6. Curve

Company: Curve

Founder: Shachar Bialick

Website: curve.com

About: Curve is an Over-The-Top (OTT) Banking Platform that lets you combine multiple cards and accounts into one smartcard (Curve card)

 

About Curve

Curve is one of the fast-growing and innovative fintech companies of our generation. Founded by ex-Israeli special forces member, Shachar Bialick, the Curve app allows you to combine multiple cards and accounts in one smart card and enjoy perks such as no fees when spending abroad, real-time transaction notifications, double rewards and the ability to “time travel” and switch the card they paid with.

Curve’s  platform is currently available in 31 European countries including the UK, with plans to expand to the US in 2020.

Curve secured seed funding of $2 million in December 2015 from the leading names in Fintech in Europe such as Taavet Hinrikus (founder of Transferwise) Ricky Knox and Michael Kent (founders of Azimo and Tandem Bank), Ed Wray founder of Betfair and several members of the Google Wallet team.

Curve has raised $75,000,000 in funding over three rounds. Curve’s latest funding was mid-2019, in a Series B and subsequent Crowdfunding – raising $55,000,000 at a valuation of over $250,000,000. New investors who invested in this round included Gauss Ventures, IDC Ventures and Creditease, alongside existing investors who followed such as Santander Innoventures, Seedcamp, Speedinvest and Investec.

On 4 September 2019, Curve’s crowdfunding campaign broke records after initially smashing its £1M target in under five minutes setting a new record, and closing out the record breaking round at just under £6M and 5 hours – becoming the fastest UK startup in history to raise on Crowdcube crowdfunding platform.

Since November 2019 Curve has launched integrations with Samsung Pay and Google Pay (G Pay), Garmin, Fitbit and Sony’s Wena.

In January 2020, Curve launched on Apple Pay, allowing Curve customers throughout the 31 European Economic Area countries to add their Curve card to their iPhone, tablet or Apple watch and pay using any card connected to the Curve app, even if they are not supported by Apple Pay.

curve-cards
Curve combines all your cards in one.

Curve provides three different tiers of services to their customers, each with its matching card – Metal, Black, and Blue. Curve’s subscription-free Blue card has most of Curve’s core features however limited in use, such as lower limits on fee-free spend abroad and foreign ATM withdrawals and offers cashback at 3 retailers for 90 days.

Curve offers customers an instant 1% “Curve Cash” cashback on top of any Cashback their underlying cards provide. The Curve Cashback is offered at over 100 brands including Amazon, Uber, Netflix, Spotify, TFL, and Sainsbury. Curve also offers a holistic Customer Protection, a benefit that covers all credit and debit card payments of up to £100,000 made through Curve card, globally.