Curve Strengthens Protection Levels for their Payment Cards

FACTS

• The British FinTech Curve –behind a BtoC and BtoB card aggregation service– makes further foray into the insurance sector.

• Their new offer, called Customer Protection, is meant to speed up compensation processes for card payments. Claims are refunded within 1 working day.
• Based on Mastercard’s programme, they also increased by 100 the amount of covered card transactions: from £1,000 to £100,000.
• This protection is available for all Curve cards (Blue, Metal or Black) and for all users (i.e.: it is not exclusively intended for their British customers).
• Curve’s protection service applies to goods and services, enabling customers to have online purchases refunded if the items are delivered damaged, if they don’t meet expectations, or if they simply don’t get delivered at all. Also, this protection makes up for services that may not otherwise be refunded.

Key Figures

• Claims through Curve’s protection service are supposed to be refunded within 24h (after validation)
• 400,000 customers (vs 300,000 end-2018); +40% each month since February 2018
• 10.5M transactions in 2018, over £340M

CHALLENGES

• Making up for a legal void. Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act covers credit card-based purchases in the UK but is not applicable for Curve card users. The start-up now improves their protection to make up for a legal void inherent to their model, so as not to adversely affect their users.
• Justifying their European reach. As this protection also applies to non-British users, Curve their entire customer base, beyond their home market. A way for them to strengthen an already international targeting strategy.

MARKET PERSPECTIVE

• In February, Curve also celebrated an anniversary: their service was launched in 27 European countries a year ago.
• Curve pays further attention to diversifying their range of features and on securing their business model. They also just introduced a Metal version of their card. Among other features, this card comes with a cashback option and an insurance service applied to purchases made abroad. Its monthly cost has been set up to £15.
• As regards to card acceptance, their conflict with American Express remains unresolved. This network still blocks their cardholders’ transactions when they rely on Curve.
• In the end of 2018, Curve claimed they were preparing a Series B funding round. This round table is not yet closed. Their latest funding round dates back from July 2017 ($10M).