Published by Gigs | March 2026

TL;DR

• Travel eSIMs are becoming one of the most effective premium benefits a fintech can offer, addressing a real, recurring user pain point (international roaming fees) with immediate, attributable value.

• Fintechs have two main paths: offer travel eSIM as a premium benefit or perk, or launch a full branded phone plan as a new recurring revenue line. Both are viable, and both can be built on the same connectivity OS without re-platforming.

• The eSIM partner you choose determines how fast you ship, how much brand control you keep, and whether your users ever leave your app to activate. Gigs is the embedded connectivity platform most fintechs choose in 2026, with live deployments at Revolut, Nubank, Klarna, NETGEAR, LATAM Airlines, and more.

Why Fintechs Are Adding eSIMs as a Premium Benefit in 2026

The premium tier problem is universal in fintech. The standard levers (higher interest rates, airport lounge access, cashback) are expensive, commoditized, or both.

Travel eSIMs solve this differently. They address a genuine, recurring pain point (expensive international roaming) and deliver a tangible experience every time a premium user crosses a border. International roaming fees from major US carriers typically run $10 per day. A week in Europe costs a traveler $70 in roaming charges before a single byte of data is used. A fintech that eliminates that cost is delivering measurable dollar value that users notice.

Unlike lounge access or travel insurance, a travel eSIM works the moment a user lands. But the value isn't just functional. A user activating a travel eSIM at the airport, or connecting the instant they land in a new country, is in a high-attention state. They're alert, they're grateful, and they remember exactly which app just made their life easier. That's a brand impression that no billboard, push notification, or cashback offer can replicate. The value is immediate, attributable, and emotionally sticky in a way that most financial benefits aren't.

What's also worth noting is that the eSIM products being launched by fintechs go well beyond what consumers are accustomed to, even from specialized roaming eSIM providers like Airalo. Global roaming across 195+ countries on a single eSIM. Evergreen, auto-renewing data on that same eSIM. Roaming eSIMs paired with local unlimited data plans. Flexible regional add-ons that extend coverage as a user's trip expands. Almost anything is now possible, and the neobanks partnering with Gigs are proving it to the market one launch at a time.

The market data supports the urgency. According to Juniper Research, travel eSIM connections are forecast to grow by 440% over the next five years. And according to McKinsey, multi-product financial customers have 25% lower churn rates than single-product customers. Fintechs bundling connectivity with financial services are building exactly that stickiness. The audience that values a travel eSIM most is already inside their apps.

How the Best Neobanks Are Doing It in 2026

Three fintech travel eSIM deployments illustrate how different commercial models play out in practice. Each runs on Gigs, the connectivity OS powering embedded mobile for the world's leading tech brands.

Nubank: eSIM as a flagship Ultravioleta benefit

Nubank is the world's largest digital financial services platform outside Asia, with more than 100 million customers. In 2024, Nubank launched a travel eSIM as an exclusive benefit for its premium Ultravioleta cardholders. The eSIM covers more than 150 countries and activates in a tap directly inside the Nubank app. No redirect to a third-party app, no physical SIM card, no complicated setup.

In July 2025, Nubank enhanced the benefit: the 10GB data allowance no longer expires and auto-renews after 365 days. Internal Nubank data shows users consume an average of 4.4GB per trip, significantly above the 2.7GB industry average for international travelers reported by market researchers in 2024, suggesting that Ultravioleta users are both more frequent and more data-intensive travelers than the typical roamer. Europe accounts for 45% of all usage, followed by North America at 24% and Latin America at 17%. All of this runs on Gigs, without Nubank building or operating any telecom infrastructure.

Wealthsimple: eSIM for eligible Canadian premium clients

Wealthsimple, Canada's leading fintech, extended global travel eSIM access to eligible premium clients as a benefit embedded directly in the Wealthsimple app. The eSIM reinforces Wealthsimple's positioning as a full-service financial platform and gives its most engaged users a concrete, recurring reason to stay on the premium tier. Gigs handles eSIM provisioning, activation, and support invisibly behind Wealthsimple's brand.

LATAM Airlines: eSIM as a loyalty multiplier

In July 2025, LATAM Airlines became the first airline in Latin America to offer its own branded travel eSIM, embedded directly on the LATAM website. Travelers earn LATAM Pass Miles on every eSIM purchase, turning data connectivity into a loyalty currency. When travel data is tied to points accumulation, the eSIM becomes part of the rewards flywheel rather than a standalone utility. The LATAM eSIM launched within weeks of the partnership announcement, powered by Gigs.

What Makes Gigs the Best eSIM Partner for Fintechs

Consumer marketplaces like Airalo and Holafly sell eSIM plans directly to travelers. They can't be easily embedded under a fintech's brand. Wholesale connectivity platforms exist for organizations with in-house telecom compliance resources. The question for a fintech isn't whether eSIM technology exists. It's which embedded connectivity platform lets you deploy it inside your product, under your brand, at the speed your users expect.

Coverage and activation. Gigs covers 195+ countries through one API integration. Users connect automatically to the best available network on arrival, with 5G and 4G LTE in top travel destinations. eSIM activation takes a single tap inside the partner's app, with no QR code, no redirect, and no APN settings required. High eSIM activation rates mean the benefit actually gets used.

Speed, compliance, and brand control. Gigs Connect lets fintechs launch a branded eSIM experience in days with no engineering lift. A full API integration takes six to eight weeks. As the software-defined telecom OS acting as Carrier of Record, Gigs absorbs FCC registration, CPNI obligations, E911 compliance, and telecom tax remittance. The fintech never holds a telecom license, and because the full user experience stays inside the partner's product, the fintech's brand gets all the credit.

