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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.

  • Peter King says:
    30 Jan30 January 07:42

    Curve is a victim of its own success. they must have charged millions of pounds to amex in the last few days.

    Amex have clearly got cold feet about the risk of all those charge backs from unhappy customers if Curve fails.

    • Shoestring says:
      30 Jan30 January 07:49

      Amex wouldn’t for financially responsible for any chargebacks

      • David says:
        30 Jan30 January 07:51

        Suspect they might be – if you’re “buying” a £100 credit with Curve, that would be covered by S75 if Curve went bust, yes?

        • Chrisasaurus says:
          30 Jan30 January 08:04

          Like ‘buying’ £100 credit at Ladbrokes then? Perhaps you’ve discovered a hidden path to guaranteed riches!

          Or perhaps not. Gambling, cash, cash like transactions are not covered, and neither are any payments not direct to a merchant (eg PayPal)

        • shd says:
          30 Jan30 January 08:05

          If you’re paying with an Amex *charge* card would section 75 cover you?

        • Shoestring says:
          30 Jan30 January 08:10

          Charge cards don’t come under S75 – but Amex runs an equivalent chargeback scheme for legitimate, direct purchases – which sending £100 to Curve Amex wallet is patently *not*!

        • John says:
          30 Jan30 January 08:25

          @Chrisasaurus

          Ladbrokes doesn’t offer a credit system. If you wager £100 with Ladbrokes the lender is jointly liable for providing you with the wager.

          If you purchased £100 of Curve credit, Amex is jointly liable with Curve for giving you £100 of funds to spend on Curve.

        • David says:
          30 Jan30 January 08:45

          I don’t use an AMEX “charge” card at the moment – Gold and BA credit only, so S75 is potentially applicable. I would imagine that this is similar to the purchase of (say) HMV gift vouchers though – were they covered, I wonder?

      • Peter King says:
        30 Jan30 January 08:24

        Agreed they’re not legally responsible, but they’d still get the charge backs and get the bad press when they didn’t refund.

        Ladbrokes don’t take amex 🙂

    • tartan says:
      30 Jan30 January 07:50

      According to another site – Curve said that the 500 people on the beta had spent £1M collectively. An average of £2k per customer which seems a pretty high spend!

      • Alan says:
        30 Jan30 January 07:51

        Although I suppose quite a few went for the free £1k/mo over two months? Metal with no limit Amex top-up may have changed that…

      • John says:
        30 Jan30 January 07:54

        You could top up £3000 for free so not surprising? And many people will have paid HMRC with those funds

      • Go says:
        30 Jan30 January 08:02

        Anyone want to say how much they spent in 36 hours!

      • shd says:
        30 Jan30 January 08:07

        It would be lovely to see the breakdown by MCC 🙂

      • KJ says:
        30 Jan30 January 08:56

        I decided to ‘test’ a metal subscription yesterday with an initial £1.8k just to pay some nursery fees I hadn’t even got to HMRC yet. I think £2k avg is low when recycling like this.

      • Mr Dee says:
        30 Jan30 January 09:41

        £2k is a low, when anyone with a HMRC would probably spend this in a day at least

        • Bonglim says:
          30 Jan30 January 11:51

          Yep – I have put 30k through Curve with my HSBC card (in bits)- and anyone self employed using it for tax would put through a huge amount in January.

  • RTS says:
    30 Jan30 January 07:44

    Hahahaha, so did HFP singlehandedly break the curve / amex relationship?!

    • Shoestring says:
      30 Jan30 January 07:50

      Curve / Amex was reported in the Daily Mail on 28th, circulation 1.2M

      • Rob says:
        30 Jan30 January 07:54

        Doubt many Mail readers would want a card backed by a German payments group, with a Spanish bank (Santander) as a key shareholder and with a CEO with a foreign-sounding name 🙂

        • Alan says:
          30 Jan30 January 07:56

          Hahaha – unless they’re a cure for cancer of course! Although that might cause a #DailyFailMeltdown

        • Anna says:
          30 Jan30 January 07:57

          Lol! IME DM readers are suspicious of credit cards (and points earning) in general…

        • Alex Sm says:
          2 Feb2 February 15:13

          @Anna of course as it was them to lobby for making bank cheques to be rebranded and ‘checks’ and reverse their planned removal from circulation

      • Chrisasaurus says:
        30 Jan30 January 07:56

        That’s a depressing number….

        • Shoestring says:
          30 Jan30 January 08:14

          The DM Money section is really good, don’t dismiss it so easily with the rest of the paper?

          On pensions, they are probably the best information source in the UK of the ‘big’ papers (incl the broadsheets), with top expert Steve Webb & team giving excellent advice.

          dailymail dot co dot uk/money/pensions/index.html

          • Rob says:
            30 Jan30 January 08:33

            I am quoted in the Mail every couple of months and they did a full page on me in 2016 remember. My (German) wife never quite got over having her photo in the Mail.

        • Polly says:
          30 Jan30 January 08:33

          Must say, the DM Wednesday edition of MoneyMail is very informative. Have learned loads from those pages. Even keep it reserved when l am away. It’s the only edition we bu, but worth it IME for exactly things like pensions, tax, banking etc etc…

        • Callum says:
          30 Jan30 January 11:43

          Shoestring – No amount of good financial advice is ever going to get me to use a racist, xenophobic, homophobic and generally vile newspaper. Some things in life are more important to me than money – shame that’s a rare position to hold nowadays!

