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Curve Card to add 1.5% fee for HMRC tax payments – unless you upgrade to Curve Metal

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SUNDAY EDIT: On Sunday evening, Curve put details of these changes back on its website, with two changes:

for new cardholders from Monday 25th November, these new policies apply immediately.  Existing cardholders will not switch to the new rules until 24th January (not 21st as originally stated)

the new policy will only apply to ‘we don’t accept credit cards’ merchants specifically listed by Curve, and initially only HMRC will be on that list.  You will NOT be surcharged for using Curve at any other merchant which only accepts debit cards.

MONDAY 6pm EDIT: Curve has added some additional exclusions to the website:

After an initial trial period with HMRC, other government payments such as National Savings & Investments, DVLA Vehicle Tax, and Student Loan Payments will be included as well.

Back to the original article ….

Curve Card briefly added a section to its website yesterday about new fees it is introducing for debit card payments which are recharged to a credit card.

The information disappeared from the website after pushback in Curve’s community forum, but it was detailed enough to assume that it is happening.

The main target here is HMRC tax payments.  It will also apply wherever you use Curve Card to make a debit card payment – at a merchant which does not accept credit cards – which you recharge to a credit card.

I’m not sure that many people have huge amounts of debit card payments apart from HMRC.  Most (not all) credit card companies are blocked by Curve using its get-out of ‘no financial services transactions’.  I think all debit card payments to mortgages, pensions or savings accounts are already blocked.

If you don’t know anything about Curve Card, you may want to read my introduction here before continuing.

Why do people use Curve Card to pay HMRC?

HMRC stopped accepting credit cards for tax payments last year, after the Government stopped merchants imposing fees for credit card use.

This was a serious blow for miles and points collectors who were not on PAYE, as it removed the ability to earn substantial sums of miles from paying VAT, NI, income tax etc.

Curve Card offered a way around this.  You could link a points-earning Mastercard or Visa credit card to your Curve Card and use it to pay HMRC.  Curve Card is treated as a debit card so it is accepted.

This was, essentially, free miles for people like myself.  I have used the bulk of my £50,000 Curve Card limit this year paying HMRC bills.  I recharged them to my Miles & More Global Traveller card, earning close to (50,000 x 1.25) 62,500 Lufthansa Miles & More miles for free.

Curve introducing fee for HMRC payments

It looks like this is coming to an end ….

This is what was posted on the Curve Card website for a period yesterday:

Can I use Curve to make payments to HMRC?

If you decide to use the Curve card with a credit card selected as your payment card, starting on the 21st of January 2020, you may be charged a fee. For Curve Blue (free) and Curve Black (including Curve Black Legacy users) customers you will be charged 1.5% of the amount of the transaction. There is no charge to Curve Metal customers.

Here is the full list of Q&A uploaded to and then removed from the site:

For which transactions will the Debit Fronted Credit fees apply?
Can I use Curve to make payments to HMRC?
Does Curve charge a fee to make payments to HMRC?
Are there spending limits to HMRC payments?
I got a decline after making a payment to HMRC. What happened?

It is pointless (sic) paying a 1.5% fee to pay HMRC via Curve Card.  There are very few scenarios where the underlying miles and points earned will be worth that.

The only exceptions may be if you have a Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard, earning 1.5 miles per £1, or the Miles & More Global Traveller card, earning 1.25 miles per £1.

Your miles would be costing you 1p and 1.2p respectively.  This is not a great deal but some people may find it acceptable.  I don’t.

It is worth noting that Curve Metal customers will not pay a fee.  This is intriguing.  Curve Metal costs £14.95 per month or £150 per year.  If you have substantial tax bills, the upgrade may be attractive.

Let’s run some numbers …..

GREAT DEAL – Pay £50k of tax on a Miles & More Mastercard (1.25 miles per £1) = 62,500 Miles & More miles for £150 Curve Metal fee

GREAT DEAL – Pay £40k of tax on a Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard (1.5 miles per £1) = 60,000 Virgin Flying Club miles for £150 Curve Metal fee

AVERAGE DEAL – Pay £30k of tax on an IHG Rewards Club Premium Mastercard (2 points per £1) = 60,000 status-qualifying IHG Rewards Club points (valued by me at £240) for £150 Curve Metal fee

BAD DEAL – Pay £20k of tax on a HSBC Premier Mastercard (0.5 Avios or other miles per £1) = 10,000 Avios for £150 Curve Metal fee

The bottom line is that:

if you pay enough to HMRC each year, and

you have a generous-enough points-earning Visa or Mastercard credit card linked to Curve

…. then Curve Card via Curve Metal is still an attractive way to pay the Inland Revenue or any other debit card bill which accepts Curve.

