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Why Curve Card is a no-brainer for UK air miles and points collectors

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Curve Card, the free Mastercard that allows you to merge all of your Mastercard and Visa cards into one product, has added an extra benefit – cashback rewards for new cardholders for three months.

This replaced the original rewards scheme offered during the beta phase.

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

What is Curve Card?

Put simply, every purchase you charge to your Curve Card 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 all of your Visa and Mastercard credit cards and then switch between them at will.

Curve Card is a debit card.  You can use it anywhere where a debit card is accepted – even places where credit cards are not accepted.  This includes paying HMRC as I showed here.

This is why Curve Card is worth having:

You make your debit card purchase using Curve Card

Curve recharges it to your linked Visa or Mastercard credit card

It goes through your linked Visa or Mastercard credit card as a purchase

It therefore earns points from your linked Visa or Mastercard

You have just earned credit card points from making a debit card transaction

And the best bit is that Curve Card is free.  In fact, it is better than free – Curve Card will pay you £5 for taking it out.

It actually gets even better, due to two additional Curve Card benefits:

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 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.

And now a rewards scheme too

Curve Card has recently launched a rewards scheme for new customers. 

For the first three months, it will pay you 1% cashback on your purchases as three retailers of your choice.

The retailers you can choose from include:

Tesco, Waitrose, Sainsburys, Starbucks, Caffe Nero, Pret A Manger, EAT, Deliveroo, Just Eat, Boots, GAP, H&M, Top Shop / Topman, ASOS, Zara, Ikea, House of Fraser, TFL, Gett, Virgin Trains, BP, Shell, Netflix, Spotify and more

If you pay £50 for Curve Premium – which I don’t recommend as the extra benefits are few – you can earn 1% back at six retailers instead of three and get access to a wider range which includes:

Amazon, Ocado, Apple, Selfridges, Whole Foods, Uber, easyJet, Four Seasons Hotels, Dishoom

Card limits

Before you too get excited, it is important to note that Curve imposes some limits on what you can spend.  Don’t think that you can instantly pay a huge VAT bill with it.

The maximum spending limit is £3750 per day, £20000 per month and £50000 per year.  As a new cardholder, you are likely to be capped at £2000 per day and £20000 per year.   This limits will increase as the company grows to trust you.

The other warning to note is that purchases with Curve Card do not get you Section 75 coverage in case the retailer goes bust.  This is because there is no direct contract between the card company and the merchant, as Curve sits inbetween.  However Curve does use Mastercard Chargeback for customers to claim on lost goods.

How to order a Curve Card

The Curve Card is FREE so there is no harm in trying it out.

(I am understating the case massively.  If you pay any bills which take a debit card but not a credit card, you would be crazy not to pay them with a Curve Card linked to a rewards Visa or Mastercard.  Similarly, if you withdraw cash from ATMs it is no-brainer to use a Curve Card for the first £200 per month as it will be treated as a points-earning purchase on your linked credit card.)

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.

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current sign-up bonuses.

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

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You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

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Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.

Barclaycard Select Cashback Business Credit Card

1% cashback uncapped* on all your business spending (T&C apply) Read our full review

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General

Comments (176)

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

  • Rob says:
    11 Mar11 March 10:33

    There is a difference between your limit and your ‘no fees’ limit.

  • Lee says:
    11 Mar11 March 11:20

    Note that with the recent changes in the terms of conditions any rewards now expire after 6 months if not used. So use any rewards that have sat in your account for a while.

    • Genghis says:
      11 Mar11 March 12:05

      This also came up with my conversation with Curve. Whilst it is indeed in the T&Cs, it is not currently being applied as they supposedly do not have the technology yet to implement it.

    • Alex W says:
      12 Mar12 March 06:11

      I tried this on both my wife’s and my own curve. I topped up my Amazon account with both our curve cards, £1 linked to credit card. Transactions both went through fine, no £1 holding charge.

