Fintech startup Curve partners with accounting software Xero to make filing expenses ‘frictionless’

By Steve O’Hear for TechCrunch

Curve, the London fintech startup that lets you consolidate all your bank cards into a single card and track your spending, has partnered with accounting software Xero to remove much of the friction involved in filing expenses. The move is part of the newly-launched ‘Curve Connect’ feature that will see Curve connect to a growing list of third-party apps and services to make managing your money easier.

Specifically, the Xero feature gives you the option to connect the Curve app to Xero so that spending on your Curve card (and therefore any of the underlying cards you’ve linked Curve to) can be automatically added to the accounting software without the need to enter each expense manually.

Receipts you’ve captured via the Curve app are included too, and — coupled with the fact that Curve also controls the entry that appears on your bank statement(s) — expenses can also be reconciled in a more automated fashion.

In a call with Curve founder and CEO Shachar Bialick, he said that the new Xero integration makes filing expenses “frictionless,” which is quite a big deal as data entry and transaction reconciliation is something bookkeepers, accountants and business owners spend far too much time on. He conceded, however, that there are other solutions on the market that are also attempting to solve this problem, such as Accel-backed fintech startup Soldo, but reckons none offer the flexibility of Curve.

That’s because Curve is agnostic regarding the underlying bank account you choose to spend from, which in turn significantly broadens the number of bank accounts that are able to directly feed transaction data into Xero.

Meanwhile, as well as making Curve that bit more useful for sole traders, freelancers and other business owners, the Xero feature should also help the startup with user acquisition. It currently counts over 75,000 sign-ups, with Curve cardholders having spent almost £70 million in over 100 countries, while Xero itself has over a million subscribers, many of whom will find utility in Curve. It may also pan out that accountants themselves encourage clients to use Curve since doing so would make their lives easier, too.