Curve introducing fees for paying Inland Revenue

Don’t forget that Curve Metal has other benefits too

On top of the ability to pay unlimited sums to HMRC – subject to your Curve Card limits, which for most people are £50,000 of charges per year – your £150 annual Curve Metal fee comes with other benefits:

This page of the Curve website compares the three different types of Curve Card.  With regards to Curve Metal:

Card: You get a funky 18g brushed metal card in red, blue or rose gold.  I have been trialling the blue one and it is a bit boring to be honest so I’d recommend one of the others!

Foreign exchange fees:  Unlimited transactions with no fee (0.5% fee $ or € and 1.5% fee for other currencies applies to transactions made on a Saturday or Sunday)

ATM withdrawals: Overseas: £600 per 30-day period for free, 2% thereafter / UK: £200 per 30-day period fair use cap

These are the key benefits.  There are other benefits which I do not value highly but which some readers may find useful:

Travel insurance underwritten by AXA

Gadget insurance (maximum value £800 with a £50 excess)

Car rental CDW waiver coverage  (I have this via Amex Platinum but if you do hire cars and don’t have a standalone policy this will be worth something to you – the car must be worth under £25,000 however)

Airport lounge access via LoungeKey (this is NOT free access, you will need to pay a fee of £20 per visit)

1% cashback from six premium retailers.  This is on top of the rewards you will earn from your underlying card.

You won’t necessarily get £150 of annual benefit from this package, but you will get something.  And, of course, you will be retaining the ability to make substantial payments to HMRC via Curve Card.

Final thoughts …..

There had been rumours that Curve Card was introducing fees for paying the Inland Revenue after it sent out a questionnaire recently seeking views on the topic.

What is new here is the addition of charges for ALL debit card payments made with a Curve Card which are recharged to a credit card.

If the structure above turns out to be correct then many of our SME readers will still be OK.  They will have £50,000-worth of HMRC charges per year across VAT, PAYE, income tax etc and the upgrade to Curve Metal can be justified if you have a generous Visa or Mastercard credit card linked.

The losers are likely to be those with under £10,000 or so of HMRC or other non-financial debit card payments.  If this is you, it won’t be worth paying £150 per year for Curve Metal and it won’t be worth paying a 1.5% fee to use Curve Blue or Curve Black.

Let’s see if anything changes between now and the proposed launch date of 21st January.

PS …

If you have read this article without knowing anything at all about Curve Card, read my introductory article here.

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

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Comments (590)

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

  • Neil says:
    26 Nov26 November 15:55

    The ability to pay HMRC was one of the reasons I paid for the (now Legacy) Black card. I’m now wondering what exactly I paid my £50 for.

    • Peter K says:
      26 Nov26 November 19:19

      I’ve no sympathy for you in this count. You got a tumi wallet, you signed up for unspecified “double rewards” if an early adopter. You got £30 of it refunded if you hit a £1000 spend target and you’ve had a significant period of use of the card.
      You got everything they said and as always with a financial product things can change down the line.

  • Hg333 says:
    26 Nov26 November 16:01

    Guys, keep a lid on all these things…

    Rob/Rhys/ANYONE – please delete the Revolut / Curve comments as this will inevitably shut down the avenue.

    • Rui N. says:
      26 Nov26 November 16:35

      Curve will shutdown that avenue in January, the whole post is about that.
      And quite rich to be on a points website asking for certain ways of gaining points to not be discussed. I’m guessing you only want to hear about stuff you don’t know already?

      • Secret Squirrel says:
        27 Nov27 November 15:24

        It won’t be shut down Rui N in Jan, that’s the point most are trying to make. To continue unless your on Metal you’ll pay 1.5% fee from Jan if your on lower tier cards.
        However, openly discussing the route may get it shut down before Jan or close it for Metal after.

