Published by Gigs | April 2026

In 2026, the best fintechs are competing on more than just financial products to ensure customer retention. According to McKinsey, multi-product financial customers churn 25% less than single-product users. That's why mobile connectivity is one of the newest additions to many fintechs' mix.

It's a shift that Gigs was built for. As Hermann Frank, CEO and co-founder of Gigs, put it: "Bundling life's essentials like banking, insurance, and now telecom in one single hub elevates the user experience while compounding stickiness." Nubank, Revolut, and PicPay are three recent examples of what this can look like in practice, each launching a mobile subscription service within weeks, fully embedded in their apps, and without touching the underlying telecom infrastructure. Here's how each of them did it.

The New Fintech Playbook Includes Mobile Subscriptions

Nubank: Travel eSIM as a Flagship Premium Benefit

When you have 123 million customers and a premium tier built around making life genuinely better, a good travel experience isn't optional. It's expected. That's the bar Nubank set for itself when it decided to embed a travel eSIM directly into Ultravioleta, its premium subscriber tier.

The idea was straightforward: Ultravioleta customers travel. They shouldn't have to think about roaming data. So Nubank built it in, covering 160+ countries, activating in a few taps inside the app they already use every day. No redirects, no physical SIM card swap, no setup friction. The full launch took 45 days from kick-off to live, and Nubank made zero additional hires to pull it off.

But that was before the launch. The truly stunning effects kicked in after. The initial benefit had a time limit. Users loved it, used it, and wanted more. So Nubank and Gigs worked together to upgrade it: the 10GB allowance became evergreen, auto-renewing every 365 days, usable across multiple trips throughout the year. The teams shipped that upgrade in less than three weeks. Activations jumped 80%. Internal data now shows Ultravioleta customers averaging 4.4GB per trip, with Europe leading usage at 45%, followed by North America at 24% and Latin America at 17%.

Pedro Bridi, Sr. Product Manager at Nubank, summed it up well: "Gigs was an easy choice for launching our own travel eSIM. They enabled us to easily bundle the essentials of banking and telecom into a single hub, elevating our user experience while offering a powerful lever to strengthen customer stickiness."

Nubank didn't build telecom infrastructure. It built a product experience. Gigs handled the telecom framework underneath.

Revolut: A Truly Differentiated Phone Plan

Revolut didn't stumble into mobile. It walked in with a clear point of view: the phone plan market is broken, and a fintech with 65 million global customers and deep product instincts can fix it.

Revolut Mobile launched in December 2025 at an introductory rate of £12.50 [approx. $16 USD] per month: unlimited 5G data, calls, and texts, with 20GB of roaming across Europe and the US, all managed inside the Revolut app. But the ambition went much further than the headline price. Revolut built in features that traditional carriers haven't yet thought to offer: up to three numbers on a single plan for separating work and personal life, a Messaging Pass for staying connected in 80+ countries beyond the standard roaming zone, RevPoints integration so customers can pay for their plan with loyalty points, and a NordVPN subscription bundled in by default.

Hadi Nasrallah, General Manager, Telco at Revolut, put the goal plainly: "Revolut Mobile is more than just another mobile service, it's a truly differentiated alternative designed to change the industry."

None of this came out of nowhere. Revolut had already been in the eSIM business since 2024, when it was among the first financial apps to offer a global travel eSIM to its customers. That product became Revolut's top non-financial services product by usage, with millions of data plans created across more than 100 destinations worldwide. Revolut Mobile is that same instinct, taken further.

Hermann Frank, CEO and co-founder of Gigs, described what the launch represents: "This launch demonstrates the versatility of our operating system and marks a turning point in the UK telecom market, with Revolut setting a new standard for how people stay connected."

PicPay: Premium eSIM for a High-Income Segment

PicPay has more than 66 million customers in Brazil and a high-income segment, Epic, that expects its benefits to match its status. In March 2026, PicPay decided that global connectivity belonged in that tier.

The launch was clean and purposeful: Epic clients received free access to 10GB of global data, valid for a full year, instantly activated inside the PicPay app. Coverage spans more than 150 international destinations through a single eSIM. It just works, the moment they land.

But the insight is what really matters here. Roaming in Brazil is still expensive and unpredictable, with fees that can climb to R$300 [approx. $58 USD] per trip. For a customer who already trusts PicPay with their money, having that same app hand them reliable global data before they even leave the airport is a completely different kind of brand moment. It's the kind of benefit that sticks with a customer long after the trip is over.

