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Curve card ‘pauses’ Amex functionality

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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.)

Let’s keep Curve discussion here, please, to stop other threads getting clogged up.

I will do an analysis on this tomorrow.  My gut feeling in the short term is that – assuming you can easily spend £1,000 on Curve in the next three months (and £600 of that can be free ATM withdrawals linked to a Mastercard or Visa, earning points) – you might as well do that.

You will get the £35 credit, which if you have the basic card means you are in the same financial position as taking a refund, and you still have the Curve card for overseas use (if you don’t have a 0% card) and ATM use and for places where it is treated as a debit card.

Curve prepaid MasterCard

And, of course, if you take a refund you would need to pay £35 again later if / when Amex functionality returns. If you have the premium version, the maths is different and you may find the full refund better than a £50 credit.

It is always fun and games working with start-ups ….

The email:

I’m Shachar, the CEO of Curve. Today we’ve got some disappointing news. American Express have asked us to pause their functionality with Curve – which means you will not be able to use your Curve card with your Amex for the time being. This begins at midday on May 31st UK time – you’ll shortly receive another email with practical details of what will happen when we pause the American Express functionality – your Curve will continue to work with Mastercard and Visa.

American Express want to ensure there is a seamless customer support process for their Members when using their Card with Curve. We’re continuing discussions with their management, and hope that American Express decide to come back to Curve soon.

We’re continuing to build something big at Curve. The first ever platform to connect you to your everything money – transforming the way you handle your finances, bringing value and saving you time and money. We’re already connecting up all your bank cards, tracking your expenses in real time and saving you money with zero FX fees when you travel. This is just the beginning – we’re working hard on future features such as the ability to move charges between funding cards after you’ve paid, bespoke loyalty rewards and cash-backs, peer-to peer payments and much more.

As a big thank you for being one of Curve’s early adopters we are giving Blue card members £35 and Black card members £50 worth of Curve Points if you spend a total of £1000 over the next three months. You’ll be able to spend your Curve Points at any merchant that accepts Mastercard using your Curve. Please see our FAQs for further details.

We hope you choose to stay with us to continue the exciting journey we’ve begun together. Please write to me directly – I’m happy to answer any questions you might have.

I’ll keep you updated.

Yours,

Shachar Bialick

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Comments (437)

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  • Simon says:
    24 May24 May 10:17

    Poor to say the least. I didn’t expect Amex to stay long term but not this short a time!

    I suspect the refunds will be putting some pressure on their cash flow. I think there is a demand in the market for this sort of thing, question is whether the segment is viable enough without people that required Amex functionality enough to spend 35 quid on it.

  • Lee Harris says:
    24 May24 May 10:18

    My refund request has gone in. I acquired it purely for the Amex functionality. I’ve earned a shed-load of points I would otherwise have missed, and it saved me far more than the registration fee when I used it to pay for a holiday – the holiday company were charging £70 to pay by Amex, nothing to pay by Mastercard. But without the Amex functionality, it’s worth very little to me.

    Perhaps if they’d said what their reward program was actually going to look like I’d think twice, but as it stands, once is enough.

    • Alan says:
      24 May24 May 15:14

      Yes I found it baffling that they launch with a possible rewards programme but never provided details and still are not doing so yet promising points in this scheme!

  • Jonny says:
    24 May24 May 10:20

    I’m keeping mine for the time being and have got excellent value out of the card to date.

    Amex are proud of their customer support (and rightly so – it is streets ahead of most others) so clearly have been fed up with the volume of queries they must have got based on curve transactions.

    however, ultimately they stand to gain from the partnership, in that they can essentially generate fees from merchants that don’t accept Amex. So i would have thought that longer term it is in their interests to partner with Curve. Let’s see…

    • john says:
      24 May24 May 10:30

      Perhaps the Customer Service cost of dealing with Curve was higher than the fees they were gaining

  • Max says:
    24 May24 May 10:22

    Is there a monthly spend limit on the Curve card?
    I need to pay my council and energy bills (in advance) to hit my BAPP target.
    Might as well do this before 31st May and then cancel the card or keep it dormant.

    P.S. I could do this at the co-op stores too.

  • Anton says:
    24 May24 May 10:22

    Is this only related the “official” AMEX cards? How about i.e. TSB Amex or Lloyds?

    • Vinz says:
      24 May24 May 10:23

      I think it’s all of them. If you go on their website it’s been updated and there’s no Amex cards a tall, branded and non-branded.

      • Anton says:
        24 May24 May 10:48

        Yep, saw that as well, lets see if Ruffles will has any insight on this tomorrow

  • Vinz says:
    24 May24 May 10:22

    It was beautiful and exciting, I’m going to use it for another week then I’m out. Hopefully they won’t go busted before then. 🙂

  • Dave says:
    24 May24 May 10:23

    I’ve withdrawn well over £2,000 in the last two months alone and had no issues with either AmexAmex or Curve.

    I hope the Curve points rewards thing is worth staying with them.

  • Gulz says:
    24 May24 May 10:27

    I’ve put just under 5K on my Curve (black version) since I got the card a month or so ago. My spend has mostly been at places where I don’t expect to ask for a refund. If there was any chance I might want I refund, I’d use my Visa just so I got the Section 75 protection. Now that Amex is gone (and if you read between the lines in the CEO’s email, Amex ain’t coming back), this card is as good as any other pre paid card around that just uses Visa/MC as underlying.
    The only USP left are: a. Realtime tracking of transactions via the App, b. 0 or 1% FX fees, c. A mythical loyal;ty scheme.
    Supercard offers the first two, so these arn’t real USPs (although Supercard is going away, but there are other similar prepaid card like Revolut that offer the same USPs). Any the mythical loyalty scheme – no one knows anything about it or how it works. My big spend on Curve was in the hope that when the loyalty scheme is launched, my spend would count and I’d get double the rewards. Don’t see that happening anymore.
    I think I’ll keep the card until 31st, and then make a call. Might keep the card but ask them to downgrade it to Blue… we’ll see. But thoroughly disappointed by the withdrawal of Amex.

    • JamesWag says:
      24 May24 May 12:09

      So with £5k of spend plus the £50 refund you’ve been offered (with conditions & risk of company collapse) how much would you earn out of their rewards points ?

      Don’t know what the earning rate on the black card is ??

      • Gulz says:
        24 May24 May 13:45

        Virgin black Amex is 2 miles per £. So I have made just under £10k miles. Having said that, if Curve didn’t exist, I would have made about £7k miles since a lot of the places I used Curve at took Amex anyways, and the ones that didn’t, I would’ve used Virgin Black Visa earning 1 mile per £. So in effect, at the cost of £25 Curve gave me nearly 3k miles – making it about 0.83 pence per mile. Not bad, but not great either. Over a longer term I could have increased the earning rate, but alas!

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