Written by
Mary Gonzalez, Director of Brand & Content
Published on
April 29, 2025
Updated on
July 2, 2025
Despite evolving technologies and regulations, the voice channel remains plagued by robocall scams, illegal spoofing, and outdated technologies that continue to enable fraud. It’s a fragmented landscape where consumers don’t trust the voice channel and legitimate businesses still struggle to stand out as verified, while bad actors continue to exploit weaknesses in outdated systems.
How do consumers know that they can trust a branded call display, whether it’s just a caller name or if it has a logo? What part of the display signals trust?
It’s time to move beyond the surface-level appeal of branded call visuals. The real solution lies in caller identity integrity—built on a foundation of verification, secure transmission, and consistent presentation.
To kick off the SIP Forum’s 2025 Branded Calling Summit, Numeracle’s President and COO, Mary Clark, joined by Brett Nemeroff, VP of Engineering, introduced Branded Calling IDTM (BCID TM)—an industry-standardized solution developed with the CTIA to fix the fragmented branded calling ecosystem and bring verifiable trust back to phone calls.
While branded visuals like logos are designed to inspire trust, their presence alone cannot guarantee the authenticity of a call. So, BCID is more than just branding — it provides a cohesive and trustworthy experience for consumers by ensuring that calls from vetted sources display verified brand information, such as company name, logo, and call intent. Its goal is to protect the integrity of the voice channel while building consumer trust in phone calls.
Fraud thrives in the absence of verified identity and bad actors seem to have a talent for identity manipulation in particular, exploiting weak technologies, like CNAM, to convince you they are a different identity. Bad actors understand the flaws and weaknesses of such technologies, enough to exploit those weaknesses to impersonate and defraud.
These legacy technologies offer no real verification of caller identity, and while logos and branded visuals are helpful in signaling trust, the lack of authentication allows scammers to easily spoof legitimate numbers, deceiving consumers into answering fraudulent calls.
“The real issue is that there is no caller authentication mechanism built into the voice network. Scammers understand the technology and implement it before we're ready.”
— Brett Nemeroff, VP of Engineering – Voice; Numeracle
How BCID Solves: The BCID ecosystem is comprised of Authorized Partners, like Numeracle, who are vetted and audited against
a set of stringent industry-driven requirements. The ecosystem is built to authenticate callers and use Know Your Customer (KYC) practices to vet their brand information before it reaches the consumer — the first step toward a secure, branded calling experience.
Once identity is verified, the next challenge is maintaining its integrity across transmission. Current STIR/SHAKEN protocols help, but they don’t cover the full scope of branded calling, especially when multiple service providers are involved in the call path. Secure, end-to-end identity integrity requires authenticated call delivery every step of the way.
“One of the great things about STIR/SHAKEN is it made us think about cryptography in phone calls. We need a way to authenticate and securely present that identity so the person on the other end can trust who’s calling.”
— Brett Nemeroff, VP of Engineering – Voice; Numeracle
How BCID Solves: Branded Calling ID ensures authenticated delivery of vetted brand information, securely embedding this verified identity data into each call through STIR/SHAKEN Rich Call Data (RCD). This allows the caller's identity information to stay intact throughout transmission, from origination to termination.
Even with verified identity and secure transmission, if the branded information isn’t displayed correctly on the consumer’s device, trust is lost. Today, consumers receive a confusing array of visuals, often with conflicting logos or inconsistent displays due to multiple competing solutions or outdated branding methods. This fragmentation undermines the trust branded calling is supposed to deliver.
A complete solution must ensure that what’s seen on the phone screen is exactly what was authenticated—no alterations, no conflicting information, and no misleading branding.
How BCID Solves: BCID’s unified, standards-based presentation displays verified names, logos, and call reason — consistently displayed natively by the device with no consumer-downloaded app required. Plus, Android phones display “Verified Business Call” along with the logo to signal that this is more than a branded call that they can feel confident in answering. Consumers are empowered with the information they need to confidently answer or decline a call.
It’s critical for the industry to continue its collaborative efforts to protect this new form of secure branded identity display before it becomes another technology that can be exploited by bad actors.
If other competing technologies are allowed to natively present without KYC, vetting, verification, rigor, and cryptography behind the presentation, then this type of logo presentation will be abused, and consumers will learn they can't trust this method either and continue to distrust the voice channel.
Brett posed a critical question during the session: “Does your solution meet all three pillars?” Most don’t, but BCID does. BCID represents one of the first comprehensive solutions to the challenges plaguing branded calling today. It was built to uphold all three pillars of trusted communications:
By supporting these pillars, BCID creates a secure ecosystem where enterprises can protect their brand integrity, and consumers can regain confidence in the calls they receive.
If you're ready to secure your brand's voice and lead the charge in trusted communications, reach out to Numeracle to get started today.
The Branded Calling ID (BCID) ecosystem is an industry-standard framework, defined by the CTIA, that brings together a network of trusted partners to ensure every branded call is authenticated, verified, and delivered seamlessly. This collaborative approach helps businesses contact their customers more confidently, saving time and money while improving the overall customer experience. By establishing a secure and reliable method for displaying verified business information on outbound calls, BCID enhances call transparency and combats fraudulent activities.
Yes, enterprises can access CTIA's Branded Calling ID (BCID) through their originating service provider (OSP). However, not all OSPs offer this service directly. To utilize BCID, enterprises typically need to work with an OSP that is an Authorized Partner within the BCID ecosystem. Numeracle works closely with many originating service providers (carriers), resellers, and analytics partners. This allows enterprises to get integrated with BCID regardless of which provider they currently use.
CTIAs Branded Calling ID (BCID) solution is the only branded calling solution that service providers can currently resell. Under current industry standards, BCID can only be legally and securely sold through providers authorized by the CTIA. As a service provider, you can join the BCID ecosystem as an Authorized OSP Partner and resell this secure branded calling service to your enterprise customers.
As a CTIA Authorized Partner, Numeracle enables you to resell branded calling through our standards-based solution, Secure Verified Identity Presentation (sVIP). It’s the only way to offer authenticated brand display via Rich Call Data (RCD) and STIR/SHAKEN with cross-carrier delivery.
CNAM is a more traditional service. When a call is made, the recipient's carrier queries a database associated with the calling number to retrieve and display a name, typically up to 15 characters long. This service relies on the recipient's carrier having access to and performing a lookup in these databases, which may not always be consistent or up to date. CNAM primarily displays a text-based name associated with the phone number.
Branded caller ID goes beyond simply displaying a name. With branded caller ID, businesses can display their branded assets directly on the recipient's phone screen. This richer display provides immediate visual recognition and context, increasing the likelihood of the call being answered. Furthermore, Branded Caller ID often incorporates call authentication features like STIR/SHAKEN, which helps to verify the legitimacy of the call and reduces the chances of it being flagged as spam. While CNAM is more widely supported currently, branded caller ID offers a more robust and trustworthy identification method, leading to higher answer rates and improved brand recognition. Think of Branded Caller ID as the next evolution of CNAM, providing a more comprehensive and secure way for businesses to identify themselves.
