Fintech startup Curve has just announced a $55 million funding round from a group of investors as part of a successful Series B funding round. This brings the startup’s valuation to a quarter of a billion dollars.
Curve’s growth has been pretty impressive over the years. In 2016, it raised $2m in a seed funding round to get its product out to the market. In 2017, the fintech raised $10m in a Series A round to boost its growth, build new features and recruit more staff.
The Series B will mark the beginning of a new era in banking – an Over-The-Top Banking Platform that provides a better banking experience, and places Curve in the top five UK consumer fintechs next to Transferwise, Monzo, Revolut and Starling.
The round is being led by Gauss Ventures, a fintech investor whose team has a track record of funding some of the brightest UK fintechs, as well as backing high impact technologies that reshape industries, and comes less than two years after Curve secured its Series A investment.
The Series B round also welcomes other prominent investors such as Creditease, IDC Ventures and further participation from Outward VC (previously Investec’s INVC fund), which has historically backed other fintech category leaders Monese and Bud.
Shachar Bialick, founder and CEO of Curve said, “While the challenger and traditional banks are busy fighting to win or retain new customers, Curve is building an Over-The-Top Banking Platform that provides customers with a better banking experience with no need to change their bank.
“Curve is playing a completely different ball game, it is not a challenger bank which means that we can focus on creating a radically better customer experience, without asking customers to trust their salaries with us, or the significant overhead of becoming a regulated bank. Receiving this level of investment from such prominent investors is a fantastic endorsement of the value and experience Curve brings to its customers.”
Curve is available in 31 European countries and plans to use the fresh funding to expand its product offering in the UK, Europe and overseas. It will officially launch into six European markets later this year: France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain, and aims to launch its operations in the US by mid next year.
“The success of Curve, demonstrated by its outstanding growth, is a clear testament to the opportunity in rebundling of financial products and services” said Daniel Gusev, founding partner of Gauss Ventures.
“The strength in Curve over the challenger banks is its product strategy which avoids competing directly with the banks by building an over the top banking platform” he added.