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

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Here’s something I didn’t see coming.  After launching with much fanfare on Monday, American Express suspended its relationship with Curve Card on Tuesday night.

This came just 36 hours after Amex functionality was launched to the public.  Amex cards had, however, been activated for a test group of Curve Card users for a few months before this.

(EDIT:  Curve has now published a lengthy blog post explaining how the split with American Express occurred.  I copied it into a separate article here.)

If you look on the Curve website, none of the cards are showing the option to link to American Express.  This means that the company is effectively back to the position it was in before Monday.

American Express sent me a statement last night which said:

“American Express participated in a limited Curve beta test where we enabled a small number of Card Members to load funds onto an e-wallet using their Amex Card in the Curve app. Following this beta test we informed Curve that we would not participate in the further roll out of the Curve e-wallet.”

I spoke with Curve’s CEO early this morning and, whilst for legal reasons I don’t want to repeat what he said, he confirmed the position with American Express.

Curve has sent the following to users:

“We are extremely sorry that the top-up functionality for your Amex wallet is currently disabled.

Like thousands of other UK merchants, Curve has a valid merchant agreement to accept Amex payments into its e-wallet. However, on Tuesday evening, Amex decided to terminate this agreement and block all Amex transactions to Curve with immediate effect.

Amex has given no good or fair reason for their decision and we feel it is entirely disproportionate and discriminatory to Curve and all our (joint) customers. UK payment regulations clearly state that Curve should be allowed to access the Amex payment network on a level-playing field with every other fee-paying and legitimate merchant.

Rest assured that you can still spend the funds that you have already topped up to your existing Amex Wallets. If you have contacted us for support, we apologise for the delay in response and will endeavour to do so as soon as possible. We will update you as soon as we have any further information.

With our customers interests in mind, and our mission to deliver to you a truly innovative product, Curve intends to fight Amex’s decision with its full might. We believe financial freedom is the future and we are prepared to fight for yours.”

If there is any more news during the day I will drop it into this article.

TechCrunch has decent take on the subject here if you want to read more.  It is worth noting that the Amex statement given to TechCrunch – 18 hours after my statement – is a bit different:

“We participated in a limited Curve beta test in which we explored enabling Card Members to load funds onto an e-wallet using their Amex Card in the Curve app. A very small number of Amex Card Members participated in the test. Based on the results, we communicated to Curve that we would not participate in the further roll out of Curve because of concerns related to the overall American Express Card Member experience. Subsequently we terminated our contract with them.”

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

PS.  In a separate (or perhaps not entirely separate) note, payment company Billhop – we covered Billhop here – sent the following email to users yesterday:

“Due to guidelines from American Express you will no longer be able to make payments to private accounts with an American Express card regardless if the purpose of the payment is related to a business transaction. This change will come into effect on the 7th of February 2019.

You will still be able to use a MasterCard and/or VISA card for transactions to private accounts relating to business transactions including, but not limited to, payroll, housekeeping, rent, nanny services, etc.

Please note that peer-to-peer remittance is still not allowed regardless of card.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.”

Note that this only covers payments to sole traders.  You can continue to use Amex via Billhop to pay a company, local authority, HMRC etc.

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Comments (788)

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

  • Jas says:
    30 Jan30 January 10:04

    I just applied for a Curve Metal yesterday, along with my wife, for the Amex functionality. Is it possible to cancel our application now, can we get a refund?

    • Richster says:
      30 Jan30 January 10:09

      LIkewise, I guess we have to contact Curve direct for this

    • Mary Berry says:
      30 Jan30 January 10:27

      Maybe ask Curve? 🙄

      • Thomas Howard says:
        30 Jan30 January 11:11

        I’m still waiting for a response to a query regarding limits I sent on Monday. I wouldn’t expect a fast response after this fiasco.

    • Frenske says:
      30 Jan30 January 11:26

      Yes. I think it was mentioned in the T&C though I was looking for something less. I think there was a 14 day cool-off period in which you can cancel without costs.

  • luckyjim says:
    30 Jan30 January 10:05

    Curve’s say they are a data company not a finance company.

    And yet they invite someone like ME to take part in their beta?

  • Mr Dee says:
    30 Jan30 January 10:10

    The launch was a mess, they didn’t even have lounge club setup to go, how can you expect people to sign up and wait for features to come down the line when you already stuffed people last time with the black card features!

    In the mist of Amex and Curve colliding over issues, I will suggest n idea for Curve to continue, launch their own points scheme where you will get a return on spend i.e 50% of the fee they get and for premium members that pay monthly 75% plus other benefits.

