Case study
Travelsim Asia
We rebuilt their eSIM backend by removing instead of adding
The brief
Travelsim Asia is a travel eSIM product. The brief wasn't "build us something new." It was more like: this works, but it's clunkier than it needs to be. Travelers are busy, stressed, arriving at airports — make it faster.
The actual problem
Anyone who's traveled knows the friction: airport SIM queues, roaming bills, or installing an app you'll use for two weeks and never open again. The apps especially always felt like overkill — account creation, onboarding, notifications you don't want. For a product someone uses for a single trip, that's a lot of overhead.
The decision that shaped everything
We removed user accounts entirely. No logins, no passwords, no "sign in to continue." After purchase, you get a secure access link in your inbox. That link is your interface — check usage, manage your plan, top up if needed. Everything lives there.
It sounds almost too simple, but that was the point. Email is infrastructure travelers already have. Their inbox travels with them. We don't need to compete with it.
The full flow ended up being: buy online → instant delivery → tap to install → connected. That's it. Nothing to download, nothing to set up, nothing to remember.
What we removed
- User accounts and login flows
- Password resets and session management
- App download requirement
- Onboarding screens and setup wizards
- Push notifications and in-app messaging
What this reinforced
Most software is overbuilt. Not because developers are careless, but because adding features feels productive and removing them feels risky. The instinct when something is broken is to patch it with another layer — another screen, another step, another confirmation.
But friction kills conversion. Especially for something as immediate as travel internet. If someone's landing in Bangkok and just needs to get online, every extra tap is a reason to give up.
Simplicity is also easier to maintain. By cutting the account system, we cut a whole surface area — password resets, session management, the login flow, all of it. Less to break, less to support, less to iterate around.