Buying a SIM without registration: what is allowed and what changed

You can still buy a SIM card in Britain without a passport and without a contract: a pay-as-you-go card is sold in supermarkets, newsagents and at pharmacy tills. But since 29 October 2026 there is a criminal restriction in this area that almost nobody knows about — and it concerns not a single card but devices that take many.

What exactly became a crime

The Crime and Policing Act 2026 created two new offences: possession and supply of what the law calls SIM farms. The Home Office published its guidance on 27 July 2026, and liability begins on 29 October 2026.

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In law a SIM farm is a device capable of using five or more physical SIM cards simultaneously or interchangeably, for the purpose of making telephone calls to allocated numbers, or sending messages to or receiving messages from them.

The key word is device. Five cards in your pocket are not an offence. This is about equipment built to work with them at scale.

What a mistake costs

In England and Wales the penalty is an unlimited fine; in Scotland and Northern Ireland a fine of up to £5,000. On summary conviction the court imposes a financial penalty.

The Act contains an express defence: where a person can show they had a good reason or lawful authority, possession or supply is not an offence. The context of use has to be taken into account.

The Home Office specifically notes that legitimate activity should not be caught. Bonded-IP video encoders used in broadcasting, for instance, may hold more than five cards but are not SIM farms, because they are designed neither to make calls nor to send SMS.

Why it was done

SIM farms are the main instrument of mass scam messaging. Some of these devices hold hundreds of physical cards and send out thousands of texts. Britain became the first country in Europe to ban their possession and supply.

The figures the government used to justify it: fraud rose 19% in a year and accounts for more than 40% of all reported crime in England and Wales. Two-thirds of British adults — over 35 million people — have received a suspicious message on their phone. Vodafone alone blocked more than 38.5 million suspected scam messages in a year.

What it means in practice

If you are simply buying a card for yourself, nothing changes. Pay-as-you-go SIMs are still sold with no documents and no check.

Two situations call for care. The first: someone asks you to hold or resell equipment with several SIM slots — that is precisely the zone the new law covers. The second: you run a small business and use multi-slot modems to message customers. Be ready to explain what the device is for — the good reason defence exists, but the burden of showing it falls on you.

And a general point about finding the "honest" operator: check the terms, not the advertising. Look at what is written about mid-contract price rises and at how long credit lasts on a pay-as-you-go card. That, rather than the headline tariff, is usually where operators differ.