Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

More on Curve Card and cash withdrawals and earning points

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

A quick update on this subject, which has been discussed at length on HfP this week.

Whilst Curve announced last weekend that they were changing the coding on transactions, which would make ATM withdrawals visible to your card issuer, it turns out that they did not actually go through with this change until Thursday.  We were told it was happening last Monday.

If you made a cash withdrawal during Monday to Thursday and it was treated as a purchase – which it will have been – this does not necessarily mean that your card issuer will not pass on these new charges.  You need to have a transaction done from Friday onwards before you can be sure.

I did test Creation (IHG, Marriott credit cards) and MBNA (Horizon) transactions yesterday so let’s see how these end up.  You might want to wait before doing any further withdrawals.

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


best travel rewards credit cards

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – October 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

Get 5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

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.

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

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

50,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

18,000 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:

American Express Business Platinum

Up to 80,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

Get up to 40,000 points as a sign-up offer and FREE for a year Read our full review

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

10,000 points bonus – plus an extra 500 points for our readers Read our full review

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios 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 when you spend at least £2,000 per month.

Barclaycard Select Cashback Business Credit Card

Get 1% cashback when you spend at least £2,000 per month* Read our full review

Comments (199)

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

  • MDA says:

    Is there still a free £200 atm allowance for credit cards?

    Also, strangly enough my hilton card is being rejected at atms since last month. Tried twice now

  • Roger says:

    I feel curve need to be fully demystified here 🙂

  • John says:

    So are there eight types of Curve currently circulating?
    – commercial vs personal
    – blue vs black
    – with vs without embossed numbers – any practical differences between these?

    Does every combination exist?

    • the_real_a says:

      I`ll try to give it a go…

      Personal Vs Business – this is a legacy thing as Curve’s original liscence meant they could only issue business card. They get 1.5% from the interchange fee on these cards. The personal card came later and they only get 0.3% on the interchange. Business cards are only meant to be used for commercial transactions. I mention this as a business card user Curve has been good to me and given me a few things for free. I would guess business card customers are the only profitable customers right now.

      Blue and Black – Blue was the free card giving 1.5% on the reward partners, with the Black (£50 one off annual fee) card giving 3% on the reward partners. No other difference.

      Embossed / not embossed – just card design to excite millennial’s who are confused as to the real purpose of the embossed numbers. No practical difference if your eyesight is working as the numbers are printed on the back for online transactions.

      Annual fee card coming in 6 weeks – a feature packed new card that may be metal and offer innovative features such as Insurance, enhanced free ATM and FX limits and maybe a small AMEX allowance. they have also been desperate to launch some kind of credit product so i would not be surprised if you could not go “back in time” to loan.

      Prepaid Vs Debit – i think everyone is now forced onto the debit card so wont go into this.

  • Jo says:

    Any tips for getting around the annual limit?

  • John says:

    OT (from FT) passenger fuel surcharges will be permitted ex-HKG starting 1st Nov, in order to “enhance competition”. The date refers to ticket issuance, not date of travel.

    Unlike the previous system where the amount was capped it seems that airlines can now charge what they like. The minor positive is that advertised prices must now include all taxes and charges.

    • KevMc says:

      Read this last night. Very disappointing. I would have hoped more countries would join the fight against these, rather than giving the airlines the ability to do what they want. In my view, if they want to add them, they should have to be against the ticket type, and always be the same as each other, whether you are paying in cash or points.

      So am I correct in thinking this leaves just Brazil and the Philippines that actually outlaws them? And Japan and Korea remain capped, meaning YQ on redemptions is low?

      • John says:

        I think YQ/YR is usually the same whether you pay with points or money.

        The issue is that it devalues points because to the passenger paying with money, there is no difference between £1000 fare + £50 taxes and airport charges, vs £500 fare + £500 fuel surcharge + £50 taxes and airport charges. But there is a big difference to someone paying with points.

        Under the previous system the HK Civil Aviation Department would set the maximum fuel surcharge that could be levied every month. This was at least somewhat related to the price of fuel. Now, like in most of the world, it will be unregulated and there is no easy way of actually finding out the charges short of querying the GDS for every combination of airports.

        I wonder how much the HK government paid those consultants to tell them this.

    • RIccatti says:

      I think Brazil does not have it anymore (zero fuel surcharge), in any case it was not really enforced: Avios.com and BA always priced with full surcharge out of Brazil.

  • Alex W says:

    Thanks for the warning Rob. This could have caught a lot of people out. It’s either very sneaky from Curve, it they are just not thinking through the consequences of what they are doing and how they are communicating it.

    • Alex W says:

      *or they

    • swhostring says:

      they are a bunch of amateurs in some respects, got a lot to learn about clear comms, compliance, don’t let the CEO bully his way to changes without letting other people say: hang on, have you thought about this?

  • Mark2 says:

    Perhaps they had no choice. The card companies may have insisted on receiving the correct code or not accept transactions. But badly handled.
    (total speculation).

  • The Streets says:

    For Curve to work on a method to allow credit card companies to receive the correct code has worked in their favour. This will then lead to a cut down in the number of people purely using it for cash withdrawals

    • the_real_a says:

      As the Chinese say: If you cut off the chickens foot, you often kill the chicken…

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

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.