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What Curve Card’s email yesterday about ATM cash machine usage means

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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.)

If you have a Curve Card, you will have received an email from them yesterday which you may have found a little confusing.

There is a big Curve announcement coming this week which I will cover on Thursday morning.  If you don’t know about Curve, I will run a full explanation in that article.  You can also learn more in this HfP article.

I spoke with Curve’s CEO yesterday to get an understanding of what is going on.

Curve card ATM changes

As many Curve cardholders have discovered, Curve has a decline rate which is higher than standard credit cards

A key reason for this is that all Curve transactions carry the same merchant reference code.  Standard credit card transactions are coded based on the type of retailer or, for big companies, the exact retailer name.  Unfortunately, when your underlying credit card issuer sees transaction after transaction coming through marked as ‘general’, it can trigger fraud concerns.

In order to improve acceptance, Curve transactions will now carry a merchant reference code which reflects the underlying transaction.  Your underlying credit card company will now see a mix of retailer types coming through instead of just ‘general’, ‘general’, ‘general’ etc.

Another upside here is that it will trigger sector-based and, for large retailers with their own merchant code, company-based promotions.  For example, the HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard – until the end of the month – offers a £20 Uber credit for a £500 airline transaction.  A bonus like this should now trigger if you paid with Curve as it would now carry an airline merchant code.

However …..

As part of this recoding, ATM withdrawals made using Curve will now be identifiable as cash transactions by your card issuer.

It is important to note that, short term, my understanding is that there should NOT be charges for making ATM withdrawals with Curve.  However, over time, it is possible that individual credit card companies will make changes to treat these transactions as cash withdrawals.

ATM withdrawals made using Curve when it is linked to a debit card will continue to be free regardless.

We have seen the same thing happen with Revolut.  Some credit card companies have changed their terms and conditions recently to treat Revolut transactions as pseudo-cash, and so incurring cash withdrawal fees.  Other credit card companies have not, so you can load your Revolt card from those credit cards and have it treated as a purchase, earning miles and points.  Our main article on Revolut including a HfP special offer for applying is here.

Conclusion

For now, you should be able to continue making £200 per month of ATM withdrawals with Curve Card and have them treated as a purchase, earning miles and points on the underlying card.  Keep an eye on your emails and card statements, however, as you may receive notice from your underlying issuer that this will change.

You can find out more about Curve in this article.

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

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Comments (268)

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

  • R says:
    18 Sep18 September 06:55

    It is mildly irritating, but I really can’t see why people are so steamed up about losing fee free £200 pm withdrawals. It’s hardly a large amount: a max earning of 1,800 Virgin miles pa on the free Virgin CC or 3,600 Avios pa if Amex comes back on board.

    I have earned literally 10’s of thousands of Virgin miles paying my tax, for no effort or cost, for which I am very grateful !!

    • Andrew says:
      18 Sep18 September 07:49

      Many of us are on the original card which is £200 per day of cash.

      • Genghis says:
        18 Sep18 September 07:53

        I can do £1k a day but got shut down (after quite a while) last year. The £200 pcm is fee free per terms. Anything over has de facto not been charged despite terms but is monitored.

  • Amo says:
    18 Sep18 September 06:57

    I decided to give Curve another go a few weeks ago after finding my card in an old sock drawer. I needed to get in touch with their customer services to get a card removed (you can’t seem to remove a card that’s already expired). Each reply took them 8 days, so after over two weeks of trying I promptly put the card back in my drawer.

    For a financial institution, I think Curve need to better understand that to challenge the existing banking companies it’s not just about having fancy technology.

  • Sabby says:
    18 Sep18 September 07:00

    I hit my 50k limit asked for increase got a call back 2months later saying that they looked into my spend and curve card is not meant to be used to pay HMRC they will reset my limit on this one occasion under the condition I stop doing this and use it for every day shopping

    • George says:
      18 Sep18 September 08:37

      Interesting – I hit mine and put in a ticket about it but so far I’ve been completely ignored (2 weeks). I never cared about the cash thing, that was always too good to be true – but the HMRC payments were the main reason I kept the card. This is a shame.

    • Alan says:
      18 Sep18 September 17:52

      I thought the 50k annual limit was a hard MasterCard-imposed limit that they couldn’t/wouldn’t move on anyway?

  • KevMc says:
    18 Sep18 September 07:05

    I am personally happy to lose £200/month ATM withdrawals in exchange for 0% FX fees, now that the Lloyds Avios cards will start charging 3%.

    This will only be a problem if topping up the likes of Revolut and paying the tax man become an issue. But I can’t see how any issuer could justify HMRC payments being classed as a cash advance.

    • swhostring says:
      18 Sep18 September 07:26

      Because it’s financial services

      • Roger1* says:
        18 Sep18 September 09:07

        No it isn’t. My Curve payment to HMRC was classed as Business Services.

