Travel perks have long been a growth lever for consumer finance companies.
From credit cards like Amex to fintechs like Revolut and Monzo, travel incentives have proven a winning strategy for attracting high-earning, premium customers.
One report found that half of the UK’s 20 million+ neobank users first opened their account for the currency exchange benefits while spending abroad. Today, many of those users have graduated to high-value features like savings, credit cards, and investing—driving meaningful revenue for the banks that brought them in. But it all started with a trip abroad.
To capitalize on the enormous growth potential of travel perks, leading fintechs are doubling down on their travel offerings. Revolut and Nubank now offer a wide range of travel products, from itinerary planning to airline miles and lounge access, while Monzo has expanded into travel insurance.
But there’s one product, in particular, that is quietly appearing on almost all fintech roadmaps. It’s easy to offer, essential for every traveler, and keeps users connected and engaged wherever they go: travel eSIMs.
Be the first app they open when they land
Mobile connectivity powers every step of a trip: from flight check-ins to navigation. Yet for many of us, getting connected abroad is still a stressful and expensive experience. Global roaming spend reached $45 billion in 2024, with everyday consumers footing most of that bill.
In the past, the only way to avoid the sky-high fees was to rely on sketchy wifi connections or buy a SIM from an airport kiosk. No surprise, then, that travel eSIM adoption has grown rapidly since the technology arrived on the scene.
If you’re a fintech, offering travel eSIMs to your users comes with multiple benefits:
Freeing users from the pain of roaming fees is a great way to generate lasting customer love.
Users need mobile data in order to engage with your app, so it’s in your interest to keep them connected while they’re abroad.
Travel eSIMs put your brand at the very heart of every journey, driving engagement with your product while your users are on the move.
By offering roaming, your app becomes the first thing users open when they land and the one they keep using throughout their trip. That means more chances to drive engagement with your services—from currency exchange and miles to core products like investing and saving.
Crucially, that engagement doesn’t have to end when the trip does. As UK fintechs have shown, travel perks can be the spark that builds long-term customer loyalty.
The free perk that funds itself
There are many ways to integrate travel eSIMs into a product strategy, but one option that has gained traction among fintechs in recent months is the ‘self-funded perk’.
The model is simple:
What makes this model so effective is that the revenue from top-ups and paid plans offsets the cost of offering free data to premium users, turning a loyalty perk into a self-funding growth engine.
As a result, travel eSIMs become both a retention play for high-value users and a new revenue stream, driving stronger customer love and higher ARPU.
The concept of a single, global travel eSIM—downloaded once, used for life—is also a major shift. No more buying a new SIM for every trip. Instead, users manage their roaming directly from their “Connectivity Wallet”, topping up data on the go.
This is exactly the kind of seamless, smart experience that helped fintechs win millions of customers from legacy banks in the first place.
The future of global connectivity
Travel eSIMs are doing for mobile data what travel cards did for cross-border spending. Before long, we’ll wonder why we ever put up with sky-high roaming fees.
It’s only fitting that the same apps that made global spending effortless are now making global connectivity just as seamless. This is the future of roaming: smooth, affordable, and fully embedded into the consumer apps we use every day.
To learn why the world’s leading fintechs trust Gigs to power roaming for their millions of users, get in touch.
