Every travel brand knows the feeling: a customer completes a purchase, the confirmation goes out and then support tickets start coming in. “I never received my QR code.” “I can’t activate my eSIM.” “I’m at the airport and it’s not working.”
For brands delivering digital travel products like eSIMs, the channel you use to reach your customer after checkout may matter just as much as the product itself. This is why we’ve been working with a prospective customer, a global online travel platform offering visas, eSIMs, VIP airport lounges, and travel insurance on a projected impact analysis for their post-purchase eSIM delivery flow. Their current setup uses WhatsApp Business API, but we see RCS Business Messaging as the right opportunity for them.
Here’s what the numbers look like, market by market.
The Setup: A Simple Message with High Stakes
When a customer purchases an eSIM, they receive a QR code via WhatsApp. They scan it, activate their data plan, and they’re connected. In practice, this flow breaks down depending on the market, the device, and the message content.
The stakes are particularly high for eSIM delivery. A customer who has just bought connectivity for an upcoming trip may be trying to activate their eSIM precisely at the moment they have no reliable data connection. If the delivery channel fails at that moment, there is no easy fallback.
RCS Business Messaging addresses each of these failure points directly. It delivers via the native messaging app, renders QR codes and rich content natively, and through iBASIS’s implementation includes automatic SMS fallback for any device that doesn’t yet support RCS or in case there is no internet connection.
Scenario 1: Italy – A Direct Cost Win
Italy is one of the most RCS-ready markets in Europe, with high native penetration across both Android and iPhone devices. For our prospective customer, this makes it the most straightforward case: switching from WhatsApp Utility to RCS Single Message delivers an immediate per-message cost saving with minimal integration effort.
But the financial case goes beyond the per-message rate. RCS renders QR codes natively and supports embedded deep-links directly to carrier settings, which means fewer customers struggle with activation. Based on our market analysis, projected figures for this market look like this:
| KPI | RCS | Change | |
| Messaging cost per eSIM delivered | €0.0248 | €0.0220 | −11% |
| QR code render success rate | 87% | 97% | +11% |
| Customer support contacts post-delivery | 14% of orders | 6% of orders | −57% |
| Projected annual saving (1M eSIMs/year) | — | — | ~€28,000 |
(Figures represent projected impact based on iBASIS market analysis.)
The combination of lower messaging costs and a significant reduction in support contacts means the real saving per eSIM delivered is considerably greater than the per-message delta alone suggests.
Scenario 2: USA & Germany – Reach Is Everything
In several major markets, the WhatsApp model runs into a structural limitation that no amount of optimisation can fix: most customers simply don’t use it.
In the United States, WhatsApp reaches approximately 25% of the population. In Germany, around 35%. For a global eSIM provider, this means that in these markets, the vast majority of customers who purchase an eSIM never receive their QR code, because they don’t have WhatsApp installed.
The consequences are severe: missed activations, frustrated customers, and a flood of support contacts from people who paid for a service they cannot access.
RCS requires no app download or account setup. It works natively on virtually all modern Android and iPhone devices. Combined with iBASIS’s automatic SMS fallback, the result is guaranteed delivery coverage and a dramatically different activation rate.
United States
| KPI | RCS | Change | |
| Effective delivery reach | 25% | 100% | +300% |
| eSIM activation rate (of purchases) | 22% | 91% | +314% |
| Customer support contacts post-purchase | 51% of orders | 8% of orders | −84% |
Germany
| KPI | RCS | Change | |
| Effective delivery reach | 35% | 100% | +186% |
| Effective cost per eSIM successfully delivered | €0.130 | €0.070 | −46% |
| eSIM activation rate (of purchases) | 31% | 89% | +187% |
| Customer support contacts post-purchase | 38% of orders | 9% of orders | −76% |
(Figures represent projected impact based on iBASIS market analysis.)
The Germany cost figure deserves a closer look. Even if the per-message rate were identical on both channels, the effective cost per successfully delivered eSIM on WhatsApp is nearly double that of RCS, simply because so many messages never reach a customer who can act on them. When reach is the problem, reducing per-message rates is the wrong lever.
Scenario 3: Brazil – Eliminating an Invisible Risk
Brazil is a WhatsApp-dominant market, which means it often looks like a safe bet for WhatsApp-based communication flows. But for brands whose products naturally lend themselves to cross-sell, there is a hidden cost trap to be aware of.
WhatsApp automatically classifies message templates as either Utility or Marketing. A pure transactional message like an eSIM QR code qualifies as Utility and is priced accordingly. But the moment a promotional element appears in that message (e.g. a lounge upgrade offer, a travel insurance nudge, a discount on the next purchase), WhatsApp’s automated systems can reclassify the template as Marketing. The cost increase: up to 3-4x, sometimes applied retroactively across active campaigns.
For a business that sells visas, eSIMs, lounges, and travel insurance, four verticals that naturally belong in the same customer journey, this reclassification risk is not theoretical. It is a predictable consequence of building a smart, integrated messaging flow.
RCS has no such classification system. A message is a message, regardless of whether it is transactional, promotional, or both. This eliminates cost unpredictability and opens the door to richer upsell content without the penalty.
| KPI | WhatsApp (reclassified as Marketing) | RCS | Change |
| Cost per message | €0.0518 | €0.0200 | −61% |
| Monthly messaging budget (500K messages) | €25,900 | €10,000 | −€15,900/month |
| Upsell CTR (lounge / insurance offer in message) | 4.2% | 9.8% | +133% |
| Opt-out rate | 4.7% | 1.9% | −60% |
(Figures represent projected impact based on iBASIS market analysis.)
The combination of lower cost, higher click-through on upsell content, and lower opt-out rates creates a compounding advantage that benefits both the messaging budget and the overall customer lifetime value.
What This Means for Your Customer Management
This use case illustrates something that applies well beyond the travel sector: the channel that feels safest or most familiar is not always the one that performs best, especially when you are operating across multiple markets with different app adoption patterns, different pricing dynamics, and different regulatory environments.
For teams managing post-purchase flows, RCS offers three distinct advantages worth evaluating:
- Guaranteed reach. Unlike app-based channels, RCS reaches customers through their native messaging app with no dependency on app installation, account creation, or active data connection. Combined with SMS fallback, delivery is guaranteed.
- Richer delivery experience. QR codes, images, deep-links, and suggested actions render natively, without the compression and formatting inconsistencies that often degrade the WhatsApp experience on certain devices.
- No classification risk. Brands can include transactional and promotional content in the same message flow without triggering reclassification or facing unpredictable cost spikes.
Interested in Running the Numbers for Your Market?
The scenarios above are projections based on iBASIS market analysis and current pricing. Your results will vary depending on your messaging volumes, markets, and current channel setup, but the underlying dynamics are consistent.
If you’d like to model the potential impact for your specific use case, get in touch with the iBASIS team or start with a free 14-day trial to see RCS delivery performance in action.