Curve, the so-called “over-the-top” banking platform that lets you consolidate all of your bank cards into a single Curve card and app, is launching a new feature to make it possible to send money to friends and contacts.
Dubbed “Curve Send,” the feature lets you send money from any of your bank accounts (via the debit cards you have linked to Curve) to any other account in more than 25 currencies. It does this by utilising the APIs of Visa and Mastercard, essentially turning the card networks into a single money transfer network via Curve as the intermediary.
“Curve Send instantly solves people’s problem of financial fragmentation by consolidating all their cards into one, eliminating the lengthy money transfer process experienced by most customers when they want to send money to their friends or peers using multiple bank accounts or multiple currencies,” says the London-based fintech.
To transfer money via Curve Send, you simply open the Curve app, choose a contact and amount and then select which of your linked bank cards you want to send the money from. The recipient will then get notified and be asked to take a photo of their bank card, and Curve will send the money directly to their bank via the card network.
Curve says it doesn’t charge fees for sending or receiving payments via Curve Send. It will also handle FX, too, at a claimed “mid-market” rate with no fees (capped at £500 per month for Curve users on its free plan, and unlimited for Curve Black and Curve Metal).
In a brief email exchange with Curve founder and CEO Shachar Bialick, he said that “Curve is basically operating like an exchange” in that it brings Visa and Mastercard together, with Curve powering communication between the two card networks for peer-to-peer payments. “We’ve done tests for the past two months and people love it,” he says.
Adds Diego Rivas, Curve’s head of OS Product, in a statement: “Customers want to send money to their friends and family with just a few touches. But with so many different options and the rise of challenger banks, the process is unnecessarily complicated and customers end up having 3-4 apps just to send money. We wanted to make this whole process ten times easier for our customers. Now they have one simple, smart platform which can move money from any account to any account, securely and fee free.”
