SMS

Some Nigerians don’t have smartphones. Most do, but on bad connection days, SMS is still the most reliable rail. Guild does both — two-way conversational SMS for people without WhatsApp, and one-way transactional SMS for everyone.

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Who uses SMS

Employers don’t typically use SMS for anything other than OTPs. Their flows live on WhatsApp and the web.

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One-way transactional SMS

OTPs, balance alerts, payment confirmations. Outbound only. The user doesn’t reply. These fire through OPay’s SMS API. Example:

Your Guild code: 459217. Valid for 10 minutes. Don’t share with anyone.

Sub-second delivery. Single segment. The sender ID is “Guild” (a registered alphanumeric sender).

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Two-way conversational SMS

Job alerts and other reply-expected messages. The user replies; we read the reply; we act. These fire through our own SMS gateway — paired Android phones with Nigerian SIMs, hosted on the same VPS. Detailed at SMS infrastructure. Example:

Guild: 5 bricklayer jobs in Bodija, ₦4k/day, 3 days. Reply 1 to apply, 0 to skip.

You reply 1. Application submitted.

Guild: Applied to Adekunle’s bricklayer job. He’ll get back to you today.

Total interaction: 2 SMS each way, under a minute end to end.

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Why two-way matters

Most SMS APIs are excellent at outbound and mediocre at inbound. Replies don’t always reach the sender; deliverability varies by route. We can’t have job applications quietly disappearing. Our gateway uses SIMs we own, on each major Nigerian network. Inbound replies have 99%+ deliverability because they land at our SIM. Detail at SMS infrastructure.

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What you can do via SMS

For Job Seekers: For Traders: For both, replies to OTPs and balance alerts are recognised as ambient messages and routed to the intent engine.

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What an SMS looks like

We design every SMS to fit in a single 160-character segment when possible. Multi-segment SMS costs more and is more error-prone in delivery. Examples: Short on purpose. Single-segment SMS is the deliverability sweet spot.

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When SMS won’t work

A few cases:

• Your phone’s SMS inbox is full. Some older phones reject incoming SMS when the inbox is full. Clear old messages.
• Your carrier’s SMSC is having an outage. Rare but real. We retry.
• You’ve sent stop and we’ve paused alerts. Send start to resume.

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Sender IDs

Our SMS comes from one of two sources:

• “Guild” — alphanumeric sender ID for one-way transactional. Registered with Nigerian carriers. Recognisable.
• A Nigerian phone number — from our gateway SIMs, for two-way conversational. You can reply to these.

You can verify the source by replying. A non-replyable Guild SMS will give a delivery failure if you try to reply (it’s coming from an alphanumeric sender). A two-way SMS accepts your reply. This distinction matters because a scammer could send an SMS claiming to be “Guild.” If you want to verify a suspicious message, reply to it. If the reply bounces with an error, it wasn’t from us either (or it was a one-way alert that we explicitly don’t accept replies on).

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What we don’t do via SMS

A few intentional limits:

• We don’t send marketing SMS. Only transactional and conversational.
• We don’t send long-form content. SMS is for short, actionable signals.
• We don’t ask for sensitive data over SMS. No “reply with your BVN” or “reply with your PIN.” Ever. If you get such a message claiming to be from Guild, it’s not from us.
• We don’t bridge SMS to lender events. Snapshots and consent flows happen on web or WhatsApp.

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Cost to you

Inbound SMS to your phone is free (your carrier doesn’t charge you to receive). Outbound SMS (your reply) is whatever your carrier charges for an SMS to a Nigerian number. Typically ₦4-8. If you’re on a low-balance day, you can still receive job alerts. Replying costs a small amount; we don’t reimburse.

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Where to read more