Currensea

Idea

Introduction

You have an account with a major high street bank. Your money is secure. Yet for the convenience of using your bank card abroad, you could pay between 3-7% in fees.

Currensea is a brand-new way to spend (and save) money abroad. It's a debit card that works as an extension of your existing bank account, saving up to 80% on charges. So you have the convenience of your existing bank, just without the bank fees.

The alternatives involve jumping through hoops: opening a new challenger bank account or getting a pre-paid card, transferring money into it, continually topping it up, and hoping you've kept track of the balance, so you don't get your card declined when you're away. Then on your return, figuring out what to do with any leftover money.

This is why so many UK adults simply use their bank debit cards abroad. Over 1.5bn times per annum to be precise. That's an average of 28 transactions abroad each year per UK adult. Currensea provides a real solution.

Intended impact

Do you remember the days of mobile phone roaming charges in Europe? You would either pay a hefty fee to use your phone abroad or buy a new SIM card, top it up, keep running out of credit, leave money on it, and find out a year later that it's expired! Now it sounds archaic. Thankfully, the rules changed, and you simply use your phone abroad as you would do at home.

Well, the rules have recently changed for UK banks, and Open Banking has enabled us to transform spending abroad.

Why should you have to open a new bank account or get a pre-paid card to spend your own money at a competitive rate? With a Currensea card, you don't. Your money stays safely in your existing high street bank account. Your Currensea card connects to your bank just like your bank debit card.

Currensea will save up to 80% on bank charges for an average traveller. This could be up to a £200 annual saving for a UK family. A chunky extra amount to spend on your next holiday, not on charges!

Substantial accomplishments to date

We've come a long way since we kicked-off the idea in late 2017. Since then, we've worked with the UK regulator and Mastercard to build and launch a market-changing product from scratch. It's not easy when there's no precedent, but we’ve been determined and have overcome every challenge. We think you'll agree it's been worth it.

- Currensea has now been successfully used in almost 30 countries across the globe.
- Initial marketing statistics show exceptionally strong conversion rates - we believe the UK travelling population has been waiting for a product like this for a long time.
- The UK media have been keen to talk about the product, even pre-launch

Monetisation strategy

Currensea has a simple monetisation strategy based on solid revenues and low costs.

We make money through:

• Forex: we use the interbank market for foreign exchange. This enables us to offer a competitive real-time rate with a markup of just 0.95%, and a big saving versus banks. The markup generates revenue for the company.

• Interchange: a percentage of every transaction paid to us by Mastercard and funded by the retailers where our customers spend.

• We plan to open more revenue streams through products complementary to Currensea. For example, travel insurance.

We have low costs:

As we partner with existing high street banks, we ourselves can run a leaner operation, focusing on what we do best: saving money for our customers when they spend abroad.

Use of proceeds

Where we've come from:

Phase 1 - The Build (Oct 18-Oct 19)

The Seed round supported building the product and infrastructure and closed beta testing.

What we're looking to do now:

Phase 2 - Open Beta Launch (Q4 2019 - Q3 2020)

The Extended Seed round will be used to launch the product into the UK market. This will generate the customer traction required to provide the launchpad for a strong Phase 3 (Series A).