ANA Holdings is increasing its investment in Japanese travel eSIM company trifa, but the more interesting story is not the funding itself. It is what the decision says about where airlines believe the passenger relationship is heading.

Through the ANA Future Frontier Fund, the airline group is backing a service that lets international travellers buy and manage mobile data in more than 200 countries and regions without collecting a Wi-Fi router or swapping a physical SIM. trifa passed two million downloads by April 2026, while overseas sales now represent roughly 10% of its revenue.

This is also not ANA’s first move. The group initially invested in trifa in October 2024 and has since tested the relationship through ANA Mileage Club redemptions and use of the service by employees travelling abroad. The new investment therefore looks less like experimentation and more like a decision to deepen a partnership that has already produced practical use cases.

The airline app is expanding

Airlines once considered their digital job largely finished when a passenger booked, checked in and received a boarding pass. That model now feels narrow. The modern airline app is gradually becoming a travel control centre covering hotels, transport, payments, insurance, loyalty and, increasingly, connectivity.

ANA says it will support trifa’s international growth using its network of 55 routes across 40 cities. trifa, meanwhile, plans to expand particularly in East Asia and move into adjacent services such as payments and transport booking. That fits neatly with ANA’s wider ambition to improve the journey before, during and after the flight under its “Uniting the World in Wonder” vision.

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Connectivity is especially attractive because it begins producing value as soon as the passenger lands. A connected traveller can receive disruption alerts, access digital boarding information, order ground transport, use maps and engage with loyalty offers. For the airline, the eSIM is not simply another item in the checkout basket. It can become the digital bridge to the destination.

A wider airline trend

ANA is not alone in recognising this. LATAM already promotes eSIM activation alongside flights, hotels and car rentals in its app. AirAsia MOVE offers travel eSIMs and has used free-data promotions to bundle connectivity with eligible passenger purchases. Airalo is also targeting airline distribution through APIs, co-branded services and loyalty integrations.

The difference is ownership and strategic proximity. Many airlines add a third-party eSIM through an affiliate or white-label agreement. ANA has taken an equity position in a domestic provider and is helping shape its international expansion. That gives the airline more potential influence over product development, loyalty integration and the wider travel-service roadmap, although it also creates more exposure if trifa struggles to scale beyond Japan.

The timing is favourable. The GSMA reported in 2026 that 73% of mobile network operators now offer commercial eSIM services, with travel use cases driving much of the growing consumer awareness. The competitive question is shifting from whether travellers will use eSIM to which company will own the most convenient moment of purchase.

Convenience still has limits

The ANA-trifa proposition will suit travellers who value one-app simplicity, mileage integration and pre-departure setup. It may be less compelling for long-stay visitors who need a local phone number, travellers with non-eSIM devices or highly price-sensitive users willing to compare local SIMs and specialist global providers.

There is also room for improvement. Coverage across 200-plus destinations sounds impressive, but travellers increasingly want to know the underlying network, expected 5G availability, data-routing location, hotspot rules and what happens when installation fails. Deeper integration into ANA’s booking flow, automatic destination recognition, one-tap top-ups and visible customer support would feel like a genuine passenger-experience upgrade rather than a branded referral.

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Travellers should still compare trifa with airline-linked options from LATAM and AirAsia MOVE, established travel eSIM marketplaces such as Airalo, Ubigi and Nomad, and local operator plans where voice, SMS or longer validity matters more than instant setup.

Conclusion

ANA’s expanded backing of trifa shows that eSIM is moving out of the telecom niche and into the commercial architecture of travel. Airlines have spent years trying to protect the customer relationship from online travel agencies, payment platforms and super apps. Connectivity offers them another chance to remain useful after the aircraft door opens.

The winners will not necessarily be the airlines with the cheapest data bundle. They will be the ones that integrate connectivity so naturally that it supports disruption management, loyalty, payments and destination services without becoming another confusing add-on. LATAM and AirAsia are already proving that eSIM belongs inside the travel platform. ANA’s investment goes a step further by suggesting that some airlines will want influence over the connectivity layer itself.

That is the real trend behind this deal: eSIM is becoming less visible as a product precisely because it is becoming more important as infrastructure.