Time travel is finally here, sort of – and it takes the form of a credit card from mobile wallet Curve.
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Curve began in 2015 to "cut out the noise and disconnection" in banking. The platform is designed to put your financial services into a hub where you can spend, see, receive and save money in one place.
Once a person’s cards are uploaded to the Curve platform, they are all stored on a single Curve card. When shopping, they can then choose which account they would like to shop with using an app. If they change their mind, for example if they paid using a credit card but meant to pay with a debit card, the time travel tool lets them go back and swap.
CEO Shachar Bialick pitched Curve and its 'time travel' feature to this year's WIRED Money’s startup stage judges on Thursday, May 18. He was announced as the winner later that afternoon after he revealed the company’s latest feature would begin rolling out in the coming weeks.
“We’ve identified that users sometimes don’t have the right card with them or sometimes not the right amount of money in their account so they’re using very expensive cards,” Bialick said. “With Curve, you can basically go back in time.
“You can pay with Curve anywhere you want in the world and you have up to 14 days to go and change the card which was charged, even after you’ve made the purchase.”
The system works on all payment sources from credit cards to debit accounts. Curve takes care of the behind-the-scenes process, but you still have to have funds in your account to go back to the future.
“You cannot make a transaction unless you have funds in the account and therefore if you want to go back in time to another card that means the card has to have the funds,” Bialick said.
“I’ve seen a quite a lot of innovative products and I’ve not seen anything quite like that before,” panel judge EY’s head of fintech, Imran Gulamhuseinwala said.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
