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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 (223)

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

  • john says:
    26 Mar26 March 13:01

    Downgraded my metal card just after Amex pulled their agreement.
    I was so happy that Amex finally works with Curve, but only lasted for a few days.

  • Zana711 says:
    26 Mar26 March 13:12

    O/T but since there’s quite a bit of discussion on Revolut above – has anyone done Revolut’s Source of Funds check recently? How long did this process take you? And if you don’t mind disclosing, what limit do you have to hit before you were asked to provide docs?

    I’ve just been asked to do it – very fiddly on the App because it only lets you upload JPEG on your phone or take a picture. Asked me for 3 months payslip & 3 months bank statements (not unusual) but also a copy of my tax return (hard to upload pages in JPEG).

    • stevenhp1987 says:
      26 Mar26 March 13:41

      Done it today… Topped up around £25k recently…

      Wouldn’t take PDFs… Had to convert each one into a series of jpegs…

      It says to wait 48 hours for a response, I’ve not had one yet.

      • stevenhp1987 says:
        27 Mar27 March 11:07

        FYI, It just went through, around 24 hours after sending docs in. They also asked for updated copy of driving licence as the one on file was old.

        24 hours isn’t too bad. I was still able to spend as well, just not make transfers or top-up.

    • The Urbanite says:
      26 Mar26 March 13:43

      Yes. I think each time you flag up for review they will give you a new limit based on your circumstances so it must be different for everyone.

      That said if you are spending enough to hit that you should be fairly used to KYCs. Their process isn’t too onerous and can be sorted over the chat system.

    • Alan says:
      26 Mar26 March 14:25

      Took a few days for me – same as last time. A slow and laborious process IME. Wish they’d bring back the tracker that let you know how far off another source of founds check you were!

  • Ben E says:
    26 Mar26 March 13:35

    ummm… £200 a month cash withdrawal limit. What happens if you go over that?

    • stevenhp1987 says:
      26 Mar26 March 13:54

      2% charge. I’ve gone over £200 in the past without ever seeing the charge though… but I’ve not done this recently!

      • @mkcol says:
        26 Mar26 March 13:56

        Likewise…a few times & no charge evident anywhere.

      • Julian says:
        26 Mar26 March 14:43

        Likewise withdrew £400 in total in month in cash a couple of times and no extra charge but now don’t need to take out so much cash these days so don’t know if Curve have tightened up in enforcing that rule since the start of 2019.

        • Alex Sm says:
          26 Mar26 March 22:48

          It occurs to me that the limit is £1000 or so. I definitely withdrew more than 200 in a month and nothing happened

        • Alex Sm says:
          27 Mar27 March 12:41

          It’s still 1000 for the UK and 400 abroad (for free Black card)

    • TGLoyalty says:
      26 Mar26 March 17:06

      As long as you don’t take the p*ss its fine.

  • Lady London says:
    26 Mar26 March 13:40

    Julian i appreciate much of what you say. But its hard sometimes not to.decide just to not read any particular post you may make if by words or tone you could appear to be publicly insulting other contributors to these blog comments or our host Rob. I think you often make interesting points. But i’m starting not to read you because as well as the occasional negative remark about someone personally sometimes there is an impression that overloads in negativity. This could give an unfairly bad impression of you, and makes it hard for the rest of us to align our views to yours. My marketing colleagues would say ‘lighten it up a bit that way your message is easier to absorb. Jus’ sayin’.

  • @mkcol says:
    26 Mar26 March 13:57

    Delighted to confirm that Curve’s “Faster Purchase Protection” does indeed work within a day & that was only for a ~$35 purchase.

  • Rob says:
    26 Mar26 March 14:18

    I’m on holiday! And if I want to talk to Shachar I’ll just ring him up 🙂

  • AndyW says:
    26 Mar26 March 14:24

    Genghis what on earth did you do to the bloke?!

    • Julian says:
      26 Mar26 March 14:36

      Genghis didn’t do anything to me.

      Its just a kind of backhanded complement really as Genghis appears to be the most definitively expert contributor to this website as few seem to know as much as he does about the intricacies of the airline points collecting game. And his commitment to the subject is further indicated by the sophisticated IT measures he has clearly put in place to alert him to any responses to his own posts in these blogs or to any fresh posts (not responding to his own) that mention him by name.

