Curve Card’s version of what happened with their American Express partnership

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• Alex Sm says:

  2 Feb2 February 14:53

  A new potentially serious development in this saga:
  My AMEX transfer to Curve which was pending for 6 days has DISAPPEARED for good as if it was not there at all! But the monies were transferred to Curve and spent!
  So, Curve will now need to fund all these transactions out of its own pocket! And this could be millions of £££ in losses for them… Bleak

  • Mark2 says:

    2 Feb2 February 16:13

    Surely as an honourable person you will be reimbursing Curve since you have had the money?

    • Alex Sm says:

      2 Feb2 February 16:17

      Let’s pool our resources together!

      • Anna says:

        2 Feb2 February 16:49

        My pending £100 has also disappeared into the ether. Of course Curve is entitled to claw this back but there doesn’t seem to be any function on the app for the cardholder to actively reimburse it.

  • Paul says:

    2 Feb2 February 16:55

    I think they have up to 6 months to claim the funds. Most banks will let transactions drop off after 4-5 days if it hasn’t claimed. Doesn’t mean curve can’t claim them

    • Anna says:

      2 Feb2 February 17:00

      Whatever the case, this will have delayed a few sign up bonuses and 2 4 1’s being triggered! Just credited £75 to Amazon to make up for this.

      • Anna says:

        2 Feb2 February 17:01

        Actually that could be really inconvenient. If anyone had several £k pending which has already gone to a recipient and no idea when Curve will call on it, it could really mess up one’s earning strategy!

    • Mark2 says:

      2 Feb2 February 17:06

      Where does this idea of ‘claiming’ come from?
      Surely the money is paid to the merchant automatically?

      • JPR says:

        2 Feb2 February 17:11

        Presumably not in the event of a termination event. For example, if there were concerns over illegality, money laundering or much else I imagine the fund would not be passed to the merchant. I am sure someone who has an Amex merchant account will be able to opine.

      • Charlieface says:

        2 Feb2 February 21:03

        Not at all. Most merchants do automatically claim it but many (hotels, car hire for example) take time til they settle the transaction, possibly even changing the amount in the interim. They have usually at least 30 days to settle.

      • J says:

        3 Feb3 February 11:17

        As with any merchant account an pre-authorisation on funds will expire if they are not ‘captured’ within the required period i.e. 7 days. It looks like the pre-authorisation has not been captured for some reason, however depending on the merchant acquirer the settlement terms to the merchant can be anything from 7 – 30 days. Although the pre-authorisation has now lapsed, this does not mean that the customer is not still liable for the goods / funds that have been obtained and benefitted from. My guess is that Curve will exercise their right to obtain from the funds from a funding method and if this is no longer in place could potentially look to take legal action against the individual under such laws as the Fraud Act 2006. Assuming Curve is not in breach of their Amex Merchant account, and assuming this is a standard merchant agreement with no additional caveats linking it into a beta, they will still should have access into the Amex system to go back and immediately ‘capture’ a payment. If they are in breach of the merchant agreement with Amex and the merchant account is frozen, with no recourse, then they could go to plan B which is claim from another card or demand payment with some form of legal action threat if the monies are not paid. I know there are a lot of if, could, should and assuming, however none of us are party to the full details and this is speculative based on the limited information we have.

      • Ian M says:

        3 Feb3 February 22:16

        I topped up my Amex Plat wallet on Curve to the tune of £1300. Like others here, the pending transaction has now dropped off my Amex card. I had a recent experience with eBay/PayPal for a large sum which dropped off, and then PayPal put it through 30 days after the purchase date, that was very annoying to say the least and pushed me over my credit limit. I spoke to Amex at the time and they said that although it’s unusual for a Merchant to put the payment through so late, they are within their rights to do so.

        I was planning on closing my Amex Plat this week so it’s all a bit annoying. I would like the 1300 points. I’m sure Curve will try and put the payment through again at some point. But seeing as the same seems to have happened to a lot of people, I’m guessing there’s something going on here.

