Gift an eSIM
Give somebody gigabytes. They do not expire, and you do not have to guess the country.
The two things that make a money gift card annoying are that it runs to an expiry date and that it is denominated in a currency the recipient may not be spending. Gigabytes have neither problem.
1
Code, redeemed exactly once
0
Days until the gigabytes expire
145
Destinations one balance reaches
8
People on one balance, if you use Pool instead
Why data and not money
A gift card denominated in money loses value in two ways. There is a date in the terms after which it is worth less or nothing, and it sits in one currency while the person you gave it to is spending another. Data has no exchange rate and no clock.
This is the same promise the the Orbislo wallet makes to everybody else. Data you have paid for is data you own until you use it. We are not being generous by refusing to expire a gift. We simply have nothing to expire, which is why the gift is measured in gigabytes in the first place.
One code, redeemed once, into their wallet
A gift card is a code and an amount of data. The recipient signs in, enters the code, and the gigabytes are added to their balance. The code is marked redeemed at that moment and is tied to the account that used it.
- One code, one redemption. There is no partial redemption and no second use by anybody.
- The data joins the balance they already have. It is not a separate pot to keep track of.
- A message can be attached to the code, so the person redeeming it knows who it came from.
- The recipient is charged nothing and needs no card details to redeem it.
- An unredeemed code is simply unredeemed. It sits there until somebody enters it.
The real advantage: you do not have to know where they are going
This is the part that beats gifting a country pack, and it is the reason to read this page. A pack bought for Japan is worth nothing to somebody whose plans moved to Korea, and every travel eSIM sold as a single country ticket has that failure mode built in.
Wallet data does not, because it draws in 145 destinations from one balance. So this works for somebody who has not booked yet, somebody moving abroad for a job that has not started, and somebody who travels constantly and would rather you did not guess. The current list is on the destination list.
Four ways to give somebody connectivity
| What you give | Does it expire | Survives a change of plan | What you have to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orbislo gift card, in gigabytes | No | Yes, in 145 destinations | Nothing. One code covers it |
| A single country pack | Yes. Airalo's cheapest global gigabyte runs 7 days | No. It is bound to the country you chose | The exact destination, before you buy |
| A gift card denominated in money | Usually. Check the terms | Only if the currency matches | Nothing, but they can lose the value |
| Orbislo Pool, instead of a gift | No | Yes, and you can top up again | Nothing. You add data whenever you like |
The country pack row uses Airalo's own published listing, checked on 1 August 2026. That is their figure, not ours, and it is in lib/facts.ts with the date so it can be rechecked.
Who this is actually for
Four cases account for almost all of it, and they have one thing in common: the giver knows the person is going somewhere and does not know the details.
- Somebody moving abroad. The first month in a new country is the month they use the most data and know the least about local plans.
- A parent giving a student a term of data instead of money. The longer version of that is on our page for students abroad.
- An employer sending a contractor away for a fortnight, without putting a company card in a personal account.
- A leaving present from a team, where nobody knows the destination and everybody knows the person is going.
For a recurring gift, use Pool instead
A gift card is one code and one amount. If what you want is to keep somebody topped up rather than to hand over a present, Orbislo Pool is the better shape. One balance covers up to 8 people, the money stays on your account, and you add data to somebody else's phone in another timezone in about ten seconds.
Nothing is installed on their phone and no card details cross a border. A parent uses that monthly, an employer uses it for a rotating field team, and neither has to buy a new code each time. You can also set a cap per person, which a gift card cannot do because a gift card is finished the moment it is redeemed.
What the recipient needs, including the awkward part
They need a phone that supports eSIM. That is most phones made after about 2018 and not all of them, and the list by model is on the device list. Check before you buy rather than after, because the code is easy to give and awkward to explain.
Here is the awkward part, said out loud. They still have to install an eSIM profile. On iOS 17.4 and later that is a tap and a confirmation, and elsewhere it is a short walk through a settings menu, but it is not nothing. And if the phone is locked to a carrier the profile may not install at all. Some operator branded handsets ship with eSIM switched off entirely, the Pixel 4 among them.