Lendable Leads Fintech into UK Mobile Market

Earlier this month, Lendable became the first finance brand to launch a mobile service in the UK. The company, which specializes in personal loans, is piggybacking on the Vodafone network and is offering a single £20-a-month unlimited data plan, exclusive to its borrowers.

The move comes ahead of expected mobile service launches in the UK by rivals including Revolut, Klarna and Monzo.

Lendable’s offering is powered by US-based Gigs. Founded in 2020 and backed by Google among others, Gigs positions itself as an all-in-one connectivity platform that acts as an aggregator, enabler and operator, supporting brands launching their own mobile service.

Gigs is also an important player in travel eSIM, enabling connectivity offers for airlines like Chile’s LATAM. CCS Insight’s latest Spotlight report analyses this fast-growing part of the market.

Until recently, the barriers for prospective entrants into the mobile market were far higher. New players faced tough commercial negotiations with network operators and were forced to make significant upfront commitments to achieve competitive rates and fair network access. Engineering teams had to commit major resources to navigate an often complex patchwork of suppliers, and achieving geographic scale was difficult as it meant repeating the process with a different operator in each market.

In a call with CCS Insight, Gigs likened itself to Stripe, the payment processor that launched in 2010 and helped transform online commerce. Gigs plans to remove the complexity of launching and managing a mobile service in a similar way to how Stripe simplified accepting payments.

Gigs enables its partners to offer a mobile service directly through their own app, via an API. Lendable’s app is called Zable and is used by 2 million customers, presenting an attractive, ready-made group to cross-sell the mobile plan into.

The Zable mobile service can be accessed through an eSIM or a physical SIM. Up to 10 GB of international roaming is included each month, although only to European destinations.

Contracts are offered on a rolling monthly basis and there are no annual price rises. Importantly, speeds are not throttled after a certain amount of data has been used up, although there is a fair usage policy. These features seek to mirror the parent brand’s ethos of fairness and transparency, and help Lendable stand out in the competitive mobile market.

The mobile market is proving attractive to the fintech sector as it provides an opportunity to sell another digital product to a captive and tech-savvy audience. This can foster new revenue, greater brand engagement and enhanced loyalty. The financial sector is already adept at cross-selling products such as mortgages, loans, insurance and travel money, and appears poised to do similarly well in mobile.

Gigs is also behind Klarna’s recent launch of a mobile service in the US, part of a partnership with AT&T. Klarna offers a $40-a-month unlimited data plan to its 25 million active US customers.

Elsewhere, Gigs has enabled the launch of mobile services by Nubank in Brazil, Wealthsimple in Canada and Majority in the US. Another digital bank, N26, which has customers in 24 markets in Europe, has broken into the German mobile market using 1Global’s eSIM platform and the Vodafone network.

The push into mobile by neobanks raises questions for the established banking brands: should the likes of HSBC, Barclays and NatWest follow suit? I don’t see why they can’t, but they could find it a harder transition to make; legacy infrastructure and internal bureaucracy means they are less agile and responsive than their younger siblings.

A greater impact could fall on network operators, which are already feeling heat from the resurgence of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). In the year to March 2025, the number of customers on virtual providers in the UK leapt 9% while traditional operators saw a 2% dip. According to our latest forecast, MVNOs now represent more than a fifth of all connections (excluding machine-to-machine), up from 15% four years ago. We expect them to continue taking market share from the principal providers.

In addition to fintech companies, organizations in other sectors are also branching into mobile. They include energy companies, fibre “altnets”, travel firms and sports teams. I’d argue that almost any brand with an audience could now consider offering a mobile service. Last week, at our annual Predictions event, we suggested that a pop star would launch their own mobile service in an effort to boost fan engagement. Other high-profile celebrities, including actors, broadcasters, influencers and sportspeople, could also consider the move.

However, although the MVNO market is performing well, it offers no guarantee of success. New players like Lendable should not underestimate its highly competitive and congested nature, and that building scale and brand association can take a lot of time and investment.

Yet it remains one of the most exciting areas in telecom, and I look forward to watching how new brands seek to make their mark.