    • Callum says:
      30 Jan30 January 10:55

      There’s no way on Earth they could ever afford to give out points. You do realise their cut is pretty much zero?

      • Mr Dee says:
        30 Jan30 January 12:30

        Yes of course, I don’t see many other options that are going to work out in order for them to be able to charge a monthly fee that they need to in order to generate revenue, the monthly fees alone could generate useful cashflow. If you have any other suggestions that might work feel free to post them excluding Amex…

  • Rolfe says:
    30 Jan30 January 10:10

    Presumably Amex make less in charges from one top up payment to the curve wallet, than they would from multiple payments totalling the same value? Maybe this is part of their reasoning, but I don’t know much about their fees…

    • Mr Dee says:
      30 Jan30 January 10:13

      Would be nice to know Amex’s reasoning but only go to hear it from Curve or Amex direct

    • Rob says:
      30 Jan30 January 10:17

      But it is all incremental for Amex as you are using Curve at places where Amex is not taken

      • luckyjim says:
        30 Jan30 January 10:28

        Yes. Like your friendly neighborhood money launderer.

      • shd says:
        30 Jan30 January 10:34

        I’m sure there are any number of clever people here who could come up with ways for Amex to drive incremental volume by dropping margin and/or by bending card scheme rules.

        Very few of those ways would count as “good ideas”.

      • GraemeA says:
        30 Jan30 January 10:35

        Yes, so Curve cards help Amex take business away from the competition (visa/mc) by effectively expanding the range of places which accept Amex. Apologies if that’s stating the obvious.

        Amex also presumably get the data on where the purchases are made? Helpful in targeting new retail partners.

        As you say Mr Dee, good to get this from the horses’ mouths.

        • John says:
          30 Jan30 January 10:39

          Curve is a mastercard… Amex doesn’t get the data unless Curve was telling them (without telling us they were)

        • Alan says:
          30 Jan30 January 10:40

          No, Amex would only see the topup to Curve, they wouldn’t see how it was spent from the wallet.

        • Mike says:
          30 Jan30 January 12:28

          I guess that was always Amex’s goal – perhaps in reality they found that it displaced spend with existing Amex merchants (due to convenience on the cardholders part) at a lower merchant rate than what they would have got otherwise.

          The issuer does see the merchant data – I have a curve card and the source card statement says something like “CRV*SAINSBURYS…” in the merchant field.

          • Alan says:
            30 Jan30 January 13:10

            Yes but Amex didn’t work that way because of the wallet functionality…

      • David says:
        30 Jan30 January 11:55

        Except for the foreign travel part – that would be taking fee away from Amex.

  • Evan says:
    30 Jan30 January 10:18

    I’m about as fed up with Curve as I am with Brexit. Next!

  • rams1981 says:
    30 Jan30 January 10:34

    In the main curve may suffer. I’m fine with it though as will link to ihg and hsbc world elite and still get decent earnings where I otherwise wouldn’t. So I hope they survive.

    Luckily I’m legacy black and haven’t upgraded so in a decent position relatively.

  • Christian says:
    30 Jan30 January 10:41

    Amex should launch a visa debit card / charge card combo and have done with it. Not that they ever will. It’s deja vue all over again. First there’s Amex then there isn’t. Then there is, then there isn’t. At least Curve hasn’t actually cost me anything. I hope this will temper the “best thing since sliced bread” editorials we’ve seen about Curve from this site. It isn’t. And that’s been proven twice now.

  • Alex says:
    30 Jan30 January 10:42

    Many people here are way too harsh about Curve.

    I have been a Black card user for the last 3 months and had nothing but positive experience, including the recent beta. Yes, there were quirks – the very restricting 50K limit (which according to Rob has been lifted now, I know) and lack of detailed information about what’s exactly possible (eg I tried taking out a small amount of cash from my Amex wallet in China, and it did not work – it is clearly communicated now that you can’t do that, but I don’t think it was mentioned in beta) – but overall I got huge value out of using it even within 3 months.

    Even the support was responsive enough, though I can imagine they’ve not been able to cope since Monday.

    However, people seem to have unrealistic expectations about FinTech startups, especially service-wise. You simply can’t expect them to provide a phone line to call to be able to sort out issues in real-time, this is simply not feasible. I was about to write ‘they are not banks’, but in all honesty service at banks is now piss-poor anyway – and in most cases far less convenient that sending a message to Revolut/Curve etc.

    So let’s hear out what happened here first, and I wish Curve best of luck anyway as at least the concept is very appealing, would be said if another innovative thing was crushed by regulatory restrictions / big corporates.

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