Traditional SIM activation involves a retail store, a government ID, a form, a wait, and a plastic card in the mail. We wanted to do it differently.

Here's what actually happens when you activate a GeSIM plan.

The handshake

When you tap "Get Plan" and confirm the USDC payment, three things happen simultaneously:

  1. Payment confirmation — your wallet signs the transaction. The GeSIM smart contract verifies it.
  2. Plan record created — an anonymous plan record is written: data allocation, region, expiry. No name, no ID, no billing address.
  3. eSIM profile generated — our MVNO layer requests an eSIM profile from the carrier using a temporary reference ID. The carrier sees a business-to-business activation request, not a consumer KYC event.

The profile hits your device within forty seconds on average.

Why no KYC is technically possible

Consumer SIM activations require identity because regulators mandate it for retail distribution. Business MVNO agreements operate under different rules — the MVNO (GeSIM) is the regulated entity, and it activates profiles on behalf of end users through a B2B carrier API.

This isn't a loophole. It's the same model every prepaid MVNO uses. The difference is that we've built the anonymous payment layer on top — so the MVNO has no identity to collect in the first place.

What the carrier knows

The carrier sees a profile activation from GeSIM's MVNO account. They know a plan was activated. They don't know by whom, because we don't know by whom.

Your USDC transaction is on-chain and pseudonymous. GeSIM never takes custody of your identity.

The fallback path

Occasionally, profile delivery takes longer — typically due to carrier-side congestion on the LPA (Local Profile Assistant) layer. When this happens, the app retries automatically. If delivery exceeds five minutes, the app shows a manual install code as a fallback.

This has happened to fewer than 0.3% of activations in our current cohort.