A lot of companies have come up with the idea for reducing all your cards into a single piece of plastic. Here’s a summary of all the ones I could find, and their fate. Beware: this field is very much a startup graveyard. The only remaining survivor seems to be Curve¹ but it’s also the first one that’s attempting this outside of US.

There seem to be a lot of challenges (regulatory, financial, and technical) before such a thing becomes reality. And there’s Apple/Samsung Pay as well. Here’s a summary of all the companies I could find in this space. If I’ve missed any, please let me know, and I’ll add them here.

Curve (2015-)

Curve allows you to spend from any of your accounts using just one card, clearing the clutter from your wallet and simplifying your finances.

• Curve has raised a total of $74M at a valuation north of $250M, out of which £6M were from a crowdfunding campaign in 2019.
• Their waitlist is at 800,000+ users.
• Curve faced flak for failing to disclose its usage numbers (<100,000 monthly active users out of total 500,000) to crowdfund investors.
• Only works with Visa/MasterCard. Used to work with Amex, but Curve has a history of working and being blocked by Amex repeatedly.
• See this page for some details on how it works.

Coin (YC W13) (2012-2017)

• Coin raised a total of $15.6M.
• Shipped in 2015 April.
• Acquired by Fitbit in May 2016.
• Shutdown by Fitbit in Feb 2017.
• Related: Google acquired FitBit in 2019 Nov.

Plastc (2014-2017)

• Single dynamic card with e-Ink touchscreen. See obligatory launch video with fancy AR.
• Crowdfunded $9M on pre-orders in October 2014.
• Delayed launch to April 2016, and then again to September 2016.
• Shut down and declared bankruptcy in April 2017.
• Complete story via digg.com.

Stratos (2015-2015)

• Was supposed to cost $95/year.
• Announced May 2015.
• Raised $6.63 million over three rounds of financing.
• Ran out of money by December 2015.
• Sold to Ciright One to avoid collapse.
• Seems to be dead now.

Swyp (2014-2017)

• Had a pre-order campaign in 2014.
• Raised $5M from Khosla Ventures in 2017.
• Tried to pivot in 2017, failed.
• Offered customers a debit card with an app called Hoot in 2017 as an alternative to refunds. I don’t think the Hoot card ever materialized.
• Tilt (Swyp’s payment processor) also ceased operations in 2017, due to unrelated reasons.
• Swyp finally shut down in December 2017.

Final (YC W15) (2014-2017)

• Final was with a credit card with a different number for every website. As a independent card, Final doesn’t exactly fit in this list, but it’s a very relevant and loved product.
• Announced itself with a snazzy video in mid 2014
• Raised $4M and launched in August 2016, but remained invite-only till the very end.
• Final’s blog has some interesting content: A Request for Credit Cards program to build card-issuance backed businesses and the Payment card landscape for 2017.
• Shut down in december 2017 and acquired by Goldman Sachs in an acqui-hire.

Indian Landscape

India hasn’t seen a true single-card app yet, but there have been lots of related attempts:

• Infino promises a single-card, but it hasn’t launched yet. It had a public roadmap, but never launched and ultimately pivoted to a Coupon Aggregator called Meet Donut, which shut down.
• IndusInd bank has tried a dual-chip debit+credit card. Union Bank has a similar card.
• IndusInd has also tried an interactive credit card with 3 buttons.
• FamPay, Fold, Niyo, OneCard, Donut🪦, vCard🪦, Slice ² and lots of other startups are doing co-branded issuance, but that’s not the same thing.

With the emergence of UPI, and low penetration rate of credit cards, I don’t see a market in India - but I’d love to be proven wrong.

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Did I miss anything? Reach out and let me know.

Thanks to Harman for reviewing drafts of this, and PRL for getting me interested enough to document this.