London-based Curve, an “over the top” banking service that consolidates all bank-issued cards into a single smart card and app, has integrated Samsung Pay for UK-based clients, according to a company release.
Adding support for the new payment system makes it easier for Samsung smartphone users to make digital payments from their phones.
“To be able to offer Curve’s unique all-your-cards-in-one benefits to customers of one of the world’s biggest brands is a fantastic opportunity to cement Curve as the ultimate way to manage all your finances,” commented Diego Rivas, Curve’s Head of Product – OS. “It’s fantastic that Samsung customers will be able to take advantage of all the features of Curve, and we are happy to invite customers of more banks to the Samsung platform.”
The new feature will complement Fintech’s existing platform, which consolidates users’ bank cards into a single Curve card. After registering their Curve card with the Samsung Pay app, users can connect any of their other Mastercard and Visa debit or credit cards.
This feature could be quite useful for Samsung mobile phone users because Samsung Pay is not supported by many banks that choose to add NFC-enabled payments into their own banking software.
Third-party application developers can access the NFC technology in Samsung and other Android smartphones. This gives less incentive to financial institutions to add support for competing NFC-enabled apps, such as online wallets including Samsung Pay and Google Pay. Of course, one may expect that Apple Pay, the most popular mobile payment service, will be added at some point in time.
The integration of Samsung Pay has come after Curve raised $55 million through a series B funding round in June this year. The firm is now valued at around $250 million. Curve’s management noted (at the time of the raise) that it was planning to use the investment to develop more features for its platform and to expand its operations throughout Europe.
Earlier this year, Curve ran a highly successful crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube raising over £5 million backed by more than 9000 investors – in less than one day.
Curve’s main strategy involves turning users’ smartphones into a financial control and management center that brings together different financial products into a single app to help users keep track of their finances.
Instead of creating a new current account, which challenger banks such as Revolut and Monzo are doing, Curve simply uses a company card and an app that allows its customers to connect all of their payment cards so they only need to carry one card.
With the addition of Samsung Pay, NFC-enabled transactions can be performed using Samsung smartphones.
