Homedemo

The Only Card You Need to Carry When Traveling to Scandinavia

Tor Kjølberg

November 23, 2018

The Only Card You Need to Carry When Traveling to Scandinavia

– or anywhere else in the world. A new debit card, Curve, lets you connect all your existing Mastercard and Visa debit and credit cards to one single card and helps you control your spending better. The new Curve debit card is ‘the only card you need to carry when traveling to Scandinavia’.

The solution is that The MasterCard-issued contactless Curve debit card is linked to a mobile app. Centralizing all your transactions from multiple providers in a single app, Curve aims to be the only card you need to carry. The Curve card allows you to charge payments and cash withdrawals to most card you possess. When you use the Curve card in a store or online the card you selected in the app will be billed.

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The Only Card You Need to Carry When Traveling
Most people carry around between 3 or 4 cards and with Curve you only have to remember one pin number. As a travel journalist I consider this a great advantage since I spend a lot of time traveling.

You can see all of your spending in the app, which is available for iOS and Android, and it can also be used as a way of spending on your credit card in places that don’t officially take credit cards. The physical card is nicely brushed black and has expiry and account information printed on the back for an extra-clean look.

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Everyday spending with Curve
Curve is simply a debit card, so there’s no current account with it and no hard credit check when you apply. The activation is handled with the Curve app and is entirely straightforward. The card lets you do your everyday spending on it, and has a feature which lets you ‘go back in time’ by up to two weeks, to change the card you used for a purchase. This could be useful if you accidentally use the wrong card, or want to manage your credit.

If you lose your card, you can freeze it in the app, and unlock it later if you find it again. You can also get a PIN reminder by entering your password. So, the worry of card cloning isn’t so much of a worry.

Curve will notify you of how much you’ve spent in both the local currency and your home currency, every time you spend.

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Curve is more secure than your bank
Curve’s main selling point, however is the claim “the only card you need to carry”. In practice this has in fact more than one direct benefit. You can for instance use your credit card where it’s not normally accepted and charge it to your credit card. In addition, Curve offers a layer of protection better than most other cards.

“The Curve Card brings all of your banks to the 21st century”, says Matthew Phillips at Curve. “By giving you instant spend notifications, no exchange fees abroad, the ability to lock with one tap, seeing all your spend in one place and many other magical details,” he adds.

How to apply for Curve?
To get one of the cards you need to download the Curve app, which is available on Android and iOS.

Sign up for a card. Once registered, you can add your existing cards to the app, and set a default card. You can add any Mastercard or Visa debit or credit card to the app.

About Curve Card
Curve was founded in 2015 by Shachar Bialick. The company secured seed funding of $2 million in December 2015, after launching a closed beta of the card and its app. Open beta for iOS users in the “business community” was launched in February 2016. In December 2016, Curve announced that the app was made available for Android users.

In July 2017, Curve secured funding of £8 million in a series A round , including investors such as Santander InnoVentures, Connect ventures, SpeedInvest and Investec. In 2018 the card was made available to the general public.

The Only Card You Need to Carry When Traveling to Scandinavia, written by Tor Kjolberg

The Danish Art of Happiness

Tor Kjølberg

November 21, 2018

The Danish word ‘hygge’ has no single, literal translation, but its baldest definition is ‘coziness’. According to ‘The book of Hygge’ by Louisa Thomsen Brits, the word covers ‘a feeling of belonging and warmth, a moment of comfort and contentment’. Her aim is to teach us the Danish art of happiness.

But can the Danish really teach us how to live?

As a Scandinavian, although not Danish, I have worked with and know the Danes and their mentality quite well. When in Denmark, I must admit I have the feeling of ‘hygge’ which means I am reminded to slow down, to dwell and savor rather than rush and spend and to connect with place and with one another.

The Danish Art of Happiness
If you’ve ever sat in an Arne Jacobsen egg chair, been beguiled by the fairytales of Hans Christian Andersen, or enjoyed a piping hot æbleskive at a county fair, you’ve had a taste of Danish culture. It’s a kind of lighting the fire in winter every day or having a light at our breakfast table and sharing ‘hygge with family or friends.

According to the author, when you curl up by the fire with a blanket, or have a simple meal with friends, that is hygge. When you acknowledge the sacred in the secular, or focus on people rather than things, or when you express love through small gestures, that is hygge.

Hygge is a hot topic around the world
Despite being somewhat amorphous, hygge has become a hot topic around the world. A few minutes of research turns up a number of books that tout their hyggelig credentials, including multiple adult coloring books, collections of cake recipes, crafts, and games, and even a book about knitting Nordic sweaters “to keep you cozy.”

The climate play a role in hygge
The Danish prominence of pyromania is probably due to the Scandinavian climate. In her book, The Year of Living Danishly, Helen Russel writes: “We have a saying in Denmark that there is no truly bad weather, just bad clothes.” You might twist this saying around many Danish situations.

The Book of Hygge is an invitation to welcome abundance and contentment into your life. It is a call to live more fully by focusing on what moves you.

Material things often do play a role in hygge and can be used to invoke and cultivate a hyggelig feeling — for example, a mug of hot chocolate on a chilly winter night, a natural wood table worn smooth by caring hands, or, yes, a knitted woolen sweater. The valorization of the cold is possibly the most distinctive feature of the region, and certainly the least exportable.

With beautiful full-color photographs and instructive meditations on relishing the everyday, The Book of Hygge is your essential guide to cultivating the coziness that has made Danes the happiest people in the world.

And for those of us whose basic needs are met, why not indulge in the physical pleasures of hygge?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Louisa Thomsen Brits was born in Uganda to a Danish mother and English father. Louisa is a mother of four, an amateur naturalist and wild swimmer. She has been a radio restaurant and arts critic and a tribal belly-dance teacher. Louisa is interested in the overlooked details of ordinary lives, liminal places, community and craft. She writes about the art of living, the nature of things, our common life and the rhythms and rituals that unite and define us all.

“The most poetic of the hygge books. I found myself repeatedly returning to its list-like incantation of hyggeligt habits,” wrote Louisa Kamps in ELLE magazine.

The Danish Art of Happiness, written by Tor Kjolberg