Curve Card

Banking Personal Banking
41

Looking through their blog post they have got more to come including crypto-rewards and also they are making curve flex findable from its own card in the app so I don’t think this will be the demise of curve yet.

I do dislike the decision.
It would be good if they added a second physical card and you had two carousels of cards so you can select one credit card for one physical card and a debit card for the other. Etc.

So if you always frequently use two cards then your good to go. I think it’s also fair to say that with everything going on in the world lots of things are struggling. I mean look at Netflix.

Maybe they should of looked at including a delivery fee for the standard card of £4.99 that might have been a better option for them than a £1.99 fee.

No one new is going to signup and use Curve X on day one unless they are ex-curve users and already know what it’s all about.

That’s my opinion.

1 Like
42

Getting barclaycard on Google pay

43

Can you use only one debit card to pay Amex? Haven’t paid an Amex bill manually for a while but I thought in the past I had used different debit cards, perhaps on different days/different months even.

44

Barclaycard will not work directly on Google Pay, I believe there are some other cards which cannot be added to Google Pay. Barclaycard have their own contactless payment app.
By adding Barclaycard to your Curve account, then add Curve to Google Pay you can use Barclaycard with Google Pay via Curve.

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45

^this exactly

46

This is what I do :+1:

47

When first release the unique USP of Curve was the ability free your wallet and have a single card for credit cards and debit cards, the possibility of using Amex as one of those cards to front it where AMEX was not accepted and GBIT. None of the benefits to subscribing to a specific tier were of particular interest but that could have changed.
However, the latest changes and its pricing seem incomprehensible when there are IMHO better products out there where carrying an extra card or two becomes a no brainer.
With Chase and Starling banks are Fee-free FX, Barclaycard rewards and Nationwide CC are Fee-free FX and Barclaycard rewards has 0.25% cashback non of which I have to pay for.
Moving all the way up to the Curve metal card where for 14.99 Month/£ 179.88 Year Worldwide Travel Insurance, Mobile phone insurance, Airport lounge access the better value is the Nationwide Flex account which has a cost of £13 month/£156 year and provides Worldwide Travel Insurance, Mobile phone insurance, Breakdown cover but for Curve this is.
This seems similar to the Tandem credit card where the company has not looked at with wider market and are misreading their fintech users. Trying to make the changes palatable to the current user base and provide realistic incentives for them to change tiers (£23.99 for a year at the base subscription level before moving to £59.88 after a year) and expect current user base to accept the changes when better alternate products are available seems a strange strategic move.

48

I hold all of those, plus Monzo and Halifax Clarity, which also provide fee-free FX.

49

An old article from October 2021, however, shows that Curve were bleeding money in 2020:

https://www.fintechfutures.com/2021/10/curve-reports-widening-operating-losses-despite-revenue-growth-in-2020/

The article also highlights though that they were doing well on the paid-for plans.

Perhaps they feel that more people are prepared to pay for the new Curve X tier, than actually will.

Time will tell if this move is genius, or folly.

50

There’s the two camps. :flushed:

There’ll be a lot of breath-holding in the corridors of Curve.

I suspect the forum isn’t a good barometer, though. The knee-jerk there will be to moan, not to extol the virtues of that business decision.

I wonder if their future lies in a sale? :thinking:

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51

Would i still get my barclaycard cashback?

Its so frustrating that they don’t allow google pay, yet they do apple pay.

Id dump them but ive been with them for so long ive got perks i dont want to give up.

52

Yes, still get the cashback from Barclaycard if you have a cashback card (i.e. 0.5% on purchases) but not retailer specific cashback rewards e.g. 10% off at Boots because the transaction will be Barclaycard to Curve, not Barclaycard to Boots.

54

Yes. It should be noted though that Barclaycard are something of an outlier in terms of still doing this across the board. (They even paid cashback when I withdrew cash last time I did that about a year ago!)

Tesco Bank and Natwest Group Credit Cards will treat any Curve use as a cash transaction which will invoke fees, interest from day 1 and no rewards.

Amex withdrew Curve’s merchant agreement early on, and then withdrew from a subsequent trial when Curve unilaterally decided to ‘rollout’ the trial to their entire customer base. (There was a threat of legal action from Curve at the time but that appears to have gone nowhere.)

Virgin Money are threatening the same (although don’t appear to have yet done it)

HSBC are not paying any rewards when used in conjunction with Curve

Creation completely banned Curve use and then closed the accounts of the majority their customers who had ever used Curve.

Not sure about LBG and Sainsbury’s Bank but both support Google Pay.

Even in the case of Barclaycard, reports on HfP and elsewhere indicate that customers of their new Avios cards are having their accounts closed after using them in conjunction with Curve.

2 Likes
55

I have my Tesco Bank Credit Card attached to Curve and have never paid any fees.

In fact, my last transaction, 2 June, for a coffee at McDonalds, was written off by Tesco as a Small Account Balance. The third such write off this year!

56

Interesting, thank you! They must have rowed back on it then, there was definitely a whole saga about it when they started charging as they’d only warned a subset of their users it was happening, which led to them being removed, refunded and then reapplied later.

Perhaps now Curve pass the MCC through they don’t mind so much. Do you still get Clubcard points at the ‘non-Tesco’ rate? Not that you’d get any on sub-£ transactions, of course.

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57

Curve on Twitter are suggesting that people are flocking on to the upgrades.

Really? When you can get current offering for next 60 days with no change :thinking:

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58

Reality - the upgrade process was probably rushed and screwed up

Positive spin - there was ‘so many people’…

59

Well it looks like Curve have made the decision for me. Pretty worthless having it with all these limitations on the free tier, in all honesty.

1 Like
60

May you elaborate on how this happens, i.e. is this consistent behaviour?

61

Yeah, it’s all quite weird really.

My Tesco Bank credit card is my oldest credit card, having been taken out in 2017 for 0% purchases (long since expired) and has a decent credit limit.

So, while I do not use it as one of my main cards any more, especially as not Google Pay supported, occasionally, I shall use to buy a bottle of water from Tesco Express (65p) or a McDonalds coffee (99p) to keep it active, as it may be of use in the future.

In fact, once upon a time, it was one of my qualifying DDs for a current account.

However, every time my statement balance has been below £1, which is at least three occasions now this year, Feb, Apr, and Jun statements, on the day the statement is to be produced, a SMALL BALANCE WRITE OFF transaction appears for the value of the statement, thus leaving a £0 balance :person_shrugging:

I know the answer is to spend more than a £1 on it then, but I rarely use this card because of its limitations, i.e. no Google Pay, and certainly do not carry it, other than through Curve.

It doesn’t concern me at all though tbh. If Tesco Bank decide one day they don’t want me as a credit card customer, then that’s fine as I have plenty of other credit cards at my disposal (or delayed payment cards, as I refer to them, as I always pay in full and do not use full credit facility) :smile:

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