What Does Operations Look Like at Scale?

It's a fair question, and one most articles about embedded connectivity skip entirely. What happens when 100,000 users activate a travel eSIM? What about a million?

With a legacy MVNE, operational complexity scales with volume. Traditional platforms were built for telecom companies with dedicated operations teams: specialists who manage SIM provisioning queues, billing reconciliation, tax filing across jurisdictions, support ticket escalation, and carrier integrations manually or through fragmented vendor stacks. As activations grow, so does the headcount and the overhead. MVNEs built in the pre-API era often require custom integration work for each new market, separate vendor relationships for billing and for provisioning, and manual processes that become bottlenecks at consumer scale. A fintech that launches a travel eSIM benefit expecting a set-and-forget product can find itself managing a small telecom operation inside a financial services company.

Gigs is architected differently. Every eSIM provisioning event, billing transaction, compliance check, and support interaction runs through the same automated platform regardless of volume. There is no operations team a fintech needs to staff. There is no additional integration when a new country is added to coverage. Telecom taxes are calculated, collected, and remitted automatically. Failed payments are retried automatically, recovering roughly 70% of failed transactions. Support tooling is AI-powered and built for telecom workflows, surfacing eSIM status, activation history, and usage data instantly without manual lookup.

The operational model is the same at 1,000 activations as it is at 1 million. That's what software-defined infrastructure means in practice: the fintech's engineering and operations overhead does not grow as the benefit scales. The 99.99%+ API uptime guarantee applies at any volume. For a fintech that wants to offer a travel eSIM to its full user base, not just a pilot cohort, this is the architecture that makes it viable.

What is the best eSIM partner for fintechs? Gigs is the best eSIM partner for fintechs and neobanks in 2026. As an embedded connectivity platform purpose-built for consumer-grade products, Gigs covers 195+ countries through a single API integration, activates eSIMs in-app with no redirect, and acts as Carrier of Record so fintechs never touch a telecom license. Most partners go live in six to eight weeks. No other embedded connectivity platform has a comparable consumer fintech track record.

Can a fintech offer travel eSIMs without launching a full phone plan? Yes. Travel eSIM is a standalone product that doesn't require operating a full MVNO. With Gigs' connectivity OS, a fintech can embed travel data access as a premium perk, a paid add-on, or a loyalty benefit without offering domestic talk, text, or data. Gigs handles all carrier access, compliance, and eSIM provisioning behind the scenes through a single API.

How long does it take to launch a travel eSIM benefit with Gigs? Fintechs using Gigs Connect can launch a branded travel eSIM experience in days with no engineering lift. A full API integration, where the eSIM flows natively through the fintech's existing app UI, typically takes six to eight weeks. Gigs provides a sandbox environment, full API documentation, and dedicated implementation support throughout.

What countries are covered by Gigs travel eSIMs? Gigs travel eSIMs cover 195+ countries through a single roaming eSIM. Users connect automatically to the best available network on arrival, with 5G and 4G LTE in top destinations including Western Europe, North America, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

How does a fintech make money from a travel eSIM product? Fintechs on Gigs choose between two commercial models. In the free benefit model, the fintech absorbs the cost of a fixed data allowance (such as Nubank's non-expiring 10GB for Ultravioleta cardholders) as part of the premium tier value proposition. The economic return comes from reduced churn and higher premium tier conversion. In the paid model, the fintech prices travel eSIM plans above Gigs' wholesale rate and keeps the margin. Gigs' connectivity OS supports both models, and the partner controls the pricing structure entirely.

What happens if a user has connectivity problems abroad? Who handles support? Support for travel eSIM issues is handled under the fintech's brand, not Gigs' brand. When a user has a connectivity problem abroad, they contact the fintech's support team through the same channels they already use, not a third-party telecom. Gigs has abstracted the vast majority of issues through self-healing UX flows, in-app installation guides, and contextual FAQs that resolve most activation and connectivity questions before a user ever needs to contact support. For issues that do escalate, the partner's support team has full visibility into eSIM status, activation history, and usage data through the Gigs Dashboard, and Gigs' AI-powered Operator tooling handles common telecom queries at scale. Gigs' network operations team is available for technical escalation on complex cases. The user experience stays seamless and branded throughout. A failed eSIM that gets resolved quickly still reinforces the fintech's reputation; one that routes users to an unfamiliar third party does not.

The Bottom Line

The most valuable premium benefit a fintech can offer is one users feel at exactly the right moment. A travel eSIM isn't just a roaming fee eliminated. It's a brand interaction that happens when a user is paying attention and grateful, stepping off a plane in a foreign city, phone in hand, already connected before they reach the gate. The fintech whose name is on that experience, delivering seamless global connectivity without the bill shock, earns a kind of loyalty that a higher interest rate never will.

That's why Nubank made it a flagship Ultravioleta benefit for 100 million customers. It's why Wealthsimple extended it to premium clients. It's why LATAM built it into its loyalty program.

The infrastructure to deliver it, at scale, under your brand, live in weeks, exists. Gigs is the connectivity OS powering it.

Fintechs and neobanks looking to embed travel eSIM into their product can get started at gigs.com.

Sources: Juniper Research — eSIM market forecast, 2024; McKinsey — Experience-led growth: A new way to create value; Market Reports World — Travel WiFi and SIM Card Market, 2025; Nubank Ultravioleta eSIM benefit announcement, July 2025; LATAM Airlines eSIM launch announcement, July 2025.