  • George K says:
    30 Jan30 January 07:47

    I feel very sorry for Curve, especially this happening so soon after going live. While there is the possibility that it jumped the gun with this, it feels like Amex is the one acting unilaterally here.

    Last time Amex pulled out, there was a good notice period. This time not. I wonder if there was a dealbreaker element which goes beyond the simple use of Amex cards via Curve – previous threads shed light in questionable practices by users which may or may not have been a contributing factor.

    I for one was very happy with both the product and their customer service as they did nothing wrong by me, but understand there are others who feel differently. There is still a place for Curve in my wallet even with everyth8ng that’s happened.

    • shd says:
      30 Jan30 January 08:11

      >> I wonder if there was a dealbreaker element

      Take your pick from:

      Curve not having a business model

      Curve playing fast and loose with card scheme rules (“Commandment 1: Though shalt not pay off one credit card with another….”)

      • Mr Dee says:
        30 Jan30 January 09:44

        It wouldn’t take a genius at Amex to notice Curve’s card numbers being used to pay off their Amex, especially if person also used Curve to top up their account, Amex would be very angry at the potential hassle of this IMO

        • shd says:
          30 Jan30 January 10:26

          Curve openen this particular can of worms by issuing Mastercard Debit “cards” which are drawing funds from a linked credit card. Why should it be up to Amex to spend time and money blocking Curve? *Curve* should be the ones making sure their cardholders and systems obey the card scheme rules!

          Feels like Curve is yet another startup that thinks it’s too clever to have to bother following rules & regs, presumably hoping that if it grows big and powerful the rule-breaking won’t matter. Good luck with that one.

      • Alex Sm says:
        2 Feb2 February 15:16

        @shd what about balance transfers then??? It’s one of the core pillars of credit card banking!

  • Jonathan says:
    30 Jan30 January 07:51

    On the strength of the Amex link I upgraded to the curve metal 2 days ago , I’ve asked for my £150 annual subscription back hope I get it .

    • Anthony says:
      30 Jan30 January 08:38

      Likewise! I am waiting for an email from Curve to explain the case for people who have upgraded to the metal already, they took the £150 pretty sharpish!

      • Marlene says:
        30 Jan30 January 10:06

        I hope so too, there is a 14 days cooling off period with full refund but I also read in their terms of service that they will still charge £50 because of the labour of making the metal card!!!! I mean this is something we need to try waiving due to the circumstance of cancelling it!

        • EwanG says:
          30 Jan30 January 10:59

          If they fail to provide the service you have paid for, they are in breach of contract. I cannot see any reasonable way they could still charge you £50 for this, except if Curve promptly manage to convince Amex to reverse their decision!
          Fintechs and startups are willing to lose money to gain market share, so long as their backers can see a way of making their money at some point. Curve will have entered into contracts for producing their 10,000 metal cards have intimated this won’t have been cheap, and the admin fallout from this will be messy and costly too. It will be interesting to see how Curve emerge from this mess!

        • Andy says:
          30 Jan30 January 13:53

          I was told not to expect a card until some time in February, so as far as I’m concerned they haven’t made it yet so I don’t expect to incur any costs – quite apart from the fact that they are now failing to provide the service that they are charging for, which is breach of contract anyway.

  • Johnny Tabasco says:
    30 Jan30 January 07:52

    Do wonder how many people having a moan are people that abused the system lol

    • Mr Dee says:
      30 Jan30 January 09:45

      36 hours isn’t a lot of time so I would assume not that many apart from the people paying off their Amex bills…

  • Chrisasaurus says:
    30 Jan30 January 07:52

    It’s not coincidence they’ve (Amex) dropped billhop at the same time is it? Is this Amex imemtnting a change relating to cash recycling and it being a coincidence it’s just after Curve launched?

    ie it is possible this is rude but not vindictive?

    But mostly,
    WHY DID I NOT PAY OUR VAT YESTERDAY!?

    • Anna says:
      30 Jan30 January 08:00

      I thought they’s just banned payments to private individuals via Billhop, though that has been in place for a while now?

      Indeed, I thought I would start small and put £400 through it yesterday, but on the bright side it has triggered a sign up bonus early!

      • Martin Pelant says:
        30 Jan30 January 08:53

        Maybe that’s the reason for AMEX pulling out? So that you can’t easily trigger signed up bonuses by just topping up Curve wallet.

      • Polly says:
        30 Jan30 January 15:11

        Got a clarifying letter from Billhop just now saying businesses only etc but some businesses are one man bands etc that need to be paid…not that clear really..like your cleaner!

  • Don says:
    30 Jan30 January 07:54

    Not being able to pay one month of rent on Amex a year via billhop just to trigger the top higher target means I might as well stop bothering with Ba/Amex and move to the Virgin card. At least MasterCard is accepted for council tax etc etc now curve is kuput. 🙁

  • Vasco says:
    30 Jan30 January 07:59

    So will they refund early adopters’ Metal fees?

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