        • swhostring says:
          18 Sep18 September 09:38

          That’s not the point. The point is issuers identifying HMRC payments as ‘financial’ (= cash advance) in future. Doesn’t really matter what the description is – if there’s a code & a payee (HMRC) that your credit card supplier sees as always meaning it’s a cash advance, they’ll potentially be able to work out a cash advance fee is payable.

          BTW I paid HIFX £2000 on my Tesco credit card last year & that wasn’t seen as a cash advance – when it surely should have been.

      • 80 says:
        18 Sep18 September 11:07

        lol no it isn’t

        • Genghis says:
          18 Sep18 September 11:13

          Agreed. HMRC is not a financial services institution.

        • swhostring says:
          18 Sep18 September 16:10

          OK sloppy language on my part – it’s cash equivalent same as cash advance (ATM withdrawals), foreign currency, paying certain bills, gambling, buying giftcards. I’m not saying buying giftcards in Tesco is a cash advance, Tesco doesn’t treat it as such so the credit card co won’t know any different. But where the credit card co can see it’s a cash advance equivalent, they’ll generally levy the fee. I think the logic is that they can’t get the cash back from whoever you’ve paid, so they need to build in some kind of bunce for the extra risk they’re running (& dissuade you, maybe).

  • Mike says:
    18 Sep18 September 07:10

    ZERO days off notice to customers about an important change of T&C is unacceptable!

    • swhostring says:
      18 Sep18 September 07:28

      There’s no change to T&Cs AFAICS

    • Big dave says:
      18 Sep18 September 08:06

      Wasn’t exactly zero days – I noticed an article on their blog on the 13th so 4 days if you noticed the article

      • 80 says:
        18 Sep18 September 08:25

        A blog post isn’t an acceptable way to communicate material changes of a financial product to customers.

        They haven’t yet changed their Ts & Cs, but they have changed from previous advice that cash withdrawals are OK to advising against them because they may be charged.

        Not directly contacting customers is just typical of the attitude Curve takes. It’s not the first time.

        • Big dave says:
          18 Sep18 September 09:03

          I agree its not acceptable – I doubt anyone but me noticed the blog post –
          also done after everyone got their new cards too – leaves a bad taste but I still like the product for now
          Having said that I only use the curve abroad and to cut down on cards in the wallet – i never actually used it to withraw cash from a non-debit card
          That and peddling my code, (AMCEN) around various forums means a steady flow of free beer now and again – so I prefer it to the likes of revolut etc…

    • the_real_a says:
      18 Sep18 September 14:09

      I totally agree – had someone not dropped it in the comments over the weekend i doubt we would have known. I would imagine the email was only sent after Rob`s meeting with the CEO on Monday…

      • Alan says:
        18 Sep18 September 17:53

        No, it was already planned from last week from what I’ve read – they seem to realise they did get their comms quite right on this one…

        • the_real_a says:
          18 Sep18 September 19:14

          What? the commm’s were planned three days after the published start date? 🙂

        • Alan says:
          18 Sep18 September 19:17

          I’m just saying they said emails were going out a few days before Rob did his interview on the Monday. Clearly should have gone out much earlier tho!

  • Mark says:
    18 Sep18 September 07:12

    looks like the end of double/triple dipping on points/miles, If so, and no link to Amex, Curve has no value to me.

  • callum says:
    18 Sep18 September 07:16

    It doesn’t say it doesn’t affect cash withdrawals – Rob believes that the T&Cs of credit cards don’t cover ATM withdrawals via Curve so there won’t be a charge. I’m not completely convinced!

    • Genghis says:
      18 Sep18 September 09:24

      +1

    • the_real_a says:
      18 Sep18 September 14:42

      There is already a precedent in that pay-pal sends through MCC for certain categories (namely gambling) which then levies a cash advance charge on the underlying card, despite it being paypal as the merchant.

  • Jeff says:
    18 Sep18 September 07:17

    Curve has slowly been changing something – I swapped my card (at my request) for the Curve debit card version last year and it has worked really well without declines but had a lower daily limit than the old card at £3750/day, so slow to pay big HMRC bills.

    Unsolicited, last week my wife was sent an updated Curve card that doesn’t have any embossed numbers on the front. There is a card number simply printed on the back under the signature strip. It does have a chip. Unfortunately it doesn’t work as it will no longer accept the underlying Tesco card linked to her original Curve card. They are hoping to stay around – it expires in 2023, but many of the benefits seem to be disappearing…

    • Big dave says:
      18 Sep18 September 08:08

      mine anew one arrived too and it works as the old one after activating it – yours must have an issue – contact them on facebook they reply quite soon

    • Genghis says:
      18 Sep18 September 08:13

      My “numbers on the back” version works ok.

    • KevMc says:
      18 Sep18 September 10:19

      I think the first transaction after receiving a new card has to be using chip and pin, so perhaps try that?

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

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