  • Dave says:

    3 Feb3 February 08:34

    Same. About £800 of pending payments on two Amex cards showed pending for days. This morning there is no trace of those payments on either card.

    The money has gone from my Curve account and I have receipts from HMRC for the payments.

    At this point I’ve paid a chunk of my tax bill for free but presumably Curve will be sending a bill of some kind. Does anyone know if they just bill your current account in this unusual circumstance?

• Brighton Belle says:

  3 Feb3 February 08:12

  Curve sent a £300 hotel charge through to Amex before they pulled the shutters down. It sat in Amex Pending for a few days. I had an online chat with Amex and told the agent it was a legitimate charge and not to consider it fraudulent. He said it would hit my account soon.

  The £300 pending charge has totally disappeared off my Amex transactions today. Presumably Amex have rejected it as a matter of policy leaving Curve to decide where to send the charge.

  • Shoestring says:

    3 Feb3 February 08:17

    That has to be the presumption, as many here have reported something similar. I guess this will lead to an immediate & very serious cashflow/ credibility problem for Curve.

    Amex plays hardball!

    Rather a bad Curve management decision to unilaterally go for the ‘wider beta launch’ (sic) – despite Amex saying ‘hold fire, please’.

    • Charlie says:

      3 Feb3 February 12:48

      Surely you have a lump sum amount on your amex from Curve? That’s the amount curve have charged to your Amex, and then everything else comes out of that pot of money without hitting the amex directly?

      • Shoestring says:

        3 Feb3 February 16:30

        Difficult to square the circle. Somebody tell me where the money’s coming from etc?

      • Anna says:

        3 Feb3 February 16:36

        No – e.g. my Amex is showing no transactions and no balance whatsoever on the Curve app, however I topped it up with £400 in total and spent it. £300 of this has been charged to Amex but the other £100, which was still “pending” in my Amex account, now isn’t showing anywhere.

• Nick_C says:

  4 Feb4 February 01:39

  The issue of top ups not being charged to Amex might just be a curve IT issue.

  There was a similar problem a few months ago where the underlying credit card was not charged. The charges all went through on the same day after about three weeks.

  • Go says:

    4 Feb4 February 10:08

    This is a bit of a pain. I have about £1500 in charges that curve haven’t collected. I have however already paid £500 to Amex in anticipation of the charge, so I’m sitting wiith an Amex credit. I’ll view the rest as an interest free loan until they decide to collect it. Agree that it must be IT or Amex relationship issue as Curve surely must need the cash. Can’t help feeling days might be numbered for curve which will be sad

  • Kev says:

    6 Feb6 February 15:14

    This is an interesting one because if Curve no longer have an active Merchant Services Agreement with Amex can they recharge the cards at all?
    I topped up, and promptly used curve, to spend £1.8k which also first showed as pending and has now dropped off my Amex account. When I called Amex about it they said that Curve *should* have completed the transaction within 7 days otherwise they’d need a new authorisation from me. I’m now wondering what T&C’s Curve might try and fall back on to recoup that.

    • EwanG says:

      6 Feb6 February 16:36

      Very interesting, and grossing this up I wonder how many customers / how much £ affected.
      An administrative nightmare for Curve, doubt (m)any fintechs would have mature incident management experience or be able to shift resources to quickly handle a crisis like this!!

• Symon says:

  4 Feb4 February 02:15

  Amex issues aside, it does seem that Curve is using the current hoo-ha to distract from other issues. I, along with other users cannot add new cards to Curve, as verification isn’t working. Curve Rewards is *still* unavailable, and referral payments are suspended. Now would be a really good time for Rob to get a full statement from Curve on whats happening. This would seem to be bigger than the Amex issue, and to the casual observer could be interpreted as Curve is running low on funds…

• Nick says:

  5 Feb5 February 07:06

  Slightly off topic but since the changes to curve it has asked me to verify all my cards which failed, and so I deleted and attempted to add them every single card comes with an error message saying that the name on the card is missing, but there is no way if adding the name!

