Company: Currensea
Founder: James Lynn
Website: https://www.currensea.com/
About Currensea
With UK travellers wasting a huge £2.7bn in foreign exchange fees every year by using their bank cards abroad, travel debit card Currensea launched in 2021 to provide a simple and cost-effective solution to this issue.
The Currensea card offers travellers savings of up to 100% on overseas spending by removing the normal foreign exchange (FX) fees leveraged by banks and other card providers. Since launch, Currensea has saved travellers over £4 million in FX fees.
Using open banking, the Currensea debit card connects to a users’ existing bank account so there is no need to open a new account.
Currensea’s card also avoids the issues that existing payment solutions all presented – as well as not needing to open a new bank account, users do not need to transfer or top-up funds from other accounts or juggle currencies.
Currensea acts as an additional layer on a user’s bank account so they can spend directly from their existing current account when abroad. This convenient and cost-effective solution allows travellers to avoid paying extortionate fees when spending on their cards abroad or withdrawing cash from an overseas ATM.
Currensea recently announced it had hit 100k cardholders, with the card now used globally every nine seconds as card usage across 2023 doubled compared to the previous year.
In addition to saving money, Currensea users can support the sustainability causes they care about every time they spend. Users can opt to automatically donate some of their savings to environmental projects – this has led to holidaymakers removing 7m plastic bottles from the ocean.
Currensea is also the UK’s first open banking debit card platform – allowing organisations outside of financial services to offer branded debit cards that connect to users’ existing bank accounts. This approach creates a simple solution for organisations looking to broaden their customer engagement.
Through its unique ‘Powered by’ offering, Currensea partners with other organisations empowering them to issue branded cards to their supporters, employees or customers so they can make charity donations every time they spend at home or abroad. This is made possible by Currensea’s open banking approach which simplifies the donation process allowing users to donate directly from their debit account whenever they spend. Current partners include Dogs Trust, Royal Marines Charity, Knight Frank, Royal Society of Medicine and Royal Trinity Hospice.
In Q4 2023, Currensea also launched a new credit-building product, BuildMyCreditScore, which empowers people to build their credit score simply through everyday spending on a debit card without the need to open new credit products or risk building debt – users saw a 52 point increase in their credit scores in the first three months since taking out the credit builder debit card.
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