Why do neobanks need e-sim? (Maksym Popov)

What Is an eSIM?

An eSIM is a technology that came to the market back in 2018 allowing to replace a physical SIM card in your phone with a digital one. Such change brings a number of benefits:

• New number can be purchased on the go, which is useful for people traveling and for those who are too lazy to visit a physical store
• eSIM enables multiple devices link. Users can share their phone number and internet billing plan across their phones, laptops, tablets, and smartwatches
• It can’t be damaged, lost, or duplicated
• It provides extra room for other components or a larger battery
• eSIM doesn’t need to be on the edge of the phone so the phone manufacturers can play a bit more with the hardware positioning
• Several numbers can be attached to a single device
• It can be used to track the user’s phone in case of its loss

The adoption of eSIM technology is showing steady year-to-year growth. According to eSIMs: Sector Analysis, Emerging Opportunities & Market Forecasts 2021-2025 study by Juniper Reserach the number of eSiMs embedded into different devices will reach 3.4 billion
in 2025 compared to 1.2 billion in 2021. The recently released IPhones 14 that are sold on the United States market do not have a traditional SIM slot anymore.

Such growth of eSIM popularity is an opportunity for additional revenue generation not only for mobile network operators but also for third-party eSIM service sellers such as banks.

Selling eSIMs by Banks

Why exactly banks? Because banks have both: a huge customer base and a banking application that serves as a great place for cross-selling additional services. Moreover, banks possess a lot of clients’ personal data, which allows them to precisely target
their offers.

Besides being a great place for the eSIM offers banks can heavily benefit from eSIM cross-selling by:

• Receiving a reseller’s fee
• Increasing the satisfaction of bank’s clients and increasing their loyalty by extending Banking app functionality and providing tailored offers
• Launching own virtual mobile network provider. eSIM technology enables banks to do that by using services provided by the original mobile providers. In this case, bank does not only receive a new service to offer but also improves the data collection process
  for building scoring models.

Who Already Benefits from eSIM Integration?

There are several banks that already benefit from cross-selling eSims worldwide. Let’s take a look at Monobank’s implementation.

Monobank made a collaboration with Life mobile network operator to provide eSIM cross-selling inside Monobank’s mobile application. It offers two options:

• Get a new eSIM account for one or more devices and register a new Phone number.
• Transfer your phone number to an eSIM account.

In both cases after the transition to eSIM user gets access to the eSIM account management that includes checking and topping up the balance, changing the subscription plan, on-schedule payments setup, access to Monobank support regarding the phone number
issues and questions.

Monobank-Life collaboration became a triple win solution. Users benefit from a new usability features. Monobank gets additional revenue from Life and increases the clients loyalty and satisfaction. Life promotes its services and receives an extra selling
point with a huge number of visitors.

How to Add eSIM Offers to your Banking App?

To make eSIM offers available in your banking app you’ll need to build an integration between your banking app and service provider APIs and ensure the seamless onboarding process.