  I did find Curve useful, and not as way of manufacturing spend, but as a way of putting different types of foreign spending onto different cards. Unfortunately, it seems as if they broken their app and despite sending messages to ‘support’, I am none the wiser as how to add the name to a card.

  Oh well, it was a useful app for a short time. Perhaps they will fix it at some stage, who knows.

  • Rick says:

    5 Feb5 February 11:45

    I had this on mine (Android). I had to clear the App cache (alternatively remove and reinstall the app). It then worked fine.

• Bryan says:

  5 Feb5 February 08:09

  Website still says it supports Amex… lol.

  • Tandy says:

    5 Feb5 February 10:48

    So does the Curve app, under “Manage Your Subscription”. Real shady stuff.

    • Alan says:

      6 Feb6 February 06:52

      Website no excuse, but app changes do take a while to test and work through the approval process with the respective stores.

• Jonathan says:

  5 Feb5 February 08:57

  I have asked for a refund of the £150 subscription. Curve have ignored my request . I spoke to Amex who were less than helpful and told me my issue is with curve and not them . Looks like I can kiss that money goodbye.

  • Tandy says:

    5 Feb5 February 10:49

    To be fair it isn’t anything to do with Amex. You should be speaking with the FCA, Trading Standards, ASA etc.

    • Alan says:

      6 Feb6 February 06:53

      Ermm why not just let Curve refund you as they’ve already said they’ll do?

  • Grant says:

    5 Feb5 February 10:52

    The January launch FAQs have now been updated –

    “I upgraded to Metal due to Amex, can I cancel and become grandfathered?

    Yes, you can. Customer Support will help you downgrade your account and refund your money. You will not be subjected to the Curve Metal Card Fee described in chapter 5.6.4.1. of our Terms of Service. Please note that your Curve Metal will be deactivated.”

  • Alan says:

    6 Feb6 February 06:51

    Why? They’ve said they’ll refund anyone who asks with 28 days of upgrade. They’re obviously fairly busy just now but if you’ve requested it what makes you say they won’t honour it?

• Kat says:

  5 Feb5 February 18:14

  So, Curve and it’s CEO have gone quiet. Their social media team are pushing the £150 metal cards like crazy and social media is ablaze with rumours that they’ve run out of money. What’s going on?

  • Dave B says:

    5 Feb5 February 22:19

    Had cash advance problems with curve. Not too worried in UK . hope it works in Canaries next week. Any others having problems?

  • TikTok says:

    5 Feb5 February 23:13

    Funny you should say that because Curve’s CEO tweeted for the first time since December today. The tweet was rather pathetic unprofessional, throwing shade at Amex, without naming them.

    It does seem that Curve are having financial woes; now whether that just means keeping the rewards and referral systems offline for a little longer or closing up shop I don’t know.

    Interestingly on top of what every one has already discussed ad nauseam, there seems to be another issue raising its head, concerning Curve issuing commercial cards Mastercards to non-commercial customers.

    • Genghis says:

      6 Feb6 February 15:24

      Curve did do limited sample checks way after the event, however, to confirm that commercial cards were in fact issued to commercial customers.

      My wife was asked this and then provided the CRN of the co she’s a director.

      I was never asked to provide evidence and I don’t think many were.

    • hear hear says:

      6 Feb6 February 17:32

      According to their website Curve are looking to hire 21 people for various roles. This would imply there isn’t a cash flow problem. It is odd that the rewards and referral side of things was taken down around the time Amex support was dropped. This seems to be were people have put 2 & 2 together and come out with financial problems as the answer. None of this has been helped by Curve and it’s CEO keeping mum; any well run company would have released some sort of an update by now – and I think I’ve hit the nail on the head, Curve is being run badly.

      • Alan says:

        6 Feb6 February 20:31

        Rewards has been down for a couple of months in the beta app, they launched it to live before fixing that.

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