        • ysun says:
          27 Nov27 November 18:11

          Come on, we all know for sure that this game will eventually come to an end, when the authorities and financial institutions figured out the loopholes. there were easy MS methods in the US years ago, and now there is basically none

          • Shoestring says:
            27 Nov27 November 18:19

            you have to ponder why some credit card cos have been savvy enough to code payments to HMRC etc in such a way that the cardholder pays fees costing more than the value of the points earned, thus curbing the cost…

            …and some credit card cos can’t be bothered!

          • ysun says:
            27 Nov27 November 18:28

            Shoestring – whatever the reason might be for banks to ignore what’s going on, the potential risk of getting fined for money laundering by customers would let them think twice

          • Shoestring says:
            27 Nov27 November 18:32

            not that much (or any) of it is likely to be money laundering – ie depositing (say) £5000 in a savings a/c at the start of the month, to earn 5000 or 7500 points, then withdrawing it and repeating the same exercise with the same money the next month, isn’t money laundering

          • Rob says:
            27 Nov27 November 18:51

            It will get you reported to the authorities, however, so you can explain it to them ….

          • ysun says:
            27 Nov27 November 18:39

            Shoestring – Thanks I got the point!

            Yes you’re right. Indeed such an amount will not likely to be treated as ML. I was thinking about possible MS ways in the US, and couldn’t find any. Even getting 90k miles yearly as you mentioned has already been very difficult, since there is no way of topping up pre-paid account with debit card

          • The Savage Squirrel says:
            27 Nov27 November 20:22

            Explain it to the authorities. Reminds me of that guy who hired some local guys to sit in planes in Thailand or somewhere similar to earn frequent flyer points on some particularly cheap/lucrative route and the police interviewed him and once they understood what he was doing, they said, oh we thought you were the world’s worst drugs runner :D. I’m sure Rob can remember the names.

          • Rob says:
            27 Nov27 November 21:51

            Steve Belkin. The guy talks about it in this (fab) video – https://headforpoints.com/2018/08/19/frequent-flyer-video/

            They were disabled Thai rice farmers.

          • Shoestring says:
            27 Nov27 November 20:50

            well it’s perhaps not in the same league as £100K of MS in (and out!) of a savings bank etc – but when I had to explain to various people on the phone about 3Vs/ multiple credit cards, they just laughed

    • bazza says:
      26 Nov26 November 17:03

      Rob loves these curve and revolt threads, he aint stupid, with all these comments comes 10 x as many hits and hit = MONEY!!!!!!!!!!

    • Thomas Howard says:
      26 Nov26 November 21:09

      Do you really think they don’t have sufficient analytics to work out what’s going on?

  • Mr(s) Entitled says:
    26 Nov26 November 18:18

    Any 6pm updates today or are Curve trying to look professional?

    • Dave B says:
      26 Nov26 November 18:24

      Just linked my Barclaycard to curve , any problems likely? I know Tesco cards have limited issues with cash withdrawals .

    • Rob says:
      26 Nov26 November 21:37

      Seems so 🙂 May need to unstick the post.

    • First Last says:
      27 Nov27 November 03:57

      Presume they dont give a crap as they are changing their terms and conditions with over 30 days notice. No need to contact peasants like us. Their investors on the other hand… must had been informed well in advance

  • Sundar says:
    26 Nov26 November 21:26

    How many are concerned about the monetization of the data aspect that they have alluded to ?

    • Grant says:
      26 Nov26 November 21:41

      I replied to the email about the change in terms to ask how they plan to share my data. No response yet.

      • Sussex bantam says:
        26 Nov26 November 22:53

        I did that too. They can’t just change their privacy policy without explaining how they plan to do so

        • First Last says:
          27 Nov27 November 03:55

          Can we launch a petition or action against them if no response in 24 hours (GDPR?)

          • Sussex Bantam says:
            27 Nov27 November 08:41

            We can report them to the ICO – that would have far more weight than a petition.

            However I’d suggest giving them a reasonable amount of time to respond to our query – which is more than 24 hours !

