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Curve Card launches legal action against American Express

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According to an article in The Daily Telegraph yesterday, Curve Card is going through with its threat to sue American Express for withdrawing its support in January with no notice.

The report says that Curve is seeking damages for the ‘millions of pounds’ spent on fees and development work for the project to integrate American Express into the Curve platform.

Curve has also said that it is filing a complaint with the Payment Systems Regulator.  To quote:

“We have a very large set of investors and we have a lot of money in our war chest”, [Curve CEO] Mr Bialick said. “When someone is actively trying to kill you, that means you are disrupting the model.”

Amex supplied the Telegraph with the same quote they gave to me back in January:

“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.  We informed Curve that we would not participate in the further roll out of the Curve e-wallet, prior to them launching the product.  We do not have regulatory obligations to work with a particular partner, and we can confirm that we have terminated our agreement with Curve.”

This is a tricky one to call.  For most businesses, the ability to accept payment cards is a pre-requisite to their survival so card companies should arguably not be allowed to discriminate over who they work with.  On the other hand, you can understand that Amex, Mastercard and Visa would want the ability to stop their logos being associated with stores or websites selling certain products.

Credit card companies also share legal liability for products purchased using their cards so they must be allowed to have the flexibility to only work with merchants whose finances and products are seen as reliable.  This was not an issue with Curve transactions, however, as the legal liability sat with Curve / Mastercard and not American Express or whichever other card your Curve was linked to.

Curve is still pushing forward

Curve is not going anywhere in a hurry, it seems, despite the huge setback with Amex.  Over the last couple of weeks it has announced plans to open offices in Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal and Poland (country managers are currently being hired if you’re interested).  As Amex has a lower penetration in these markets, the lack of Amex functionality is likely to be less of an issue.

It has also launched ‘Faster Purchase Protection’ for transactions of up to £100,000.  This ensures that all claims for refunds against purchases made on Curve are dealth with within one day of receipt of the requested documentation.   You are covered when the goods or services were not received, defective or not as described. It also covers eligible purchases in the event that the goods prove to be counterfeit or when a promised refund is not completed.

It is worth noting that this covers debit and credit card purchases, which makes it more generous than Section 75 coverage in the UK which only covers credit card purchases.  There is also no minimum purchase threshold, whereas Section 75 protection only kicks in if you spend over £100.

Does Curve still have value to HfP readers without Amex as a partner?

Yes it does, basically.  Arguably the free card should be in your wallet, linked to another points earning Visa or Mastercard:

you can spend £500 per month abroad Monday to Friday without incurring any FX fees (0.5% fee at weekends) and have the transaction recharged your points-earning Visa or Mastercard in Sterling

you can withdraw £200 per month via an ATM and have it charged to your underlying points-earning Visa or Mastercard as a purchase (EXCEPT for Tesco Bank and NatWest / RBS cards)

If you pay HMRC, you should also know that payments to HMRC via Curve are still accepted. It is treated as a debit card but goes through as a purchase on your underlying Visa or Mastercard.

If you’ve never tried Curve, simply go to this page of their website to download the app.

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

Can Curve beat Amex?

I’m not sure if the Curve lawsuit against American Express will get very far.  I’d like to think it would, but the situations under which you can legally force a company to do business with another company are few and far between, although they do exist.

That said, strip away all of the noise caused in the last three months by the sudden collapse of the Curve / Amex relationship and you are still left with a product which has some use in the arsenal of the average miles and points collector.

Be clear, though.  There is a shake-up coming, with little hope that Curve, Monese, Revolut, Starling, Monzo, N26 and Atom will all survive as independent fintech businesses.  I’m not sure if Curve is less at risk – because it is at least offering something different whilst Revolut etc are just offering plain vanilla banking with pretty-coloured plastic cards – or more so.

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Comments (227)

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

  • rams1981 says:
    26 Mar26 March 07:34

    I like revolut. Topping up from credit card is a big win though surely not sustainable long term.

    Monzo which I also have I don’t see the point in. I work in London and so many people have and use it to pay for the tube for example.

    Which other fintech cards can be topped up fee free with credit card?

    • Harry says:
      26 Mar26 March 08:02

      Can Revolut be topped up fee free using a credit card? I didn’t think so. I use Revolut primarily for making foreign currency transfers where the rates are always very good. I just top up first from my bank account and ten seconds later make the FC transfer. Works fine and is almost no effort. However, if I can top up using a credit card that gives me points/miles that would be much better.

      • Grant says:
        26 Mar26 March 08:20

        It can, but some credit cards will see the transaction as a cash advance and charge accordingly.

        • Colin MacKinnon says:
          26 Mar26 March 09:18

          Any that don’t work you can list?

        • Alex Sm says:
          26 Mar26 March 22:34

          Yes, please! I asked about this here before but people don’t want to share (or simply don’t see comments because there are no notifications)

    • Jonny says:
      26 Mar26 March 09:03

      I have both. I think a lot of people find monzo really useful. I used monzo a lot on a recent holiday with my partner abroad. The ability to create shared “tabs” where you can see how much money you owe/are owed (and for what/when etc) is super useful. No Fx fees. I know a lot of people who use its budgeting features, and use multiple shared tabs for house bills, eating out etc. I don’t use it all the time as it doesn’t have the full product list that I need (ISAs, credit cards etc), although they are expanding their savings range later this year….

