drives commerce and conversational care, and SMS remains vital for universal reach, though growth has stalled due to fraud and aggressive pricing.

The prediction for 2026: SMS must clean up bad actors and practices to survive.

Anti-fraud: confidence and collaboration take centre stage

Operators, CPaaS platforms and regulators convened in 2025 to tackle smishing, artificially inflated traffic and AI-driven scams. The emerging consensus: share signals faster, standardise sender verification, and balance regulatory action with industry charters. CPaaS leaders signed a memorandum to coordinate data sharing and anti-AI-threat practices.

In 2026, expect tighter controls on spoofing and stronger alignment between messaging verification, banking fraud telemetry, and operator APIs like SIM-swap and number verification. Trust is becoming a systemic requirement, not an afterthought.

Wholesale: innovation, scale and efficiency

Telecom wholesale gained momentum through eSIM travel, 5G roaming and IoT standardisation. MEF forums highlighted a pragmatic path: monetise roaming in the eSIM era, simplify IoT complexity with common APIs and CDR formats, and retool voice to protect value against evolving fraud.

Satellite-to-mobile solutions, once peripheral, moved to the centre as a strategic complement, reshaping coverage economics. Winners in 2026 will be wholesalers who make roaming analytics and IoT provisioning self-service, and who embed quality signals from Open Gateway into enterprise SLAs. Despite maturity and challenges, wholesale remains an innovative segment.

Direct Carrier Billing (DCB): revenue, compliance, conversion

DCB has weathered competition from cards and wallets but remains crucial for digital inclusion and incremental revenue, especially in mobile-first markets. In 2025, DCB advanced via improved compliance, premium content and broader app store reach, with analysts forecasting continued double-digit growth.

In 2026, operators will expand DCB as a fully licensed payment method, pairing it with fraud controls and transparent pricing. Merchants will treat DCB as a conversion lever in gaming, streaming and micro-subscriptions, not just as an alternative payment option.

Mobile payments: integration, inclusion, growth

Mobile payments increasingly intersect messaging, identity and inclusion. Verified messaging reduces scam risk, network APIs strengthen authentication, and mobile money plus DCB expand access. MEF’s 2026 roadmap emphasises making mobile money more merchant-friendly and enhancing DCB’s regulatory standing, signalling its role as a growth and inclusion pillar.

Regulation: from reactive to proactive

Regulation is shifting from oversight to market shaping. US policy choices on messaging, tariffs and verification will determine value capture as channels converge. In Europe, fraud is top of regulators’ agendas, with interventions in messaging and voice now routine. Africa’s cross-border settlement systems show how coordinated regulation and network action can reduce friction at scale.

2026 will see more structured co-regulation—industry charters backed by enforcement—and more national wallet and trusted caller initiatives prioritising identity and consent.

Trust: the principle that matters

Across 2025, trust emerged as the organising principle. MEF’s events repeatedly stressed that without consumer and enterprise confidence, advanced channels and APIs will underperform. Industry responses—from agent verification in RCS, to sender ID registries, shared fraud intelligence, and privacy-preserving biometrics—point to a more resilient mobile ecosystem in 2026.

Looking ahead 

Convergence is now practical, not rhetorical. Identity stacks incorporate network signals, messaging journeys end in payments, wholesale teams embed API quality into roaming, and developers treat networks as programmable resources. The trend for 2026 is clear: fewer pilots, more commercial deployments; fewer silos, more interoperable platforms; and a mobile ecosystem increasingly defined by trust, not just technology.

The author, Dario Betti, is CEO of MEF (Mobile Ecosystem Forum) a global trade body established in 2000 and headquartered in the UK with members across the world.