American Express suspends its relationship with Curve Card, just 36 hours after launch

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• AndyF says:

  30 Jan30 January 09:31

  I’m very annoyed to hear this, I only managed a £100 top up yesterday. I suppose if Amex tried to get better acceptance we wouldn’t have this issue. So I hope Amex uses this as a learning curve to increase their foot print. Curve I hope you survive you’ve been very useful for HMRC payments!

• Will Avery says:

  30 Jan30 January 09:37

  What a shambles!! If they’ve tested it in Beta and didn’t like it I can hardly see Amex coming back.

  I’m going to downgrade to blue once my three month trial is over.

  Such a shame because I’ve got some reasonable business for Amex in the form of their business card but wont touch it without the Curve.

• stevenhp1987 says:

  30 Jan30 January 09:38

  This whole rollout seems rushed to me.

  1) Their T&C required 2 months notice to swap payment terms (none given)
  2) Seems they didn’t get approval from Amex first (oops)
  3) Beta users were offered 6 months free Curve Black or 4 months of Curve Metal… they charged both me and my wife £9.99 for the first “free” month despite being part of the beta program. They’ve pretty much ignored our emails over the last couple of days.

  Seems completely rushed and does not look good for Curve long term. Not overly surprised this has come back to bite them, it being rushed in violation of their own T&C seems like they were desperate for cash, and without Amex support, I can’t imagine many people rushing to pay £9.99 for poor insurance.

  It’s a shame, I was looking forward to using it to pay for some big ticket items that don’t take Amex, e.g. Council tax in April (they don’t take PayPoint…).

• Kiran says:

  30 Jan30 January 09:40

  From the language used on the Curve blog that was linked to earlier, it describes the new model as an “open beta.” I wonder if AmEx didn’t know that this “open beta” was going to be given such a large marketing push to sign up new customers and offered at all customers. I can imagine they were happy to trial it with a beta but then when a significant amount of money as payed into Curve wallets over 24 hours it suddenly didn’t seem like a beta anymore and was more of a product launch.

  • Alan says:

    30 Jan30 January 09:41

    Agree that could be a factor – was surprised they were doing a wider beta launch end of last week then it seemed open for all – perhaps some confusion between Curve and Amex as to quite what was on offer?

    • Andy says:

      30 Jan30 January 10:23

      I was certainly confused….On Thursday I was invited to a beta test, “limited to 10,000” so I rushed to sign up, only to discover that on Monday it was suddenly a free for all…

      I can’t help but wonder if someone made an ‘executive decision’ to change the schedule – especially considering terms and conditions weren’t changed until AFTER the launch, and their customer services seem to be wholly and completely incapable of dealing with the entirely predictable influx of problems and questions.

• Waddle says:

  30 Jan30 January 09:45

  Funny, I have a friend who rang up Amex yesterday thinking there might have been an issue on Amex’s side because he couldn’t top up his wallet, only to have the Amex rep tell him it was because “Curve failed to pay their contract renewal fee”.

• MrK says:

  30 Jan30 January 09:51

  How does everyone plan on getting a refund for the £150. I’ve sent multiple emails the past 2 days to no avail.

  To refund, is it best to email curve directly? Just a tad worried about the fact that they seem to be swarmed in emails at the moment. Or do I have grounds to charge back via Amex?

  • Thomas Howard says:

    30 Jan30 January 12:35

    I’m going to wait until Friday and see whats posted via email or on the community forum, if they’re silent I’m calling Lloyds for a charge back.

  • Alex says:

    30 Jan30 January 13:05

    Give them a chance, I am sure they will put out some communication on the matter today or tomorrow which will clarify the refund side of things.

    Regarding support – just imagine the flood of tickets over the last 2 days, first due to ‘Amex is up!’ news, then to ‘Amex is out’ news…

• thejudge says:

  30 Jan30 January 10:00

  just as i was getting excited about paying my hmrc bills and other expenses with suppliers with amex and it gets suspended before i could re-activate my card. i am gutted its been pulled

  • Ingemar says:

    30 Jan30 January 10:10

    Hello,

    With Billhop you are still able to pay HMRC and any invoice that is issued by a commercial entity.

    The recent restriction put in place regards payments with American Express cards to private individuals’ bank accounts.

    We are happy that you use our service.

    Best Regards,
    Billhop

    • Mr Dee says:

      30 Jan30 January 10:12

      2-3% on a HMRC bill, not first choice :/

  • luckyjim says:

    30 Jan30 January 10:15

    Plus BillHop sit in the money for several days. I’d be nervous if it was more than a couple of hundred quid.

    • Billhop says:

      30 Jan30 January 11:05

      Hi Jim,

      Billhop does not sit on the money for several days.
      The payment takes a couple of days to reach the end recipient as Billhop first has to receive the funds from the acquirer e.g. Amex which takes a couple of days. As soon as we receive the funds from the acquirer they are transferred to the end recipient. In addition we are a regulated Payment Institute and as such the funds that we receive from the acquirer, that we then are to pass on to the end recipient, are kept in a separate account for client funds. This means that they are always separated from Billhop’s estate in any circumstance and are never considered to be Billhop’s funds. Hope that this clarifies how the process works. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us at help@billhop.co.uk

• New Card says:

  30 Jan30 January 10:04

  Sounds to me like Curve should be putting in their competition law complaint to the European Commission before 29/03.

  • john doe says:

    30 Jan30 January 10:24

    Sounds from the quote from Amex that they told Curve they were not proceeding beyond the limited beta, and the Curve went ahead anyway and launched cards promoting Amex compatibility as a key point.

    Competiion law or otherwise, they should not be selling something to consumers if thier intended supplier has told them they will not be a supplier..

    • Judge says:

      30 Jan30 January 13:19

      Hear hear

  • will says:

    30 Jan30 January 11:16

    It’s questionable if curve have a case here, in my unprofessional opinion :). Amex must surely justify being a responsible lender to the FCA and I can easily see a clear reason for being very cautious to say the least in allowing charges to something like curve. As useful as curve is it does blur a lot of lines in the CC industry which have been long established with respect to consumer protection and liability. It’s one thing amex being exposed to a retailer going bankrupt before they supply goods (ie flybe where the cc companies were reported to be asking for a larger deposit from flybe in order to continue taking card payments) but it’s quite another to have exposure to the possibility of an interim holding balances in a wallet that could fold.

    It may even have been strategic on behalf of amex, allow curve a beta then pull support just as they launch, would be a really cheeky move but I can’t imagine the curve launch being a secret to amex.

    • New Card says:

      30 Jan30 January 13:31

      What you describe as strategic from Amex would be the crux of Curve’s argument – Amex abused their dominant market position to restrict competition. Strategic yes, but possibly unlawful. But not my area of expertise 🙂

  • Despair says:

    30 Jan30 January 12:50

    Another misguided person who believes something is actually going happen on 29/03.

    • New Card says:

      30 Jan30 January 13:32

      Whether or not anything happens then, if you have a potential claim under EU law which has arisen now you would be an idiot to sit on your hands instead of filing the complaint now.

      • Doug M says:

        30 Jan30 January 13:56

        I understood the EU makes no law, it’s issues directives which individual countries then put into national law. So unless the government have a raft of legislation ready for the 29th nothing changes law wise.

      • New Card says:

        30 Jan30 January 15:17

        The European Commission’s power to enforce competition law in the UK would be zero after Brexit which is a key change from now.

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