Their app looks horrid, like iOS 6 with a few tweaks was the inspiration. The support within the app I’ve never gotten to work, the email support is also inadequate for a financial institution; it needs to be instant.
The UX in the app is also absolutely shockingly awful.
For an example of some poor UI, see the spending screen. Would look a lot better if it kept in-line with the rest of apps developed for iPhone and used rounded corners, not going edge to edge; maybe adding some enrichment for merchants would carry it through, too.
The insights take several seconds to load, which doesn’t feel like any app from 2015 onwards. Even then, I don’t get why there isn’t more work put into this section. It really seems to make sense, to me.
Balances is just a moot tab, was never in the original value proposition for Curve to begin with. Was meant to be a card-card link.
In terms of UX, the rewards aren’t clear at all. Curve has no information in which to work out if you’re a new user / existing user, so displays inaccurate % on payout. They’ve just rebuilt Topcashback or Quidco into the app, in an extremely poor way. They could add something like a “new users only” tag so we could at least toggle it.
Payments tab needs some love with merchant enrichment.
I have lots of critique on Curve, because they suck. Anyone who disagrees with me on this is wrong. They should have focused on making a better product before seeking a partnership with Samsung, honestly.
Are you saying that Curve as a product is good? Maybe the GBIT part works well but everything else feels like it was made by college grads lmao; note that I am not insulting the concept, but the delivery, the actual meat and bits part of the product.
I agree it’s badly managed and comms have been serially poor. My commiserations go out to the host of users who have problems with their accounts.
Customer services has been grim for ever, complicated by being a multinational product with limited multinational support. That isn’t getting fixed anytime soon, it seems.
The concept is admirable. (It begs to be acquired, ).
Go Back in Time and a basic look at my transaction timeline is all I really need. There is no alternative product which offers these features and they work perfectly for me, so that’s pretty good in my book.
I don’t use the other advanced features, as I use Emma for my transaction analysis and aggregation and the bank apps for my underlying cards directly for everything else.
The idea of having balances in the app is good, as it reduces the need to check other apps before spending, but I don’t use it currently.
This is so true. I have had an issue with the iOs app since forever which they have completely ignored. They wrote to me about 2 months ago apologising for not addressing it saying they had not migrated the query to their new CS system, and since then…nothing.
I get the impression, that, like Tymit, their IT is probably one or two people and/or has been outsourced.
I think their IT is in-house, but it seems to be run by a relatively small team.
I got that impression from their post about how they migrated away from Wirecard over the weekend during that collapse (which, of course, wasn’t Curve’s fault). It was all completed successfully, but you could tell that it had been a huge effort and some people had worked extremely hard over that weekend!
I use their Testflight beta iOS app, which is updated frequently, but most new builds are just bug fixes.
Maybe I’ll ask them about adding my Amon card to Curve next week, as we and @PoelieV discussed in the Amon thread, which would be a good chance to test out their support?
In my case, Curve managed to mess up the migration from WireCard big time, and it was weeks before it was resolved.
My own issue with them is nothing to do with that. Someone on the Curve Community referred to their IT “team” being “2 blokes in the back room of a pub”, which sounded very accurate. Strangely enough, that particular post was swiftly deleted.
Oh dear, sorry to hear that. Mine went fine and all I had to do was re-verify some of my underlying cards with 3D Secure.
I agree, and as there is nothing else quite like it I would really miss them if they closed.
I also find it very useful to have Curve as my default card on Apple Pay, since I can just wave my phone and pay without worrying about selecting a card first - and can always move the transaction later using Go Back in Time.
Yes, I could just select a card first instead but:
I’m just lazy and sometimes in a hurry you don’t want to have to change from your default.
Like @riceuten I have way more cards than Apple’s limit (now 12, previously 8 as he said on their older phones). Curve allows for all my cards to be made available, not just my “top 12”, which is useful on occasion. Some may think I just have too many cards, but the fact is that Curve obviates the need to stay within the limit which is valuable to me.
I got caught up in the Wirecard debacle which frustratingly hit just after a Curve transaction was double charged, it got sorted eventually - the irritating part was if the mistake hadn’t occurred in the first place I wouldn’t of had to spend the time I did on getting the money back.
That’s what killed curve for me - too many times a transaction has been taken twice. The money always comes back but I have never had it happen when using a bank card directly. It’s down to trust, I don’t trust Curve to work as it should, all the time, every time. It makes no difference whether it’s actually a retailer error or a Curve error, it happens when I use Curve and that’s the problem.
That’s not intended to cover for when their system fails, it’s intended to try a different card when your underlying card declines or fails to authorise within the required time.
It has never happened to me in years of using Curve, so I do wonder if it is some kind of combination of retailer error plus Curve, in a similar way to payment processing errors at Tesco causing some Monzo customers to be double-charged (which I think has now been fixed)?
. I use Curve as an adjunct to Chase - frankly GBIT is sorcery of the best kind. 
).
