Curve, the banking platform that consolidates multiple cards and accounts into one smart card and even smarter app, has vastly expanded its wearables offering by partnering with Garmin, Fitbit and Sony’s Wena pay.
Curve, founded in 2015, describes itself as an ‘Over-The-Top’ banking platform. It is not a bank, but acts as an umbrella for users to control their banking and finances, including paying for services.
These partnerships mean even more customers can leave their wallet at home, whether it’s fitness fans grabbing a snack after a park run or time-savvy travellers on their commute. Users load their cards to the Curve app, and select the account that they would like to pay with via their card, smartphone or smartwatch.
Curve also offers a host of benefits to its customers, including making all users’ cards free when abroad, getting instant notifications and categorisation of spend, earning instant 1% cashback (at the likes of Amazon, Uber, Netflix and Sainsbury’s) and the Go-Back-In-Time feature enables customers to swap spend to a different card in the app for up to two weeks after the purchase was made.
Starting with Google Pay and Samsung Pay in November, for the first time Curve customers were given the freedom and convenience of paying with their mobile phones, and has now further extended its smartwatch range.
“Wearables are fast becoming one of the most convenient ways to pay for things on the go,” said Diego Rivas, Curve’s Head of Product OS. “Bringing Curve’s unique all-your-cards-in-one benefits to three of the biggest players in the wearables space, and enabling their customers to be able to pay with any bank using the Curve platform truly cements Curve as the ultimate way to manage all your finances in one place.”
In July, Curve closed its Series B funding round, valuing the business at a quarter of a billion dollars. Looking to 2020, the company will use the funding it has raised this year, and leverage these new partnerships, to expand across Europe and venture into the US market.
