Curve gets back online after Wirecard outage

Curve customers can make payments as normal following a three-day outage starting on Friday owing to the on-going Wirecard fallout.

The firm was one of the high profile fintechs using Wirecard's e-money and payment services to be hit by the freezing of its UK business - Wirecard Solutions - by the Financial Conduct Authority on Friday.

This followed the news on Thursday that its DAX-listed parent company was collapsing under the weight of debts as its accounting scandal became increasingly bad.

Curve had just one hour's notice from the UK regulator on Friday of the Wirecard freeze. It had already begun to move away from Wirecard's services, as originally reported by AltFi, back in April.

This was due to the budding scale of Curve's business rather than any issues relating to the Wirecard scandal, a spokesman for Curve told AltFi.

To get back live, the Curve team have been working over the weekend to bring forward its plans to handle all e-money services in house.

"It's given us a bit of a shot in the arm. We've been able to move that in house bit quicker than we wanted. Which gives us more control. We've got a new processor now as well: we're working with Checkout.com," Curve's spokesman said.

"It's also united everyone. By pulling long hours over the weekend there is a really good feeling the company to have done this in such a short period of time. It is totally remarkable and probably unprecedented," they added.

Curve Founder & CEO Shachar Bialick said in a separate media release: “The call I received at 9am on Friday was the worst a founder could hear – that our accounts would be closed imminently, through no fault of our own. We’re delighted to have been able to complete the complex transition of services in such a short space of time. Working closely with our partners at Mastercard and Checkout.com, we ensured minimal disruption at a time of significant upheaval in European fintech."