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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.

  • Andrew L says:
    24 Nov24 November 20:36

    Looks what’s reappeared on the Curve website with a few ammendments…..

    For which transactions will the Debit Fronted Credit fees apply?
    Rachel Today at 16:47

    This is a service provided by Curve that enables you to make payments using you Curve Mastercard® Debit card, funded by an underlying credit card in instances where credit card payments may not be available at the merchant. At the moment, the only type of transaction that falls under this category is payments made to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).

    For customers who sign up from the 25th of November, 2019, if you wish to use your credit card to fund these type of payments through Curve, the following charges apply:

    For Curve Blue (free) and Curve Black customers (including Curve Black Legacy users), you will be charged 1.5% of the amount of the transaction. There is no charge for Curve Metal customers.

    If you signed up to Curve before the 25th of November, 2019, these fees will apply from the 24th of January, 2020.

    Please bear in mind that fees may be applied by your underlying card issuer for making such transactions using Curve and that Curve is not liable for such fees. Please refer to the terms and conditions of your underlying card issuer.

    • Andrew L says:
      24 Nov24 November 20:38

      How’s that saying go? You couldn’t write this….but unfortunately those jokers at Curve did write it, amended it and wrote it again!! 🤣 🤣

    • J says:
      24 Nov24 November 20:53

      The funny thing is that HMRC do accept credit cards – corporate cards with a fee. As Curve is also meant to be a business card, they are just saying they charge a fee where credit cards are’t accepted, but this fee will only apply to one merchant (one that does accept equivalent credit cards).

      • Andrew L says:
        24 Nov24 November 20:59

        This may be worth handing over to the UK regulatory powers to look over to see if it breeches their new credit card regulations wbich are stricter than the EU’s.

      • Secret Squirrel says:
        25 Nov25 November 06:50

        HMRC – you would be surprised what cards they do accept without incurring a fee, try a small deposit directly first using a MC/Visa card.

    • Aaron says:
      24 Nov24 November 21:11

      Ok, so based on that, the only thing changing is it doesn’t make sense to use Curve to pay HMRC. Not the end of the world for me. As long as you can still use curve free of charge and linked to an underlying credit card for all other transactions, irrespective of whether the merchant accepts credit cards or not…otherwise curve metal can still make sense if you are putting through sufficient spend. Does anyone know how easy it is to get your annual limit increased above £50k? Is it generally automatic, or does crossing that threshold require a bit of haggling? And if they do increase it, what do they typically bump it up to? £100k or something lower?

      • Aaron says:
        24 Nov24 November 21:13

        Also – isn’t the default annual spend cap for curve metal set at £100k?

      • Grant says:
        24 Nov24 November 21:16

        AFAIK, based on my experience and other reports, the spend limit increase from £50k is normally £100k, then £500k

        • Jonathan says:
          25 Nov25 November 07:01

          Yep, I’m on £500k annual. Never had automatic increase and always asked for it once I’d Max’s the previous limit.

          • Anthony says:
            25 Nov25 November 08:24

            I hit my annual £10k limit pretty quickly and duly asked for an increase but was rejected. