How to give employees eSIMs: the rollout, the four decisions, and what breaks

You do not hand an eSIM to an employee. You pay for one they install themselves. The employee buys in the Wigoo app on their own phone, the eSIM belongs to them, and the bill goes to the company. One eSIM installs on one phone, so there is nothing central to push and nothing to collect back afterwards.

That one sentence decides the whole rollout, and it is why this guide is organised around what a manager sets up front rather than around a provisioning console. What follows is the practical version: who does what, the four decisions that have to be made before the first trip, and the three things that go wrong often enough to plan for. Everything here describes our company account as it works on 30 September 2026, including the parts that are not built yet.

Who buys, who installs, who the eSIM belongs to

The last row is the point of the whole thing. On a company account the payer and the user are different people, so the purchase is company spend from the moment the employee taps the button. "Paid by Acme" appears as the first payment method in the app, and a "Work travel" page in the profile shows the employee what the company has set.

If what you actually need is a company phone number that survives the employee leaving, this is the wrong product and we say so at length in business eSIM explained. Our plans are data only: no number, no calls, no SMS.

The four decisions a manager has to make

The server checks these at every purchase, so they are not guidance in a policy document. They are the reason a button works or does not.

1. The monthly cap per person. A ceiling on what one employee can spend in a month on the company. Set it against the travel pattern of the person rather than an average of the team, because the average is made of people who travel twice a year and people who travel twice a month. The owner gets an email at ninety per cent of a cap and again if someone tries to exceed it, so a cap set slightly low is a mild annoyance rather than a stranded traveller.

2. The cap per purchase. A separate ceiling on any single plan, which is what stops a one week trip being booked as a three month plan by mistake. There is also a rule for the largest plan in GB, for the same reason from the other direction. Sizing these honestly means knowing what a working day abroad actually consumes, and video calls plus a tethered laptop are the whole story: how much data a work trip needs has the per hour figures.

3. Which destinations the company pays for. An allowed list. Companies usually build it from the countries they actually send people to, then discover the exceptions at the worst moment, which is the third failure mode below.

4. Whether top ups are covered. If they are not, the employee who runs out mid trip pays to continue, with their own card. If they are, the cap per purchase still applies to each top up. Decide this before the first trip rather than in the middle of one.

For what any of it costs, including the caps, talk to us at partners. There are no numbers in this guide on purpose.

Setting up an employee, once

The employee signs in with their work email and a six digit code. That works one of two ways: a verified company domain, which is a TXT record on your DNS, or an address on a list we hold for you. The domain is less work if you have more than a handful of travellers.

Verification lasts ninety days, and it is renewed from the app in the last fourteen. The employee gets an email a week before it expires. It is worth mentioning during onboarding, because an expired verification is the one thing on this list that is entirely silent until someone tries to buy.

Before the flight, and on landing

Two instructions cover almost everything.

• Install before leaving, on wifi. Buying at the gate works, but installing a profile is the step that wants a connection you can rely on.
• Leave their own line in the phone, with data roaming off. That line keeps the work number and the SMS codes arriving, while the travel eSIM carries data. The single switch matters: with data roaming on, the old line quietly spends in the background, which is the first of the five causes in roaming bill shock on a work trip.

When someone lands and it does not work, the failure is almost always the phone's own settings rather than the plan, and it is fixable from the seat. Our step by step for that is eSIM installed but no service. For who they call: technical faults come to us at support, because we are the ones who can see the eSIM. Anything about money, a cap or a destination goes to the account owner, because those are your settings and we cannot change them for you. Say both names in the travel briefing, or the employee will spend the first hour of the trip asking the wrong one.

The three failure modes worth planning for

They are not exotic. Each one has a cheap answer in advance and an expensive one in an airport.

1. The phone cannot hold another profile. This is a company issued handset roughly every time. Four different things cause it: a supervised iPhone with the eSIM restriction applied, a handset still locked to the carrier that sold it, an Android or Knox policy on a company owned device, or a phone with no free slot left. Only the last one is something the employee can fix alone, and carrier unlocking is the slowest, which is why this question belongs a week before the trip and not the night before. The vendor documentation, the exact setting names and the five questions to send IT are in can I add an eSIM to my work phone.

The planning version: ask about it once, per handset, before the first trip. A personal phone almost never has this problem, and on a company account the employee's own phone is a perfectly normal place for the eSIM to live.

2. Someone forgets and buys with their own card. It happens, usually to the person who travelled a lot before the account existed. The purchase is theirs, on their card, and it does not become company spend afterwards. There is no retroactive conversion.

So plan for it as an expense claim like any other, and treat it as a signal rather than a mistake: people buy with their own card when they did not know the company method existed, when their verification had quietly expired, or when the rules refused the purchase and they did not read why. All three are fixable, and none of them is fixable if nobody mentions it.

3. The trip is to a destination outside the allowed list. The refusal is not silent. The app shows the reason before the button, not after a failed payment, and the employee can still buy the plan with their own card. That is the honest design: we stop the company paying for something it did not approve, we do not stop a person getting online in a country they are standing in.

What the manager should decide in advance is who can widen the list and how fast, because the request will arrive on a Friday evening. A destination added before departure costs the same as one added in a panic, and only one of the two versions involves an expense claim.

What lands in the inbox, and what does not

The owner gets an email when a new employee joins the account, when someone reaches ninety per cent of their cap or tries to exceed it, and when a purchase failed because the balance was empty. That last one is the email to act on within the hour, because an empty balance refuses everyone at once. The employee gets an email when their own cap is nearly used, and one a week before their verification expires.

What the company sees in the account is spend, destinations and who. It does not see data consumption, and it never sees browsing, location or message content. That line is drawn deliberately and it is worth being able to explain it to the person whose phone it is: what the company sees, and what it does not is the version to forward to a sceptical employee.

What is honestly missing

Two things, said now rather than halfway through a rollout. There are no invoices yet: the account runs on a prepaid balance, and expenses come out as a CSV. And a company account is opened by us, not by signing up, so it starts with a conversation and not with a form.

It also does not replace a mobile fleet contract with numbers and voice on it. It sits next to one, or it replaces the roaming part of it.

Sources: this describes the Wigoo company account as it behaves on 30 September 2026, including the rules the server checks at each purchase and the emails it sends. Features and limits change, so treat dated statements here as the state on that day. The claims about phones that cannot accept another eSIM profile come from Apple, Microsoft, Google and Samsung documentation, quoted with their dates in our guide on company managed phones rather than repeated here. Checked 30 September 2026.

Quick answers

How do I give my employees eSIMs?

You pay, they install. On a company account the employee buys in the Wigoo app on their own phone and the bill goes to the company, so there is no central console pushing profiles and nothing to collect back when the trip ends. Before the first purchase you set a monthly cap per person, a cap per purchase, the destinations the company pays for and whether top ups are covered, and the server checks those at every purchase.

Can a company buy one eSIM for several employees?

No. One eSIM installs on one phone, and that is a property of eSIMs rather than of our account. What a company account changes is who pays, not how many devices a profile can serve. For a team of five travelling to the same country, that means five purchases on one company balance, each one visible in the account with the destination and the person.

What happens if an employee's purchase is outside the company rules?

The app shows the reason before the button rather than failing at payment, and the employee can still buy the same plan with their own card. The account owner gets an email when someone reaches ninety per cent of their cap or tries to exceed it, so the refusal is visible on both sides. Widening a cap or adding a destination is a change the owner makes, not something we can do from our end.