UK Payments Startup Curve Hits $5M Investment

Built on the MasterCard ® network, Curve simplifies people’s financial lives with an “all your cards in one” card and platform that will ultimately become your one-stop shop for all your financial needs

Curve - the London-based payments startup launched in February and making waves across the finance industry - has announced a further tranche of fundraising taking total investment to $5M. This puts the company on a trajectory for a sizeable Series A round by the end of December ahead of the planned release of its much anticipated consumer card early next year.

Built on the MasterCard ® network, Curve simplifies people’s financial lives with an "all your cards in one” card and platform that will ultimately become your one-stop shop for all your financial needs.

New investors include Connect Ventures (investors in Citymapper and Typeform), Paul Townsend (Envoy) and the Samos Bros (Kabbee and betfair), joining an already impressive set of backers including Taavet Hinrikus (CEO TransferWise), Ricky Knox (CEO Azimo), Ed Wray (co-founder of betfair), Seedcamp, Speedinvest and the Google Wallet founding team.

Bill Earner, partner at Connect Ventures stated: “Despite Brexit, London Fintech continues to explode with numerous exciting prospects but we’ve not seen any other startups taking Curve’s approach of becoming your wallet. We love the fact that this isn’t just one more account or app the user needs to think about - it’s the only app they need. They are innovating within the fin-tech space, while enabling users to enjoy the future today thanks to their unique Curve card.“

Serial co-founders, Shachar Bialick (SmartJOB, SmartEQ) and Tom Foster-Carter (Osper), now have their sights firmly set on a large Series A later this year. CEO, Shachar Bialick, had this to say: “Curve is exactly on-track in executing the vision we had almost two years ago, to consolidate a fragmented financial world into a single platform. We’re already receiving fantastic user feedback and unparalleled business results in terms of retention, engagement and revenues.”

We’ve started conversations with leading VCs on securing growth capital to push into the consumer space, and further develop the platform.”

CURVE’S JOURNEY TO DATE

Curve, a MasterCard card launched in Beta in February 2016 targeting small business owners including sole traders, freelancers and the self-employed. Despite being in Beta, the product is already demonstrating exceptional user metrics with quarterly retention of over 80% and 75% of active users using the product every week. In just a few months it has processed over £15m of spend across more than 80 currencies.

Later this year, Curve will release an Android version of its app and early next year will launch its much awaited consumer card for which there is already a large waiting list. Additional financing options, money management tools and loyalty features will help cement the product as a platform that goes beyond connecting existing cards, making it easier to keep on top of all aspects of your finances - bringing the benefits of new consumer technology in finance to a wider market, without needing to switch bank.

ABOUT CURVE

Curve allows you to store your existing debit and credit cards within its mobile app and spend from them using just your Curve card. As well as convenience, Curve saves you money and gives you more control over your finances. When you travel abroad, Curve offers you a super-low FX rate of wholesale plus 1 % making it much cheaper than typical high street bank FX rates. Users will soon be able to benefit from Curve reward points for additional savings on top of continuing to earn their original card loyalty points. Furthermore Curve provides more control with features such as a consolidated view across all your accounts, real-time notifications and spend that can be categorised, searched, filtered and downloaded. Unlike mobile payments, Curve is accepted everywhere MasterCard® works, with Chip and Pin, magstripe and contactless technology. Curve is free to use, with an initial one off cost of £35 for Curve Blue, £75 for Curve Black and is available in the UK and soon the European Economic Area.

Find out more at www.imaginecurve.com.

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