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• Mike says:

  25 Sep25 September 05:49

  RIP curve card… is this the it end?

  • N says:

    25 Sep25 September 06:32

    No, no it isn’t

  • James says:

    25 Sep25 September 07:07

    Not the end, but it does sort of mess up their marketing ‘only need one card’. I’m not farting around using a card without embossed numbers on it and an app to change underlying cards each time, when a simpler solution – for me anyway – is just to have two cards in my wallet. So, not dead, just dead for all my spending except HMRC – and how likely is that going to continue?

  • Big dave says:

    25 Sep25 September 07:47

    not at all – i only used it for forex and to carry less cards in my microwallet – was never into the ATM cash recycling thing – and if i was then I’d jump to a product that does do it now – oh wait there isn’t one. The app is quite good and the time machine part is excellent when you forget to switch card – and for business trips scanning receipts and tagging business expenses is a saviour. The new trends feature shows me I spend way too much on takeaways at the office.

  • TGLoyalty says:

    25 Sep25 September 08:03

    Not at all. Still use it daily and even better now it’s 0%. Just need to work out if I’m on a real black card

• Optimus Prime says:

  25 Sep25 September 05:57

  Be careful… In the past I have seen Creation adding charges once the statement is actually generated, not then when the transactions are cleared.

  • BLT says:

    25 Sep25 September 07:19

    Agreed. Very likely creation will add a cash advance fee on the next statement.

    • Stephen C says:

      25 Sep25 September 07:37

      Unfortunately my statement date was Thursday, so will leave it a month and see what comes through on that.

• Si says:

  25 Sep25 September 05:58

  I used Curve twice to make small cash withdrawals (one was only £10). The process was charged to my Creation issued IHG MasterCard.

  Each transaction received a £5 handling fee and also gained interest on the ‘cash’. I.e. massive waste of money

  I assume this is same for others, as above it says Creation does not charge for ATM use?

  • Ian Gleave says:

    25 Sep25 September 06:44

    And is another downside that the card issuer will now report to the credit reference agencies that you’ve taken cash from a credit card?

    • Shoestring says:

      25 Sep25 September 06:56

      Yes, that can happen.

      Isn’t talk of ‘success’ a bit premature? Could all change negatively by next week.

      • Genghis says:

        25 Sep25 September 07:49

        Don’t worry guys. All seems to be covered by the HfP money back guarantee.

    • Rob says:

      25 Sep25 September 08:01

      Yes. Not necessarily a problem as long as you are not pushing your credit limit. Anyone with £10k of headroom on their credit card who withdraws £100 is clealy not in trouble, someone up against their credit limit who starts withdrawing cash clearly is.

      • Michael Jennings says:

        25 Sep25 September 13:58

        I make foreign ATM withdrawals on my Halifax Creation card fairly often – once a month or so. I do so because this way I don’t get charged any fees to withdraw cash. The amounts withdrawn are tiny and a tiny fraction of my credit limit – often the equivalent of £50 or less for small things in case I find somewhere that doesn’t take cards. I seldom use this card for anything else – I use a Post Office card for foreign currency purchases.

        This obviously isn’t financially irresponsible behaviour, and I am sure most (or at least many) banks are smart enough to realise this.

  • Dave says:

    25 Sep25 September 07:13

    Interesting as Raffles/Rob wasn’t charged. I withdrew £100 yesterday so will see what happens when that clears..

  • Alex W says:

    25 Sep25 September 07:20

    Oh dear, sorry to hear that Si. that seems to counteract Rob’s experience, as you say definitely not worth the risk any more.

  • Dave says:

    25 Sep25 September 07:41

    Was the charges instant once it cleared or when you got your statement?

    • Alan says:

      25 Sep25 September 08:31

      Agree, that’s a key question for anyone that receives charges, otherwise stuck waiting a month for each test!