  • Russ says:
    26 Mar26 March 07:35

    Billhop if you’d rather put it on amex for £295 fee. Worth 10,000 avios or another amex airline partner. More with hotels.

    • Polly says:
      26 Mar26 March 08:08

      It’s actually worth giving Billhop a call. We had a series of payments so l asked them for a reduced fee they offered 2%. Like Anna, it gave us our 241 almost instantly, so almost fee free, used for F to Asia. So, give them a call….

      • Russ says:
        26 Mar26 March 08:21

        Thanks for the tip Polly. I do put a few regulars through so will take that up with them.

      • LewisB says:
        26 Mar26 March 08:38

        Interesting. Will try this in the future. Thanks!

  • Worzel says:
    26 Mar26 March 07:37

    Unsurprising Shambles !

  • Mr Dee says:
    26 Mar26 March 08:11

    Well if they don’t win, wouldn’t like to have to explain to investors where all the money went.

    Curve has its used for the consumer but cant see it being a profitable business anytime soon.

    • Graham Walsh says:
      26 Mar26 March 08:38

      Printing cards!! Some people got the metal card for Amex etc, then downgrading back to legacy black and they reissued a new card even though the metal card was never activated. A stupid model really. I could have kept the legacy black physical card or just even used the metal card with legacy benefits.

    • GaZ48 says:
      26 Mar26 March 08:38

      Is it pure coincidence that Amex pulled the 6 month to 24 months move now? Do they envisage an expensive fight with curve? Just a thought.

      • Alex W says:
        26 Mar26 March 09:03

        Put it another way, if Amex is allowed back on to Curve, people will absolutely rinse it to make up for their lost sign up bonuses.

        • Mr Dee says:
          26 Mar26 March 10:33

          Without signup bonuses may as well use the Virgin card

        • Doug M says:
          26 Mar26 March 12:08

          Not if Amex decide to treat all Curve as cash advance

        • Lady London says:
          26 Mar26 March 14:48

          I think the best Curve can hope for is some publicity or a token settlement basee on partial recovery of costs . If it wasn’t ‘*hit or bust’ Curve wouldn’t ne doing ut.

      • illuminatus says:
        26 Mar26 March 10:09

        Do they envisage an expensive fight with curve? – I do wish Curve luck as I use their card every day, but even ‘David vs Goliath’ is not a fair comparison for your statement. Amex would not change their products because of some very minor (for them) legal fight

        • Mr Dee says:
          26 Mar26 March 10:35

          Even if Amex paid Curve their expenses its hardly a lot of money for Amex

  • TGLoyalty says:
    26 Mar26 March 08:38

    Aren’t you better off doing the analysis at £15k spend where you get the 10k MR bonus?

    On foreign spend the 3% fee eats into your CB or points calcs. 3% to get 2% back would be madness when you can use clarity or curve or Revolut or sterling etc

    • Russ says:
      26 Mar26 March 09:30

      Ok at 3% fee on GBP£15,000 overseas spend on Amex Gold CC that’s GBP£450 and you’d pick up 40,000 avios. Currently GBP£655 to buy 40,000 avios via BA. Now saving is GBP£205.

      Unless you have a clear plan what you are going to do with the cash back I don’t think it makes sense over collecting points.

    • Shoestring says:
      26 Mar26 March 09:49

      and you’re going to get a few Amex statement credit offers/ Shop Small £5s over the year you hold Gold.

    • The Savage Squirrel says:
      26 Mar26 March 09:50

      Russ that’s exactly backwards – it makes no sense.

      Your comparison is silly because if you had £450 in cash you’re almost always better off just spending it directly on flights rather than using it to buy Avios to redeem on flights 😀

      With points you’d better have a clear plan or reason for wanting them. With cash you don’t need any plan – it’s accepted everywhere for everything and never expires.

    • Russ says:
      26 Mar26 March 10:44

      Savage, not for those who haven’t mastered the dark art of booking QR premium seats for £450 instead of 37,500 avios 😉

  • Chris says:
    26 Mar26 March 08:56

    It’s disingenuous of Curve to grab headlines with their new £100,000 limit for purchase protection cover when they don’t actually allow customers to spend that amount in one transaction.

    Or is it now possible to get my daily transaction limit increased from £3,750 to £100,000?

    • Alex W says:
      26 Mar26 March 09:04

      Exactly what I thought! Though who has a £100k limit on their visa/MC?

      • Chris says:
        26 Mar26 March 09:38

        Tesco Bank debit card. Though whether Tesco Bank would allow such a large debit card transaction is another question.

        • TescoTease says:
          26 Mar26 March 16:15

          Tesco debit card transactions are unlimited. At the moment… due to be reduced to £20k/day late this year.

    • MDA says:
      26 Mar26 March 11:48

      It took curve days for them to even respond to a chargeback request, even then they wanted written letter you wrote to the merchant – who writes to merchants when we have emails and telephone customer service lines?

  • Alan says:
    26 Mar26 March 09:00

    Ermm see comments above yours? Mediocre product in USA, not going to come here on anything like these terms.

  • Andrew says:
    26 Mar26 March 09:02

    Where are you buying the kitchen from?

    If it’s a Trade Counter at a Builder’s Merchant, then make sure you’ve discussed with the Tradie, who is going to fit it, that you are getting the best price.

    The BMs are all highly competitive and offer trade discounts, as well as cash-back deals to their most prized business account holders.

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

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