Britain’s biggest high street bank is in talks to buy Curve, the digital wallet provider, amid growing regulatory pressure on Apple to open its payment services to rivals.
Sky News has learnt that Lloyds Banking Group is in advanced discussions to acquire Curve for a price believed to be up to £120m.
City sources said this weekend that if the negotiations were successfully concluded, a deal could be announced by the end of September.
Curve was founded by Shachar Bialick, a former Israeli special forces soldier, in 2016.
Three years later, he told an interviewer: “In 10 years time we are going to be IPOed [listed on the public equity markets]… and hopefully worth around $50bn to $60bn.”
One insider said this weekend that Curve was being advised by KBW, part of the investment bank Stifel, on the discussions with Lloyds.
If a mooted price range of £100m-£120m turns out to be accurate, that would represent a lower valuation than the £133m Curve raised in its Series C funding round, which concluded in 2023.
That round included backing from Britannia, IDC Ventures, Cercano Management – the venture arm of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s estate – and Outward VC.
It was also reported to have raised more than £40m last year, while reducing employee numbers and suspending its US expansion.
In total, the company has raised more than £200m in equity since it was founded.
Curve has been positioned as a rival to Apple Pay in recent years, having initially launched as an app enabling consumers to combine their debit and credit cards in a single wallet.
One source close to the prospective deal said that Lloyds had identified Curve as a strategically attractive bid target as it pushes deeper into payments infrastructure under chief executive Charlie Nunn.
Lloyds is also said to believe that Curve would be a financially rational asset to own because of the fees Apple charges consumers to use its Apple Pay service.
In March, the Financial Conduct…