Pedro Romero, Executive Director of Wallet and Banking at PicPay, framed what the product is really about: "By offering international connectivity within the global account for Epic clients, we expand the product's value proposition and deliver an even more complete and premium experience for those seeking convenience, freedom, and technology in one place."

Gigs manages the connectivity layer end-to-end: global network integrations, eSIM provisioning, operational support. PicPay owns the customer experience. The result is a premium benefit that cost PicPay none of the complexity of building telecom infrastructure from scratch.

What All Three Have in Common

The surface-level outcomes are different: a travel perk, a standalone phone plan, a segment-exclusive benefit. But the reason each of these brands chose Gigs is the same.

Telecom is genuinely hard to enter. Carrier negotiations, regulatory licensing across multiple jurisdictions, eSIM provisioning infrastructure, billing systems, compliance obligations, support tooling: each of these is a multi-month project on its own. Traditionally, building a mobile product meant assembling all of it, staffing a team to run it, and accepting that you were now, in part, a telecom company. Nubank launched in 45 days and hired nobody new. Nubank didn't get lucky with that timeline. That's just what building on Gigs looks like.

What Gigs offers these brands isn't just access to a network. It's the freedom to focus entirely on the product experience while Gigs holds the telecom licenses, manages the carrier relationships, handles compliance, and keeps the infrastructure running at 99.99%+ uptime. The fintech's brand gets all the credit. Gigs stays invisible.

When a Revolut customer activates their phone plan inside the Revolut app, or a PicPay Epic client fires up their eSIM at the airport, the experience belongs entirely to the fintech. There's no third-party handoff, no unfamiliar interface, no moment where the user is reminded they're using someone else's infrastructure. The brand impression is clean, and it adds up with every trip a customer takes.

Gigs also doesn't force a single commercial path. Nubank offers the eSIM as a free Ultravioleta benefit. PicPay does the same for its Epic tier. Revolut charges for a full phone plan. All three run on the same connectivity OS. The platform supports the full range of mobile product types, from a standalone travel eSIM to a domestic phone plan with talk, text, and data, and a brand can start narrow and expand without re-platforming.

For fintechs evaluating whether to add mobile to their product, the question isn't really whether it's possible. These three launches prove it is. The question is how fast, how cleanly, and with how much of your team's attention. Gigs is built to make the answer to all three as favorable as possible.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get started with Gigs? There are two paths. Gigs Connect is a pre-built hosted checkout that lets brands go live in days with no engineering lift. For teams that want the eSIM or phone plan to flow natively through their existing app UI, a full API integration typically takes six to eight weeks. Both paths require zero telecom expertise from the partner. Full API documentation and a sandbox environment are available from day one.

Does a fintech need to obtain a telecom license to launch a mobile product? No. Gigs acts as Carrier of Record, which means Gigs holds all required telecom licenses and absorbs the regulatory obligations, including FCC registration, CPNI compliance, E911, and telecom tax remittance. The fintech never applies for a license, manages a carrier relationship, or interfaces with a regulator. This is one of the most significant practical advantages of building on Gigs rather than pursuing a direct carrier agreement.

What do the economics look like for a free eSIM benefit? When a fintech offers an eSIM as a free tier benefit, as Nubank and PicPay do, the fintech absorbs the wholesale data cost in exchange for the engagement and retention value the benefit generates. The return shows up in premium tier conversion, reduced churn, and higher lifetime value among the customers who use it most. Gigs supports both free benefit and paid plan commercial models, and the partner sets the pricing structure entirely.

What happens to customer support as the product scales? Support for eSIM and phone plan issues runs under the fintech's brand throughout. Gigs' AI-powered Operator tooling handles the majority of common telecom queries, including activation issues, compatibility checks, and data usage questions, at scale and without manual intervention. For issues that escalate, the partner's support team has full visibility into eSIM status, activation history, and usage data through the Gigs Dashboard. Gigs also provides escalation support in local languages where needed, as it does for Nubank's Brazilian Portuguese customer base.

To learn how Gigs works and explore what's possible for your product, visit gigs.com.

Sources: McKinsey — Experience-led growth: A new way to create value; Juniper Research — Travel eSIM Users to Grow 440% Globally, 2024; FinTech Strategy — Top 5 Neobanking Innovations in 2025; Nubank Ultravioleta eSIM announcement, July 2025; Revolut Mobile launch announcement, December 2025; PicPay Global eSIM announcement, March 2026.