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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.

  • The Streets says:
    30 Jan30 January 20:44

    How easy is it to close a Curve account?

    • Symon says:
      30 Jan30 January 21:08

      Another pertinent question: how easy is it to get Curve to securely destroy all the data they have on you?!

  • Dubs says:
    30 Jan30 January 20:46

    Wonder if all those recent amex surveys about what type of cards you hold and what type of spend you use them for has anything to do with this upset? New benefits on the horizon for amex i.e free fx maybe?

    • Symon says:
      30 Jan30 January 21:06

      I believe Curve, N26 etc has shown their is demand in the UK for Amex’s Cobalt Card. I cannot understand why they haven’t released it over here yet.

      • Thomas Howard says:
        30 Jan30 January 21:34

        Isn’t the Cobalt card only available in Canada and the MR points are restricted in what you can use them for?

        • Symon says:
          30 Jan30 January 22:03

          Yeah, it’s only available in Canada at the moment. That’s right, it works differently to a traditional MR product. Although it’s model of monthly fees, and increased MR points on Millennial focused spends, would make a real dent in market. I’m surprised Amex can’t/don’t see it.

      • Mr Dee says:
        31 Jan31 January 00:39

        I don’t really see it as a sign of it guaranteed to work as Curve doesn’t even offer points themselves

  • Navara says:
    30 Jan30 January 21:23

    Well reading this took my mind off Brexit

  • Mike says:
    30 Jan30 January 21:34

    Hey really annoyed with Billop change – It was great for paying “myself” in order to trigger Amex card sign up bonuses…

  • JPR says:
    30 Jan30 January 21:39

    @Andrew L: “You are covered under the FSCS up to £85,000 with any funds you may have in Curve. So your money is safe.” This is not correct.

    The funds at Curve are not covered by any deposit insurance scheme. At best, client funds are segregated although you wonder if they spend some time in Curve’s own accounts given the in-and-out of the business model (and Curve’s apparent lack of skill in some areas).

    • Tom says:
      30 Jan30 January 22:13

      Curve’s financial underpinning is largely provided by Wirecard from what I can gather – I’d be surprised if they actually handle any money themselves as they don’t have any regulatory permissions for that. The terms on their website say that the money in an Amex wallet is e-Money issued by Wirecard, who are authorised by the FCA. e-Money isn’t covered by the FSCS but there may be other forms of protection (eg segregated accounts, bank guarantees or insurance). But it’s more limited than FSCS.

      • JPR says:
        30 Jan30 January 22:29

        Client money is supposed to be segregated. However, if you think about Curve it must have funds sitting in its own account for a period (i.e. in from the linked card, out to the merchant paid by the Curve card). One hopes this is a very small amount of time for settlement. With the Amex top-ups the would need to sweep these into a separate client account held at Wirecard. Is this what has happened?

        • Tom says:
          30 Jan30 January 23:43

          If they are following the rules then I think money should either be segregated or covered by an insurance policy or guarantee (with the policy or guarantee set up to pay into a segregated account on insolvency) for both instances. I’m not certain actually whether they would sit on any money for Mastercard/Visa payments – it might be that sometimes funds get advanced before they receive incoming funds (as they would rely on authorisations being in place through the payment network).

          The rules (which are reflected in their T&Cs) also say that you can ask for the cash in your Amex wallet back at any time. Their T&Cs say they’ll do this by refunding back to your Amex card.

        • Mr Dee says:
          31 Jan31 January 00:36

          Good point, if they have to self fund whilst awaiting settlement that could cause some cash flow issues

    • Mr Dee says:
      31 Jan31 January 00:37

      Agree doubt it’s correct

  • Freddy says:
    30 Jan30 January 22:18

    Nora! How many comments?!

  • Bb90 says:
    30 Jan30 January 22:33

    Regarding my poor experience with Curve & in reply to questions below on how easy it is to close a Curve account & how they hold data once shut:

    I was abroad & tried to pull out cash from an ATM it did not work, I forgot about it.
    The next day I saw on the app repeated attempts from Curve trying to charge the card for this ATM transaction. I called the card issuer & told them to block any Curve transactions & emailed Curve telling them what happened & explaining I do not authorise them to put any transactions through to any of my cards.
    This is the Reply:

    “I can confirm that this transaction is pending as we were unable to capture the funds from your underlying account as we received a ‘Do Not Honour’ message from your bank (meaning they are blocking the transaction via Curve). Our system is trying to reconcile this transaction which is why you are seeing attempts to charge this card.

    Alternatively we can charge this to another card on your Curve account – please can you confirm when is a good time to recover the funds?

    Looking forward to hearing from you.
    Best wishes,
    NAME
    Team Curve”

    Thankfully the app let me remove all my cards from it which I did & I then emailed Curve to shut my account.
    Reply:

    “We will go ahead and raise a dispute against the transaction as No funds dispensed. Unfortunately we’re unable to close your account until we know the outcome of the dispute. Once the dispute is complete we will be able to close your account.

    In the meantime, please let us know if there’s anything else we can help you with.”

    I then emailed them my own set of t&c’s they would be abiding to if they wished me to remain a client of theirs. They never replied to me & I had to chase up confirming it was indeed shut. They never got back to me on the Dispute they opened.

    On another note a previous time, abroad, I had a bill of around $200 & my card was charged $800, something I should of checked at the time….Curve refused to talk to me about a dispute option, I went to the issuer (Virgin) & upon investigation they credited my account.

    • Mr Dee says:
      30 Jan30 January 23:26

      See this is another problem with Curve when their system fails to charge the card at the time of the transaction and then they try to charge it later (happened more than once), it only takes a few missed payment for them to end up losing a load of money especially at their profit margins :/

    • Bb90 says:
      31 Jan31 January 02:18

      Regarding my request to remove my data:

      Thanks for your message. We can’t fully delete your information from our system, as we are obliged by the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 to keep your data for 5 years after you stop using Curve. However, we do store your data securely in compliance with the Data Protection Act and GDPR and according to our Privacy Policy, which is available here: …

  • TripRep says:
    30 Jan30 January 22:49

    Wow, over 550 comments, must be a record by a clear margin.

    Shame it’s all regarding a cock up and bad publicity for Curve.

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