  • Joseph Heenan says:

    25 Sep25 September 12:50

    I’ve been having declines trying to use my curve to pay my amex bill. Weirdly it comes up in curve as something like “you’ve exceeded your daily spend limit, please contact curve support” but speaking to IHG customer service the issue is that the transactions are coming through coded as “cash”, which means there’s a limit of either £300 or £500 a day (I wasn’t listening too closely to be honest).

    Sounds like using curve to pay an amex bill is dead now, either way.

    I’ve tried a trivial payment to amex from my HSBC world elite card via curve, let’s see how that goes…

• John says:

  25 Sep25 September 05:59

  Anyone tried to pay HMRC?

  • Si says:

    25 Sep25 September 06:06

    Yep. Worked with no problems. All charged through with no fees (it wasn’t a massive bill though – people have said about issues with daily/weekly/monthly limits)

    • Tom H says:

      25 Sep25 September 07:44

      +1 paid just under 3k with IHG linked to Curve no probs

      • Swiss says:

        25 Sep25 September 10:57

        Is there not a chance Creation will also see this as cash??

      • mr dee says:

        25 Sep25 September 22:04

        Its not cash so why would they!!!

    • John says:

      25 Sep25 September 07:50

      Thanks. Now to decide whether to pay now or wait until closer to the January deadline and risk further changes to Curve…

      • CDB says:

        25 Sep25 September 07:56

        Is it only personal card which works for HMRC or commercial too?

      • Andrew L says:

        25 Sep25 September 08:42

        Commercial card will work but HMRC will charge you a whopping fee for doing so. Debit will work fine and fees free, as long as you use your Curve card for other day to day spending too.

      • mr dee says:

        25 Sep25 September 22:04

        See as they will also pay you interest you may as well pay early

  • mr dee says:

    25 Sep25 September 22:03

    Yeah why wouldn’t it!

• Ian M says:

  25 Sep25 September 06:29

  OT – SPG Amex

  25th Sept now, just wondering if anyone has received any points in the last week or so for the last couple of months?

  • The streets says:

    25 Sep25 September 06:54

    Still waiting. I was told the points would transfer on the 19th but then to allow for a “few days” to show on the account..

    • Ian M says:

      25 Sep25 September 07:02

      Is the 19th your normal regular date for the points to move from SPG Amex to your Starwood account?

      • The streets says:

        25 Sep25 September 07:13

        Yes for months up until July and then nothing since

      • Ian M says:

        25 Sep25 September 08:14

        Doesn’t sound hopeful to me in that case. In the normal course of events, it should land in your Starwood account within 48hrs of leaving your SPG Amex.

        So anyone else, has anyone received their points yet?

  • Alan says:

    25 Sep25 September 08:32

    Still waiting. Have been waiting to close SPG card for a month now so getting a bit fed up with this (and costing me pro-rata annual fee!)

    • Daniel says:

      25 Sep25 September 22:15

      I cancelled mine during the outage period, no points have posted yet – kept track (dumped the data from MR into Excel and also took screenshots) of what is missing, so will be chasing them in a week or so if nothing has showed up. They confirmed on the phone that the points would post after closure. I wasn’t going to sit around and wait another 2-3 months and keep paying the annual fee on the card to wait for SPG/AMEX’s mess!

  • Lee says:

    25 Sep25 September 08:51

    No, I got feeling that won’t happen soon. I’ve provided new SPG no, I will file another complain if no points hit my account in Oct

  • Scallder says:

    25 Sep25 September 09:05

    posted the below Yesterday:

    my wife has the SPG Amex and points have gone out of the account for August and September. She called Amex earlier and they said that the linking to the new accounts was meant to be done by mi-September however the project has over-run, and that it will probably be a few more weeks to sort it all out. They said there’s nothing they can do at their end, but it looks like points from the SPG Amex won’t be hitting accounts until perhaps mid-October at the earliest. Rather frustrating as want to shut her card down but won’t do it until the points have been transferred properly. Her transfer date is around the 8th of the month.

