London fintech startup Curve brings mobile wallet and all-your-cards-in-one app to Android

By Steve O’Hear for TechCrunch

After launching on iOS, all the way back in February, London fintech startup Curve has finally brought its wares to Android.

The mobile wallet lets you sync your debit and credit cards into a single app and to the accompanying Curve card powered by MasterCard. You then simply select which card you want the Curve card to act as a conduit for any payments you make offline or online, meaning you only need to carry a single physical card with you.

Other Curve app features include the ability to see and tag all of your transactions in one place in real-time (regardless of which card they originate from), search through and export your spend history across all of your cards, lock or unlock your Curve card at any time, and access significantly lower foreign exchange when spending abroad.

Perhaps most notable, however, is that, along with finally becoming available on Android, Curve has quietly put in place a feature it’s calling ‘Labs’ that will see the app begin to connect to other fintech or digital financial services — thus providing the makings of the fintech convergence strategy Curve’s roadmap has always been built on.

Here’s how I explained it when Curve launched on iOS:

The company’s founders are betting on the premise that whenever there’s disruption — in this case, following technological and regulatory changes, a plethora of new fintech companies are unbundling various parts of the banking sector — this inevitably leads to fragmentation. What then eventually follows is convergence.

I’m going to guess that Curve Labs will see the Curve app optionally connect to fintech services like TransferWise for sending money abroad (TranferWise founder Taavet Hinrikus is an investor in Curve, after all), Nutmeg for investing, or various card-linked cash-back or loyalty programs. Watch this space.

Meanwhile, the Curve iOS app is getting an update next week, adding ‘Email Receipts’. The idea is that when you pay with Curve, you can receive a breakdown of your transaction to your email inbox, and can add a receipt image to that email from within the Curve app. That way it’s easy to get expenditure to your company’s finance person or your accountant/book keeper.

I also understand that Curve is closing in on a Series A round of around $8 million, though it’s not quite a done deal yet. As ever, you heard it here first.

First appeared at TC