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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 (114)

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

  • Lumma says:
    17 Jan17 January 07:44

    I lost my original curve card and was really impressed at how quickly they sent a replacement. They also sent me a black one and I seem to be getting the higher rate of rewards too. Not that I’m gonna complain about that…

  • JamesB says:
    17 Jan17 January 07:50

    Yes, hapily saved 40k on a 4 night stay at Mayfair booked in the final hours, would have preferred something nicer but there were problems with availability.

  • Jo says:
    17 Jan17 January 08:11

    Is it 200 per card or 200 per account for atm?

    • Lumma says:
      17 Jan17 January 08:28

      Account. You can withdraw more but you get charged 2% after the first £200

      • Ed says:
        17 Jan17 January 08:43

        Is that a 2% charge by Curve? As in, does it still record as a purchase on the underlying credit card?

        • Lumma says:
          17 Jan17 January 09:23

          Yes, so if you take a second £200 out they’ll charge your card £204 as a purchase. There’s a limit of £200 per day in ATM withdrawals though

  • Neil says:
    17 Jan17 January 08:13

    Does applying for Curve hit your credit file at all? It sounds like it shouldn’t as you don’t actually get credit from them, but with the amount of applications HFP readers likely do it’s worth knowing!

    • George says:
      17 Jan17 January 08:34

      Nope, I think they do a soft check to verify your identity but no account entries and certainly no hard scoring.

  • Andrew says:
    17 Jan17 January 08:43

    “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”

    This reminds me of the famous Amex Travellers Cheque Card in about 2004 – which due your wisdon Rob saw me spend 10 minutes *every day* taking £300 off the card and paying it straight into my bank account using the same cash machine … 10k per month… I still have the letter from Amex advising me that my card was suspended as it “is not being used in the manner in which it is intended”

    Happy days….

  • Gulz says:
    17 Jan17 January 09:08

    Rob, do you know if the public version of Curve is recognised as a Business Credit Card with HMRC?

    • Rob says:
      17 Jan17 January 09:32

      They say it is a Debit MasterCard – if true that could be interesting for tax. It is not a Business Credit Card, you would not be allowed by MC to hold one if it was.

      • Lumma says:
        17 Jan17 January 10:06

        If it’s a debit MasterCard, what would stop you from paying the balance due on your credit card with it, with the same linked credit card each month and basically getting perpetual interest free credit?

      • Alex W says:
        17 Jan17 January 10:41

        Ooooh interesting 🙂

      • JamesB says:
        17 Jan17 January 11:18

        I think it depends on individual payment processing systems used by merchants. I have had it go through some like a debit card ok but last month I got declined by a merchant claiming it was a credit card. These were all online transacyions, not instore.

        • Alex W says:
          17 Jan17 January 12:36

          Do you mean the business version of Curve that you currently hold? I think Rob is suggesting the new consumer version of Curve will be treated differently, as a debit card. Here’s hoping. Or, at least that I can take advantage before the masses rinse it and it gets pulled.

        • Leo says:
          17 Jan17 January 14:01

          So does this mean it will go through as it used to do on Supercard….HMRC used to think that was a debit card.

      • the_real_a says:
        17 Jan17 January 15:15

        ummm lets see – the entity i suspect is “Mastercard Consumer Prepaid” since its technically a prepaid master card. The business curve is classified as “Mastercard Business Prepaid”

        What you guys are hoping for is “Mastercard Consumer Debit” which is typically reserved for banks.

        https://www.mastercard.co.uk/content/mccom/en-gb/about-mastercard/what-we-do/interchange.html/

        • Rob says:
          17 Jan17 January 15:37

          They are now debit cards, see the FAQ etc:

          What’s the difference between the Curve prepaid and Curve debit Mastercard®?
          Very little! Our debit cards work in exactly the same way as our prepaid cards and you shouldn’t notice a difference at all.

        • JamesB says:
          17 Jan17 January 17:10

          So if I am following this properly then we are potentially better getting the new consumer version of the card?

        • JamesB says:
          17 Jan17 January 19:48

          Liz, where are you… 🙂

        • Liz says:
          17 Jan17 January 21:26

          JamesB – see my note earlier today – I contacted them today and was told I am not on the very long wait list but it will be early Feb before I get my card and they reactivate my account.

        • Gulz says:
          18 Jan18 January 16:31

          I messaged curve yesterday. They told me that one card per customer. Since I have the business version of the card, they won’t give me the consumer version.

  • Harj says:
    17 Jan17 January 09:14

    What’s the fee for withdrawing from an ATM abroad using the business card? I thought it was 1% but it seems now that it may have changed to 1% plus £2 if it’s not in your home currency – or is that just the new personal card?

    • TGLoyalty says:
      17 Jan17 January 10:25

      From what I remember that’s always been the case for ATM withdrawals abroad.

      Tbh Lloyd’s Avios Amex or clarity for cash work best abroad. Just use the curve in places that don’t take AMEX as the rewards plus free night means the 1% charge isn’t so bad. Also UK rewards aren’t bad in M&S etc

  • AndyF says:
    17 Jan17 January 09:35

    Thanks Rob for the Curve referral code, I signed up for a new curve card a few days ago and used it!

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