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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.

  • howard says:
    18 Sep18 September 09:15

    My limit is £40,000

    • Ralph says:
      18 Sep18 September 09:28

      I have £3750/day, £20k/30days and £50k/year. Sounds quite a lot, but if you pay HMRC and buy a car it disappears quite quickly. Currently being able to use Curve as a debit card and get the underlying credit card points seems the main benefit and 1% FX fees (without the faff of Revolut etc which in any event doesn’t work in countries without mainstream currencies as it creates a double conversion). As Tesco showed when they tried to change their T&Cs, the underlying card issuers will unfortunately stamp on this quite soon.

  • Sammyjlb says:
    18 Sep18 September 09:15

    I had a very worrying experience with my Curve card recently…. paid for car hire and the deposit – around 850 euros at the end of July and took the car back a week later for a return of the deposit – around 550 euros …but it didn’t appear on my Curve card.
    Emailing back and forth to Curve for a month and then had to provide proof that the refund had been processed form the car hire company and then all of a sudden the credit appears and I get a phonecall apologising. How did these euros go missing for a month ??? Didn’t get a proper explaination but just wanted to say to all – BE CAREFUL their admin and back up systems are obviously lacking. I’m not sure when this error would have been discovered I found I hadn’t chased it.

    • Roger1* says:
      18 Sep18 September 10:17

      I think this was probably a consequence of using a DEBIT card (Curve is normally treated as a debit card).

      Car rental companies normally require a CREDIT card which allows such transactions without the jiggery pokery.

    • xcalx says:
      18 Sep18 September 10:27

      Same happens when using curve at hotel check in. Waited 3 weeks for hotel holds to refund.

    • Anna says:
      18 Sep18 September 12:46

      I had to chase them up for a £600 utility refund recently. They processed £100 of it but I had to email a couple of times to get the rest. They said there was a processing issue; I’m obviously going to be keeping a close eye on any future refunds.

    • Brighton Belle says:
      18 Sep18 September 14:45

      Curve seems to be doing odd things.
      Paid Amex last night. They rejected my Curve card but the payment was still pushed through to the linked card. How can the mercant reject a card and Curve still process the charge as valid?

      • Jon says:
        18 Sep18 September 19:54

        May have something to do with card limits, possibly? I had a similar thing a while back with a tax bill – payment got rejected but still showed as Pending on my Curve card. Customer Services were pretty good, responded promptly to my message and explained it was because the amount I was trying to pay exceedeed my daily limit (you can check yours in the Card section of the app). I split the bill into several payments on separate days and it worked fine. Took about a week for the original failed one to drop off though, but that seems to be par for the course with most cards I think, in my experience anyway.

    • Alan says:
      18 Sep18 September 17:59

      I must say I’d never use Curve (or indeed another debit card) for a deposit – only a credit card.

    • Mr dee says:
      19 Sep19 September 00:21

      You shouldn’t be using it for pre auth transactions it’s already been discussed and I am sure it is mentioned by them.

  • Scottydogg says:
    18 Sep18 September 09:24

    Ive been wanting to try this card for a while so i clicked the link to go to their site , do i need to download the app to my phone before i can apply ? i couldn’t see a standard application on their site ?

  • Lev441 says:
    18 Sep18 September 09:26

    Yes – it’s all done through the app

  • Dale says:
    18 Sep18 September 09:31

    Despite this the payments to HMRC should be unaffected shouldn’t they? As it’s the underlying credit card that will be alerted, the merchant should notice no difference?

  • Peter K says:
    18 Sep18 September 09:40

    I put decent accounts of money through this card purely to allow me to withdraw cash no problem. If that stopped then apart from HMRC it actually would be worst to keep using it than using a credit card as on large purchases there is less protection as I have the commercial version.

    • Marie says:
      19 Sep19 September 10:35

      Hi Peter,
      While making purchases with other credit cards your are protected by Section 75 (of the Consumer Credit Act 1974), when you make with your Curve card is protected by the Mastercard chargback scheme. It doesn’t matter which debit or credit card your Curve is linked to at the time of the purchase – you’re still protected. Some key differences are that Section 75 covers credit card purchases and spending over £100 – £30.000, while we cover all card purchases and any value.

  • Max says:
    18 Sep18 September 09:59

    Rob, I don’t suppose the Curve CEO mentioned anything about when they might be able to bring Amex back?

  • Yb90 says:
    18 Sep18 September 10:48

    I had a dispute and curve were extremely unhelpful, had to get my original card issuer involved and it felt like curve was actively working against me.

    The protection they offer you is next to nil and no real customer service to speak to, all to save me carrying 1 card instead of 5! Not anymore.

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

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