Draft:Currensea

Currensea Limited, trading as Currensea, is a British financial technology company, founded by James Lynn and Craig Goulding in 2018.

Following the implementation of open banking regulations in the UK in 2018, Currensea became the world’s first Card-Based Payment Instrument Issuer (CBPII). This enabled Currensea to provide the UK’s first direct debit travel card, which connects directly to users’ existing personal bank accounts.

Currensea launched its consumer and business propositions in 2020.

Martin Lewis, the English financial journalist and broadcaster, noted the Currensea offering is not based on a prepaid card, ‘so you don’t need to load it with currency before you set off’.

2017-2018
In 2017, James Lynn and Craig Goulding experienced frustration with the excessive charges levied by traditional banks following their family’s summer vacations. They decided to find an alternative way of reducing the banks’ charges when spending abroad.

Lynn had an extensive professional background in forex and building electronic trading platforms, whilst Goulding was the former CTO of Investment Banking at JP Morgan and chief engineer of open banking at Lloyds Banking Group.

On 13 June 2018, Currensea was co-founded by Lynn and Goulding.

In July 2018, Currensea was accepted into the FCA’s Innovate Program.

In November 2018, Lynn and Goulding partnered with Mastercard to build the UK’s first open-banking direct debit travel card.

2019-2020
In February 2019, Currensea was selected to join the FCA’s regulatory sandbox to build and test the Currensea concept.

In July 2019, Currensea was authorised by the FCA as the UK’s first regulated CBPII and appointed as a Principal Member of Mastercard.

In September 2019, Currensea was connected to all the major UK high-street banks.

On 9 September 2019, Currensea opened a waitlist for its new travel money card. It was the first in the UK to be linked directly to users’ bank accounts. Other challenger banks, including Monzo, Starling and Revolut, also launched cards with no transaction fees and competitive exchange rates. However, they all required customers to open an account with them.

In January 2020, Currensea launched its travel money card to consumers in the UK.

In March 2020, the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Two weeks later, Britain was locked down and ‘the travel industry went into meltdown’.

On 15 October 2020, Currensea launched the ‘first-of-its-kind’ open banking debit card for small businesses trading internationally through their existing bank account.

During 2020, Currensea won a series of awards for its open banking innovation including IBS Intelligence Global Fintech Innovation Awards for ‘Most Impactful Project API/Open Banking’, The Emerging Payments Awards for ‘Leading Banking or Open Banking Initiative’ and ‘Leading Financial Services or Payments Start-Up’, FF PayTech Awards for ‘Paytech of the Future’, and Payment Awards for ‘PSD2 or ‘Open Banking Initiative of the Year’.

Currensea was also named by BusinessCloud as one of 100 Fintech Disruptors of 2020.

2021-2022
On 9 July 2021, Currensea announced it was partnering with Singapore Airlines in the first-of-its-kind air miles offering. Cardholders were able to collect KrisFlyer miles when they spent with Currensea.

In November 2021, Currensea launched a ‘powered by’ programme, allowing travellers to convert savings from their FX fees into charity donations. ‘Powered by’ charities include Knight Frank and the Royal Society of Medicine.

In January 2022, a ‘round-up’ feature was added to encourage further charitable donations.

During 2021, Currensea received further awards, including FStech Awards for ‘Open Banking Product or Service of the Year’, The Emerging Payments Awards for ‘Best International Payments, Remittance or use of FX', and The Card and Payments Awards for ‘Best Initiative in Open Banking’.

On 20 September 2022, it was reported that Currensea users had contributed to ‘almost 120,000 trees being planted’ and ‘1.75 million plastic bottles removed from the ocean’ through donations of savings that were made when using the card since 2020.

On 9 December 2022, it was announced that Currensea was available on Google Pay.

In 2022, Currensea was also named ‘Best Open Finance Innovation’ at the Open Banking Expo Awards.

2023-24
In 2023, Currensea won ‘Best Currency Travel Card’ at the Moneynet Awards.

In December 2023, Nuts About Money named Currensea as ‘the best travel card overall’.

In January 2024, it was reported that Currensea had saved travellers over £3 million in exchange fees.

Services
Currensea offers three products: Currensea Essential, Currensea Premium and Currensea Elite. Currensea connects to an existing personal UK bank account to remove banking fees when spending in foreign currencies. Currensea Business allows SMEs to make international transactions with no bank charges and with no need to set up a separate business bank account.

Funding
Currensea secured an initial £450,000 pre-seed funding from Angel investors in October 2018.

It raised a further £1.4m through additional seed funding rounds in 2019 & 2020.

In 2022, Currensea closed a pre-Series A funding round worth £4.6m, including a £2.4m investment from venture capitalists Blackfinch Ventures and 1818 Venture Capital. The company was valued at “close to £20 million”.