    • First Last says:
      27 Nov27 November 03:55

      Very concerning

    • Grant says:
      27 Nov27 November 14:48

      I’ve now had a response to my email about data sharing saying that they won’t share my data with third parties ‘for the purpose of conducting a soft credit check or for marketing’.

      I’ve explained that that’s not exactly what I asked for and pressed to see what changes have been made to the privacy policy.

      • EwanG says:
        27 Nov27 November 15:39

        Primarily the changes to the privacy notice concern the Curve Send function which they have been beta testing, but as to why they couldn’t have been clearer in communicating what is being changed and why is disappointing, so too is their support response to Grant.

        Aside from a couple of wording changes/additions to make certain clauses clearer, the changes are as follows:
        Section 6, financial data:
        Added “details of your credit history held at credit reference agencies”

        Section 8
        Added “- give us access to your contact list, along with the photo attached to that contact (if applicable), in order for you to send funds to other Curve customers using Curve Send functionality;”
        Added “- you send information or media with payments or payment requests made using Curve Send functionality”
        Added “- Financial data (i.e. credit history) from credit reference agencies. We will search your credit history to help us develop and offer credit products that are relevant to you. This is known as a ‘soft credit search’. The credit reference agencies will record our search but no one except you will be able to see it. It will not affect your credit score.”

        Section 10
        Added the activity “- Facilitate payments made using Curve Send functionality.” under two of the purposes

        Section 21
        Added “Curve Send” and associated information
        Added “Social Media Platforms” and associated information

        Section 23
        Inserted new section for “Curve Send” and renumbered subsequent sections

        • Chris says:
          27 Nov27 November 19:30

          What on earth do they think they are doing?

          The casual addition of credit reference agency data to the privacy policy without saying why or when they intend to access it is very concerning. They don’t provide me with any credit facility so they have no legitimate interest and I have never given consent for them to access it (nor will I).

          If they ever do access it without my consent, I’ll report them to the ICO.

          • Your Flexible Friend says:
            27 Nov27 November 22:44

            They are on the rocks and don’t seem to care what they do as long as it makes them some money. You’ll get the usual Curve shills telling you to “jog on” or it’s nothing, but it is. I’m starting to think Curve can’t even afford a decent solicitor.

  • RN says:
    27 Nov27 November 03:29

    So just to check (appreciate I’m behind the curve on this – excuse the completely unintentional pun) if I wanted to go out and buy £10K worth of premium bonds with NS&I right now, I could do that fee-free via the basic Curve card right now, but come end-Jan, this would incur a 1.5% fee?
    Just want to make sure that I’ve got it right before funding (which I’d intended to do any way, but not via Curve)

  • Johnny Tabasco says:
    27 Nov27 November 07:10

    So there is talk of petitions now? Honestly, some of you need to have a word with yourselves. Newsflash: Points collecting is a hobby.
    The sense of entitlement often displayed on here is staggering.

    • Doug M says:
      27 Nov27 November 07:37

      The mention of petition was in respect of GDPR which is very real, ask BA.

      • Symon says:
        27 Nov27 November 08:04

        +1 It’s shocking how many think it’s fine for Curve to take a cavalier approach towards the law.

      • Mr(s) Entitled says:
        27 Nov27 November 08:42

        Fine. But don’t petition. If concerned take action directly through the appropriate mechanism. If not concerned, jog on.

        • Your Flexible Friend says:
          27 Nov27 November 09:28

          Things not going to well at Curve towers?

          • Rob says:
            27 Nov27 November 10:46

            They just raised $60m.

          • Rooster says:
            27 Nov27 November 18:46

            haha what a joke

          • Your Flexible Friend says:
            27 Nov27 November 22:47

            All those successful rounds of funding for a company that doesn’t have a profitable product… Guess that’s why trying going for users’ data 😉

            Anyway, I’m pleased Rob has just now posted an article in the comments that gives a better picture of Curve’s health.

  • avios hopeful says:
    27 Nov27 November 10:30

    hope nsandi loophole doesn’t close – pretty please. I don’t intend to cheat etc but want to put 10 k away for good and wont mind some avios 😉

  • Froggitt says:
    27 Nov27 November 11:24

    So I just joined the Brighton and Hove Albion Supporters Club for the first time. What’s the worst that can happen…..they take away the ability to pay HMRC???

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