    • Ian M says:

      25 Sep25 September 09:25

      Oh my, if it’s going to be middle October that’s terrible news. Such bad customer service!! It’s unreal

    • momomo says:

      25 Sep25 September 10:17

      [my response to Scallder’s post yesterday:]

      I’m in exactly the same situation and was told similar over Live Chat. However, they also requested that I provide them with my new Marriott / SPG number (the new number following account merger). I was assured that all outstanding points (Aug + Sep) would be transferred over when points from my October statement are sent (for my account: 27th-ish Oct).

      • Ian M says:

        25 Sep25 September 12:03

        Last time I spoke to Amex they promised me the same. My date is 5th October. I’m due over a million!!

• Gary says:

  25 Sep25 September 06:43

  Rob- when are you publishing your St Regis NYC review?

  • Rob says:

    25 Sep25 September 08:03

    It is blocked by the AA flight review (assuming I go chronologically) which will take half a day to do.

• SFr says:

  25 Sep25 September 06:59

  Tesco Bank credit card: £3.99 CASH TRANSACTION FEE debited Fri BUT no cash withdrawn! Paid Amex £100 using Curve linked to TCC on Thu. Processed on Fri. No other transactions.

  • Swiss says:

    25 Sep25 September 07:21

    If you can no longer pay Amex via Curve without incurring a fee that’s really bad news…. If and when the ability to pay HMRC with no charge goes then Curve really does seem to have lost any point to me. Was always too good to be true.

    • Matt says:

      25 Sep25 September 07:28

      Say what you can pay a credit card bill with curve linked to a credit card?!

      • Crafty says:

        25 Sep25 September 07:48

        Well, you could. Now all evidence suggests it’s dead.

        Now PLEASE can we all agree not to kill any other current or future golden geese by openly discussing them!

      • @mkcol says:

        25 Sep25 September 10:34

        @Crafty – How on earth are we meant to find out about these sorts of workarounds if we’re not discussing them?

      • xcalx says:

        25 Sep25 September 11:51

        Should mention the £20 credit lasts 1 month.

      • David says:

        25 Sep25 September 13:09

        Shh, I’m still playing the Club Individual game…

      • Nick M says:

        25 Sep25 September 13:48

        Thank you – passing through Euston at the weekend so will pick one up.. if you order online do they post the card out? How quickly does it arrive?

  • Anna says:

    25 Sep25 September 07:38

    My Curve card has been blocked from paying Amex since the second time I tried it!

  • JayG says:

    25 Sep25 September 11:01

    @mkcol – Completely agree. Nearly everyone finds out from somewhere / someone but then want it to become a secret only after they’ve heard of it.

    • Crafty says:

      25 Sep25 September 18:33

      There are better ways to talk about stuff (I.e. obliquely) than explicitly saying things like “omg I can pay off my Amex bill using Curve???”

      Employees of both companies read this website.

      • Rob says:

        25 Sep25 September 21:30

        Everyone reads it. Go it to loyalty conferences, as I do, and see. We do 1.3 million page views per month so if you think you’re quietly chatting to someone, think again.

      • mr dee says:

        25 Sep25 September 22:08

        agree no secrets here, thankfully easy to get lost

• SFr says:

  25 Sep25 September 07:04

  Update: Payment to Amex earlier last week went through as professional services. The offending payment processed on Fri went through as FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS-MERCHANDISE AND SERVICES

  • Rob says:

    25 Sep25 September 08:00

    They didn’t finish changing all the coding until Thursday night so don’t rely on any experience from before Thursday.

  • Simon says:

    25 Sep25 September 08:50

    Ditto payment from barclaycard. Some consultancy perhaps?

  • Boi says:

    25 Sep25 September 09:25

    Is “financial institutions” likely to attract a fee? I see that on Hilton and virgin transactions now.
    2. Does clearing it early reduce the fee or doesn’t matter?
    3. Anyone know if fees for those 2 cards are charged immediately or when statement is generated?

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