Starling moves beyond banking to deliver eSIM plans ahead of summer holiday season

Starling today launches eSIM plans, offering the bank’s retail customers competitive data-roaming plans when travelling abroad – without any surprise fees. Customers can download an eSIM directly in the Starling app. Prices start from £3.

„The eSIM plans bolster the bank’s industry-leading travel offering, which includes fee-free spending overseas, a daily fee-free ATM withdrawal allowance of £300, and free access to handy in-app travel tools.” – according to the press release. 

Starling’s eSIM plans, powered by Gigs, come in 1GB,  3GB, 5GB and 10GB options, designed for different holiday types and lengths of stay. Available in over 130 countries across the world, the bank’s digital SIMs offer premium connectivity and connect Starling customers to Gigs’ best available network provider at any moment. 

“When Starling launched ten years ago, our fee-free travel offering set the bar for traditional banks to follow. Our travel offering remains industry leading, and our eSIMs add to the convenient experience our customers love us for” said Bernadette Smith, Chief Customer and Banking Officer at Starling. 

Customers that sign up to an eSIM also benefit from global access to the Starling app; even if they use up their data allowance while abroad, they can still use the app without roaming charges. The eSIM plans last 30 days and can be purchased seamlessly within the Starling app in advance before activating automatically at the destination. The eSIM plans can also be topped up at the destination if required. 

“Starling is already the UK’s trusted travel companion for fee-free and secure spending abroad. The key piece missing was staying connected overseas,” added Hermann Frank, CEO and Co-Founder of Gigs. “Starling’s eSIM completes the travel toolkit, with users online the moment they hit the tarmac. This is the future Gigs is building: daily essentials seamlessly baked in and available with a tap, wherever customers need them.”

Starling’s eSIM offering joins the bank’s roster of savvy travel tools, including its Spending Trackers, which help customers monitor how much they’re spending on holiday; Tags, which let customers build custom tags for specific trips such as ‘Honeymoon’ or ‘Vicky’s hen-do’ and then analyse their spend; and Travel Hub, which shares the real-time fee-free exchange rate for the currency in their chosen destination.

Bernadette Smith shares her tips for how to travel like a local with Starling: 

1. Don’t tip your bank: Save money on overseas spending and ATM withdrawals with Starling, which gives you access to the Mastercard currency exchange rate. 
2. Supercharge your trip with AI: Starling Assistant, Starling’s agentic AI financial assistant, can help you budget for your trip and set you up with a Space and automatic transfers to meet your goals. Starling’s Spending Intelligence tool can analyse your holiday spending after the trip, so that you know how to better budget next time! 
3. Stay scam safe: Before your trip, Starling’s Scam Intelligence tool can analyse holiday listings on marketplace apps to help you spot holiday scams. Once abroad, Virtual cards can be used for taxi and restaurant bookings if you need to pay over the phone – delete the card afterwards if you’re worried about having your details skimmed. 
4. Beat the IOU Taboo: If you want to split costs equally with your travel companions, and don’t have a Joint Account, Starling’s Split the Bill and Settle Up features take the awkwardness out of chasing IOUs.
5. Roam with no surprises: Don’t fear surprise phone bills when you return from your travels. Starling’s eSIM offers fully transparent and competitive fees based on your roaming needs.

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​​​Starling is an award-winning, fully-licensed and regulated bank, built to give people a fairer, smarter and more human alternative to the banks of the past. It offers personal, business and joint current accounts alongside its Under 16s card. Starling also provides a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) proposition through its subsidiary Engine, using the proprietary technology platform that it uses to power its own bank. Headquartered in London, the bank has offices in Southampton, Cardiff and Manchester.​​ 

Gigs, the operating system for mobile services, empowers tech companies to seamlessly embed connectivity into their platform. By bundling phone plans and travel data with their core services, Gigs’ partners can increase stickiness and unlock a new recurring revenue stream with digital mobile experiences that create meaningful value for consumers. Gigs’ end-to-end platform provides everything brands like Revolut, Klarna, Cash App, Nubank, and Tide need to launch and operate their own multi-market mobile service: premium connectivity, a hosted checkout, billing, subscription management, analytics, and AI-powered customer service. Backed by Ribbit Capital, Google, Y Combinator, Speedinvest, and BoxGroup, Gigs was founded by Hermann Frank and Dennis Bauer in 2020.