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Curve Card is now available to the public as a debit card

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(EDIT:  Curve has changed a lot since this article was published.  Please do not rely on the information here.  Instead, please click here to read our detailed 2020 Curve review, which includes a link for a free £10 credit when you sign up.)

Curve Card, the Mastercard that allows you to merge all of your Mastercard and Visa cards into one product, launches to the general public today.

It had previously been available only to anyone who had self-employed income.  It had a generous cashback rewards scheme despite being free because it could charge higher fees to retailers.

The consumer version will be less generous, because Curve does not have any fee arbitrage to play with.  There will be a rewards scheme available soon, however, and I will let you know when it launches.

Put simply, every transaction you charge to Curve is recharged to a linked Visa or Mastercard.  Via the Curve app you can select which card is charged per transaction, allowing you to add your debit card and various Visa and Mastercard credit cards and then switch between them at will.

Financially there are two reasons to use Curve:

You can withdraw £200 of cash per month from an ATM and have it charged to your credit card as a purchase – this means it earns miles and points. 

Foreign currency transactions made on Curve are recharged to your linked Visa or Mastercard in Sterling with a 1% foreign exchange adjustment.  This makes it a better deal than using the underlying card which is likely to have a 3% FX fee.

There will, soon, be a rewards scheme of some sort

There are more practical features too, such as the ability to export your spending data for analysis and the ability (as I found out myself in November when I lost my wallet) to lock the card from your phone.  As Curve is contactless, it is also a way of making any non-contactless Visa or Mastercard you have into a contactless one.

The Curve website is here if you want to know more.  You need to download the Curve app for your phone and order a card from there if you want to try it out.

Curve will pay you £10 for trying it out if you use our link.

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Category

General

Comments (113)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Iain Wilson says:
    17 Jan17 January 06:03

    I’ve had Curve for a while, it’s a great product. I was recently asked to prove my self employed status to them, I’ve sent my tax return hopefully they’ll accept it!

    • Genghis says:
      17 Jan17 January 07:03

      IIRC you could also be a significant shareholder / director of a ltd co? Dunno if this helps?

    • Big Dave says:
      17 Jan17 January 08:22

      Now its available to everyone hopefully wont need to prove that anywmore?
      There is a waiting list list but you get to jump the queue a bit if you use referral codes
      so use robs or mine (AmcEn) much prefer you use Robs of course…

      Also worth noting they can issue proper master cards now and not prepaid ones like before which means they are accepted virtually everywhere now – used mine in 5 different countries on a recent trip and no problems whatsoever was great not having to change any physical currencies (which would have been 4 different ones)

  • VJ says:
    17 Jan17 January 06:20

    Can you have both personal and business Curve; in case how to manage both on same phone.

    • George says:
      17 Jan17 January 08:35

      The app only supports a single card. I imagine Curve will let you have a personal one if you apply, but they’ll be keen for you to use your business one (higher interchange).

  • Debbie Clifford says:
    17 Jan17 January 06:22

    Your refer a friend code also works on Free card! Thanks

  • Nadeshka says:
    17 Jan17 January 06:27

    Will the personal version of the curve card still allow charging purchases to Amex with no extra fee/limit?
    With the removal of credit card charges I noted that you can now pay off govt student loans with a visa or Mastercard without charge – with this it might present a good opportunity to get someway towards an Amex minimum spend.

    • Lynn says:
      17 Jan17 January 06:39

      Unfortunately you can not attach an Amex card to the Curve card

      • Nadeshka says:
        17 Jan17 January 06:41

        Ah there’s the catch! I guess I’m thinking of when it first launched… I’ll figure out a way eventually (that’s not just buying a ton of prepaid cards I hope)

    • Andrew says:
      17 Jan17 January 06:43

      Curve stopped working with Alex quite some time ago and with it lost it’s only selling point to me. It’s also worth pointing out that you lose several protections when purchasing goods through curve such as the ability to request a S75 chargeback.

    • Scallder says:
      17 Jan17 January 09:55

      Be slightly careful with paying off student loans on a credit card – I tried paying off a lump sum on my Creation IHG Premium CC and it got blocked as they treated it as a cash advance (and was wanting to pay more than the daily limit), which was extremely annoying. I guess could do smaller payments and then pay off the card straight away, but worth checking with your credit card company how they treat SLC payments!

      • Nadeshka says:
        17 Jan17 January 11:53

        Thanks for the warning, my backup is direct with the Hilton visa, though the rewards didn’t feel worth it so was hoping to get it onto an Amex somehow…
        On topic then, could curve > IHG work for you for SLC, and count as a purchase rather than cash? Or would curve consider this cash advance towards that 200 limit?

        • Scallder says:
          17 Jan17 January 18:53

          Not a clue I’m afraid as I haven’t tried it with Curve. If wanting Amex could perhaps look at Billhop?

        • Matt DrPositive Snell says:
          20 Jan20 January 03:24

          Yes I used both my Amex cards with Billhop with no issues. Works great 🙂

  • Clive says:
    17 Jan17 January 06:50

    If Amex are preselecting people for London events, I hope they don’t filter by home address – some of us are in London much of the time for work while our postal address is elsewhere.

    • JamesB says:
      17 Jan17 January 07:22

      Wishful thinking Clive, amex cannot even filter their regular offers by postcade. Despite living in Edinburgh I seem to get almost all the London centric offers but struggle to get. the good offers that can be used country-wide..

  • KP says:
    17 Jan17 January 06:52

    How will Amex pre-select invitees?

    I would really like to attend the photography class

  • Anna says:
    17 Jan17 January 06:53

    So just to clarify, can you withdraw £200 per month with the Curve card from, e.g. the Lloyds MasterCard and not accrue the usual daily cash withdrawal charges charged by credit card companies? That would be really helpful for the upgrade voucher.

  • Wivus says:
    17 Jan17 January 07:32

    OT. FYI the IHG redemption increases did kick in yesterday. Top end IC have increased minimum 10k 🙁

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