What is happening?
To combat increasing levels of SMS spam, the Singapore government has introduced the Full SMS Sender ID Registry Regime (“Full SSIR Regime”). This legislation requires companies to register their sender IDs with the government in order to continue sending SMS within Singapore. Unfortunately, as a foreign company working with customers in Singapore there are legal requirements for registration that we are unable to satisfy. We have been thoroughly investigating options to try and overcome these barriers to registration, but unfortunately, we have been unable to find a viable solution. Consequently SMS sent from Timely will be blocked by the Singaporean government once this legislation is enacted.
The date for this change was set for 1 August 2023 however, the government has offered an extension. They have not communicated how much longer businesses will be able to continue using the old SMS system, but we will continue to allow SMS for as long as we can.
What this means for you
In the short term, nothing will change. However, when the government begins enacting their new legislation (at a date currently TBC) we will no longer be able to operate Timely’s SMS features to customers in Singapore. The affected features are:
- Customer SMS messages incl. SMS reminders
- Ad-hoc SMS
- SMS campaigns
- Client login
To mitigate the effects on your business, here are some actions you can take:
- Change any SMS Customer messages to email - You can swap any automated customer messages to email so key information still reaches clients
- Allow your clients to cancel or make changes to their online bookings by updating your Cancellations and Changes Policy to include a link in emails to allow customers to change their booking.
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you require any help setting up any of these alternate workflows.
Can I use my own SMS provider?
Timely doesn't have any integrations with third party SMS providers, however we do link up with API software Zapier (available on our Innovate plan.) While we haven't guided customers through using the integration for this particular use, you could certainly investigate using this connection to link with an SMS provider.
What alternative is there to SMS?
Within Timely you can easily replace your automated customer SMS for email so that all your key information still makes it through to your client. Just head over to Setup > Customer Messages to adjust what automated emails you have setup.