Neo-bank CEO Shachar Bialick is an 'over-the-top' fanatic

Shachar Bialick founded the digital banking platform Curve in 2015. But the idea behind it had been gestating in his mind since 2006.

And not in the back of his mind, either; Bialick pitched the idea to the woman who would later become his wife on their first date in 2011.

“Before I start a business, I begin with an executive summary and in the end there’s a decision of go or no-go,” he said during a recent video call. Curve was a no-go back in 2006 because Bialick was convinced that either Facebook or PayPal would do it. They did not.

By 2015, with regulatory tailwinds blowing in the form of the European Union's Second Payment Services Directive (PSDII), Bialick finally decided it was time to take the plunge.

What he envisaged was a neo-banking platform that people can use to access all their money in one place, but with what Bialick calls both “read and write” access — meaning they can make payments and move money between accounts too.

Today, Curve’s marketeers bill the product as “one card to rule them all”: a single card and app for managing multiple bank accounts. The app has also been described as an “over the top” banking platform. 

Few people believed such a product was feasible five years ago. Experts told Bialick the plan was impossible commercially, technically, and because existing payments networks like Mastercard and Visa would never allow it.

“The problem with experts is they’re biased by their own experiences and this bias does not allow them to look forward,” he says. “The benefit of not coming from this space is you’re an optimist. You underestimate the size of the problem, and that optimism and a bit of good grit allow you to build great stuff.”

Curve now has more than two million customers and is available in 31 countries across the UK and Europe. But there is plenty of uncharted territory ahead. 

Ahead of the Curve?

Back in 2016, when Curve first opened to customers, most fintech startups had an entirely different focus. 

At that time, it was trendy for fintech startups to promise the “unbundling” of banks. The idea was to pick off services like lending and payments and refine them in isolation.

Bialik’s vision for Curve was grander. And he convinced a group of notable fintech angel investors — including the likes of TransferWise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus, Tandem Bank co-founder Ricky Knox and Betfair co-founder Ed Wray — to place a bet on it.

Five years later, fintech firms are now obsessed with the “rebundling” of such services — and Curve, by design, is very much at the forefront of this trend. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the business is fresh off a $95 million Series C fundraise led by IDC Ventures.

“Each company from a different tech vertical is trying to get into this super-app position that Curve was always sitting on,” says Bialick. But he believes rival neo-banks are poorly placed to take advantage of the rebundling trend, likening their efforts to trying to win a Formula 1 race with a Ford.

Bialick focuses on lending to illustrate this point. Curve is currently in the process of beta testing a credit marketplace to offer customers loans through the app — a marketplace it hopes to fully launch in the next few months.

The firm set up a subsidiary called Curve Credit, through which it can lend out its own money. But the long-term vision is to allow customers to choose between Curve and a range of other potential lenders that will be connected to the marketplace.

“I’m talking about Barclays, Zopa — other lenders that this is what they do for a business, for a living — but Curve becomes the channel for that,” Bialick says. “But if you’re a bank, it means you have a balance sheet, which you have to lend – which means you always have to compete with the marketplace. And that means that you can’t build a marketplace.”

Marketplaces, he stresses, are at the heart of the super-app concept.

Ruffled feathers

No matter how convincing the theory may be, in practice, not everyone has been a fan.

Perhaps inevitably, Curve has upset some of the incumbents whose cards it wants to sit upon. American Express caused a stir in early 2019 when it blocked Curve from aggregating its cards. Curve vowed to fight back, calling the decision “anti-competitive” — and the fight goes on to this day.

“We’re still in discussion with them. We still want to bring them back,” says Bialick. “It’s a great company in terms of brand and offering to customers, but it’s also a very tried and tested company. I just learned two weeks ago that it took them 17-plus years to join PayPal. Only in 2017, Amex joined PayPal as a funding source. We’re hoping we’ll be much faster.”

Curve has also drawn unwanted media attention at times. In 2019, Business Insider reported that only 14% of its customers were active users of the product — meaning they used the app at least once a month. This issue still seems to irk Bialick.

He says the term Monthly Active Users is interpreted differently by different digital banks, making it an impossible metric to share.

Instead, Curve has shared data on retention rates across the platform which suggest that, in its least sticky cohort, half its customers are still using the app 12 months after signing up. For Curve’s premium product, which offers various perks primarily focused on traveling abroad, the retention rate is around 70%.

“I’m very happy with those retention metrics, it’s probably the best in the space you’re going to find,” he says.

The sharp-eyed will have noted that a premium product built for overseas travelers may not be offering a great deal of value in the current climate. Bialick says Curve is “refreshing the premium proposition” in light of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Profitability is another subject he appears to find somewhat wearisome. Curve recorded a loss of £26.5 million for the 14 months ending December 31, 2019 — roughly triple the £6.1 million it lost in the previous 12-month period. 

But profit is not what journalists should focus on, in Bialick’s view. True to his roots as a serial tech entrepreneur, he sees “unit economics” as the more relevant metric.

“Are you operating on a positive growth margin as a business? The answer for Curve is yes,” Bialick says.  

Curve’s goal, he explains, is “to move to sustainability” by growing its customer base and increasing its growth margin with new revenue channels such that the business can cover its own costs. “That’s what Curve is aiming to become in the next year and a half: sustainable by itself."

Expansion plans

Of course, it was never going to be straightforward to disrupt the market in the way Bialick set out to do. One thing he certainly hasn’t lost in the more than six years he’s been at Curve is his conviction that his “over-to-top” model will emerge victorious. And banking isn’t the only market he wants to come out on top of.

With so many neo-banks and neo-brokers planning new crypto products in the wake of a surge in the price of bitcoin, it only seemed right to ask whether Curve had designs of its own.

“The entire position of Curve is over the top and bringing the ecosystem to you in your palm,” says Bialick. “So the goal is to allow you to connect or sign up to different crypto wallets like Coinbase or Bitpanda and allow the customer to buy, sell and spend crypto from Curve.”

There is no launch date for that product yet, but Curve has hired someone — Bialick would not say who — to lead the effort. I ask whether I could track the person down on LinkedIn.

“You might,” he grins. “We have a special title for him especially because of that.” 

Bialick also reckons Curve’s model is primed for success in the US — a major battleground for most of the UK and Europe’s marquee fintech firms (including Revolut, TransferWise, Monzo and N26).

The company set up its US office and team — which is led by Gauss Ventures advisor Amanda Orson — in February 2020. It plans to formally launch its US service in June.

“We’re going to the affluent retail customers in the US with a message: ‘All your cards in one, simplify your finance. All your cards in one, double-dip rewards,’” says Bialick, explaining that Curve customers earn rewards both on their Curve card and on whatever cards sit “beneath” it.

This is, unsurprisingly by this point in the interview, a topic he gets quite enthusiastic about:

“I’m not competing with Chime or Chase or anyone else. On the contrary, Chase is doing a great job. Keep Chase! Keep PayPal! Keep Citi! But bring it all together and earn rewards on top. Now add to that the tailwinds you get from all the challengers coming to market. Better for me! More cards in your wallet. Bring it all together.”

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