      Then tried to top up £5 using curve rewards. Transaction failed both times because they deducted the £1 holding charge from the curve rewards balance. How strange and annoying! I can’t understand why they didn’t take the holding charge from the first transaction. Anyway, a week has passed and the £1 holding charges have finally been refunded.

      • Rob says:
        12 Mar12 March 08:47

        Amazon always take a £1 holding charge oj new cards. Remember that Amazon never asks for your security code when making a purchase – they use their own fraud protection which they believe has a similar impact but without the ‘drag’ caused by making customers dig out their CVV code.

      • Alex W says:
        13 Mar13 March 21:53

        Amazon didn’t take the holding charge off the first transaction of both curve cards. They only took a holding charge for the second transactions.

  • RussellH says:
    11 Mar11 March 11:30

    Sorry, but what does

    > more practical features too, such as the ability to export your spending data for analysis

    actually mean??

    I cannot think of when I have ever ‘analysed’ my spending – strange new chemicals I made back in my research days, yes, but not ‘spending’.

    Or does this just mean that Curve does not issue statements. Presumably there is no need, as it works as a gateway to another card that does issue monthly statements / bills?

    • the_real_a says:
      11 Mar11 March 11:52

      It means you can pull the transaction data in Xero or excel for account purposes. The new buzz in fintech is allowing greater access to one’s own data. For the business card this made perfect sense as you could easily account for expenses. For the consumer card its less of a benefit.

  • Kathryn says:
    11 Mar11 March 11:34

    Does anyone know if you can link it to a US card? For example, if my husband got a curve card could we link it to my US Safire visa?

  • Tilly says:
    11 Mar11 March 11:48

    Trying to sign up but the email from them after downloading the app isn’t coming through. Checked junk folder too and nothing. Oh well.

    • Tilly says:
      11 Mar11 March 12:08

      I wad obviously impatient. Signed up now but over 40,000 ahead of me …….

  • Bach says:
    11 Mar11 March 12:23

    What happens if I link a no FX fee card to curve (Halifax Clarity)? From what I understand it would still use the curve FX + 1% so in this case better not use curve abroad. Or did I miss something?

    • Andrew says:
      11 Mar11 March 12:32

      It only makes sense to link it to a rewards card that does charge FX fees, that way you pay the reduced 1% to Curve and still gain the rewards from the linked card. Halifax Clarity offers no rewards and charges no FX fees, but linking it to Curve would attract a 1% charge per transaction abroad……pointless.

      • Bach says:
        11 Mar11 March 12:34

        Well the “carry 1 card and leave the rest at home” was the point. But no point if that makes me lose money indeed. Thanks

        • Andrew says:
          11 Mar11 March 12:44

          In the UK I use Curve linked to Creation IHG card and also carry the same IHG card as back up.

          Abroad……same as above except I carry my Clarity card as back up instead of the IHG card.

        • George says:
          11 Mar11 March 12:49

          You can tell Curve the natural currency of the underlying card and they will charge that. This means in the USA you set clarity to USD and you’re good to go with no fee

    • Lee says:
      11 Mar11 March 12:32

      Use Clarity abroad if over £100 in value as you will be protected. No protection with Curve.

      Or I think you can change the underlying card currency to say USD if in the USA and avoid the 1%.

    • Alan says:
      12 Mar12 March 04:33

      Just change the currency for the linked card to the one you’re spending in and you’ll be sorted – I’ve done this for many different currencies on the Lloyds Avios Mastercard. Have now switched to using Revolut though for forex transactions since they made it free to top-up using CC, as I can get better benefits topping up Revolut balance from IHG.

  • Ash says:
    11 Mar11 March 12:42

    I’ve been using this card for a while now and can honestly say it’s a great card, never had any declines unlike the old Travelex card issued ironically by a global payment provider. Recently came back from San Fran where I got charged twice for one transaction and their customer service was very knowledgeable (tips can be charged under a separate transaction sometimes) and corrected it straight away. Just a shame you can’t link it to an Amex!

  • Andrew says:
    11 Mar11 March 12:50

    Remain on the curve rewards scheme I think, but you’d need to confirm that by sending a message to Curve.

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