      Anyway I’m not some starry eyed optimistic marketing or sales type (as quite a few you clearly are, unsurprisingly because its people in those jobs who nearly always travel the most by air on business) but an analytical data expert type who remembers history and can see where many of these points collection schemes tend to go in the long run.

      And fun though collecting all these points and redeeming them can sometimes be it can also be a pain if some expiring bonus voucher makes you feel you need to book a flight or hotel that you would not otherwise have booked just so as not to lose the value of your voucher offer………….

      • Peter 64K says:
        26 Mar26 March 15:15

        I still don’t see why you read this blog. It seems to upset you so much that surely not reading it will free up more of your time and reduce your frustration and blood pressure.

      • Spiderman says:
        26 Mar26 March 15:36

        My spideysense thinks Julian is a troll

      • Shoestring says:
        26 Mar26 March 17:13

        Heaven’s sake people! Play the ball not the man. Julian has every right to be here and write a few comments, including views on churning Amex if he sees fit. Raffles met him at one party and has him down as a decent bloke. The thing with Genghis is just a bit of history that obvs still rankles a bit but amounts to nothing much. Give the guy a fair chance, every day is a new day

      • Chabuddy geezy says:
        26 Mar26 March 19:07

        Julian I dont think that is how amex worked with curve. Amex receive the same interchange fee regardless. Curve we ultimately trying to fund this with the charges to customers.

      • Sundar says:
        26 Mar26 March 19:28

        “also be a pain if some expiring bonus voucher makes you feel you need to book a flight or hotel that you would not otherwise have booked just so as not to lose the value of your voucher offer………….”

        And that’s also why the airlines run a frequent flyer program – They win some and we win some.

      • Lady London says:
        26 Mar26 March 19:53

        Actually all sorts of people travel a lot on business. Especially finance people, operations people, IT people… lots and lots of different job types. I’d say someone who thinks a sales or marketing job is going to get them travelling is often going to be sadly disappointed. Often the most apparently glamourous jobs have the least perks. I say that as someone who has travelled on business a lot, in private a lot too, and been in charge of travel budgets, event budgets and booked and arranged an awful lot of business travel in many industries in my career. oh, and a long time ago worked in travel too.

      • Alex Sm says:
        26 Mar26 March 22:47

        We need to know what this IT is and how this could be used more widely by HfP readers as Rob consistently refuses to introduce comments editing and notifications of new replies… (

      • Lady London says:
        27 Mar27 March 00:56

        * above was about “starry eyed optimistic marketing or sales type (as quite a few [HfP readers] clearly are, unsurprisingly because its people in those jobs who nearly always travel the most by air on business”

  • andy says:
    26 Mar26 March 16:25

    So on the amex news last week I put my last referral of the year through for a platinum everyday card for my wife. The card has just turned up. I want to reset the clock now for 24 months. Should my wife register the card and then cancel, or just not activate the card? Not sure if once it’s sent out it counts as active . I’m minded to get her to activate it and then cancel it but don’t want to mess things up too much!

    • Anna says:
      26 Mar26 March 16:36

      It would count towards the sign up clock as soon as soon as she was approved. Your wife can cancel it with or without activating it, but the clock will only re-set from the date of cancellation (and assuming she has no other cards which affect it).

    • Sideshowbob says:
      26 Mar26 March 17:22

      Oh dear so the latest strategy is to not even bother taking the new cards out of the envelope before cancelling. And you wonder why Amex (etc.) close down incentives for the rest of us.

      • Spiderman says:
        26 Mar26 March 17:32

        Don’t have a cow man!

      • Shoestring says:
        26 Mar26 March 17:36

        @SSB I agree, gotta be said. I hope Amex have some kind of system in place to blacklist serious abusers.

        • Andy Passey says:
          26 Mar26 March 18:33

          Am hardly a “serial abuser”. I wanted to test if I still got a referral bonus as there’s no point me keeping the Amex Platinum card long term if not. I don’t take the piss, I usually refer my wife for one card a year, we’ve both had BA Amex cards for ten years and the Platinum for two. I don’t churn that much. I’ve referred lots of friends and family for Amex cards.
          In normal situation my wife would keep the everyday platinum card now as a long term spending card but what’s the point? It just prevents her accessing a sign up bonus in the future. So for now I’ll keep my platinum card and my BA card and start referring her again in 24 months time. If that’s serial abuse then apologies!

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