On 8 October, Air India started selling its own branded eSIM to passengers. Tata Communications, its partner on the service, described the aim as "bringing travel connectivity into the booking journey itself". Two days earlier, Wise had added eSIM data plans to its app. A week later, Manulife Canada began giving an eSIM membership to eligible customers who buy its travel insurance. On 5 October, Juniper Research said travel eSIM sellers are partnering with airlines and travel agencies that can put the purchase "into existing travel bookings and transactions".
Selling the eSIM at booking makes sense: the customer is thinking about the trip and already has their card out. Issuing the eSIM at booking is a separate decision, and usually the wrong one. An eSIM that has been issued but never activated has a shelf life, and on some plans it is as short as 30 days. Take the sale when the customer books. Create the eSIM in the week they fly.
A partner asked us about exactly this. They wanted to sell an eSIM when a customer books a holiday and send it months later, and to build any trip length by stacking one-day plans. Selling at booking is fine. Buying the eSIM that early is not, and neither is stacking plans. Here is why, and what to build instead.
An unused eSIM can expire in 30 days
Shelf life is set plan by plan, often by the local operator's rules, and it varies a lot. The shortest we have come across is 30 days, counted from the day the eSIM is issued rather than the day it is first used. Others run to 180 days, and some plans set no limit at all.
Now set that against a booking made in spring for a trip in late summer. An eSIM issued with that booking can be past its window before the customer has packed, and an eSIM whose window has passed may not be refundable either.
Because the limit differs from plan to plan, we do not promise any reseller that an unused eSIM will survive a long gap between sale and trip.
Validity usually starts at the destination, not always
The validity period is the number of days the customer paid for. On most plans it starts when the eSIM first connects to a network in the destination, or when it first uses data. That is what lets a customer install before leaving and still land with every day intact.
Some plans start sooner. On a small number of them, the local operator starts the clock at installation, or even when the order is placed. Picture a one-day plan that starts at order: issued at booking, it expires months before the flight.
A plan that starts at order loses a day of validity for every day it is issued early. Measure the gap between issue and departure in days, not months.
Plans cannot be scheduled to start on set dates
The partner's second question was whether a trip could be built from one-day plans, each set to start on its own date. It cannot. There is no way to order a plan today that starts on a day you choose.
Adding a second plan to an eSIM that already has one does not get you there either, and what happens depends on the network. On some, the new plan waits until the first runs out of data or days. On others, buying the same plan again adds to the balance, while buying a different plan replaces the one running. That difference is the subject of our next issue.
The answer that works is one plan for the whole trip. Where no package
matches the trip length, some plans in our catalogue are sold by the day: a
Flexible Duration package takes a days value when you order.
Trip dates also move between booking and departure. Order in the week of
travel and you buy the trip the customer is actually taking.
Today's price is not a price for later
Your price on Zesimo moves with what networks charge for capacity, so the
price you see today is not guaranteed for an order you place months from
now. A plan you quoted can also be withdrawn before issue day, when a network
changes or retires an offer. package.updated fires when
your reseller_price changes, and
package.deactivated fires when a plan stops being sold.
So the price shown to the customer at booking is a promise you keep on your own. That was the advice we gave the partner: fix the customer's price at booking, and issue the eSIM close to departure. Two habits make it work. Price the retail product with room for some movement between the two dates. And store what the customer bought (destination, data, days, price) rather than a package ID, so that on issue day you can pick whichever plan keeps the promise.
Sell at booking, issue in the week of travel
Put together, the flow has four steps.
- At booking, sell the eSIM as a line item and store what the customer bought: destination, data, days and the price you charged. Quote the price from the live catalogue if you like. Nothing is ordered yet.
-
In the week of travel, match that to a current package
and place the order. Send an
Idempotency-Keyheader, so a retried request cannot charge you twice. -
Send the customer
install_url, the hosted page that carries the QR code, both tap-to-install links and the activation code, as covered in our guide to activation codes and install links. - If the trip is cancelled before issue day, cancel the line item. No eSIM exists yet, so there is nothing to refund.
The week is not arbitrary. We recommend issuing three to seven days before travel. That is close enough for shelf life to stop mattering, and it leaves a few days of slack to swap a withdrawn plan or retry a failed order before anyone is at the airport.
After issue, a cancellation follows the package's own terms. Every package in
our catalogue carries a refund_policy of automatic
or manual_review, and a provisioning_fee, where a
package has one, is not refunded. Wise's launch promises customers a refund
on any data plan they buy and do not use. Anyone selling at booking ends up
making some version of that promise. Issuing late is how you keep it
cheaply.
The short version
- Sell the eSIM at booking. Issue it in the week of travel.
- Assume an unused eSIM can expire 30 days after it is issued.
- Expect validity to start at the destination, and keep the issue gap short for plans that start sooner.
- Do not chain plans. Buy one plan, or one day count, for the whole trip.
- Fix the customer's price at booking, and carry any price change yourself.
The booking page is the right place to sell an eSIM. It is the wrong place to make one.
The Zesimo team