Last year, German fintech Wirecard grabbed headlines for some time after filing for insolvency following a fraud scandal. At the time, a number of fintech firms collaborating with the fallen giant found themselves in hot water as the FCA immediately froze consumer accounts linked with Wirecard, throwing their future into question. One of these companies, Curve, however, acted with remarkable agility to maintain its reputation, and today the company is flourishing.
While other companies who were working with Wirecard such as Pocket, Soldo, and ANNA Money, were thrown in the dark with their reputation mired, Curve was back on its feet in no more than 60 hours. The company, which aggregates spending cards onto one Curve card, instantly brought all card and e-money issuing services in house from Mastercard. It acted fast to catalyze an already planned migration to ensure its clients would still be serviced. The recovery effort was executed successfully in a few hours, rather than the intended months. As such, the company’s clientele barely faced a setback in service from the FCA’s freeze.
Curve also quickly transitioned payment processing to Checkout.com at a record pace to immediately sever ties from the disgraced Wirecard. Today, Checkout.com is Europe’s top privately held tech company having secured a $1.5 billion valuation as of January. Under the new arrangements, Curve’s customer transactions were being processed Checkout.com instead. Although the speed of transition may raise eyebrows, Matthieu Barral, SVP of Sales at Checkout.com ensured that “no corners were cut” and that “we followed the same implementation process that we do for every client; we just attributed the correct resources to make sure it happened in the timeframe needed.”
A success factor in the transition and continued growth of Curve is Checkout.com's API-first development methodology that their platform is built on. Customers were able to easily plug-in to Checkout.com, streamlining a potentially cumbersome reconfiguring process. Checkout.com's reputation as a trustworthy payments processor has benefited Curve in quantifiable measures. The new partnership resulted in a 95% payment approval rate for Curve, an uplift of 10% to what was achieved with Wirecard. Checkout.com's superior disputes team has also enabled success in chargeback and fraud rates, running at less than 0.04%.
While the toppling of Wirecard caused ill-fortune to its partners at the time, Curve’s speed in replacing its payments processor, as well as its strategic decision in choosing Checkout.com enabled a successful recovery.
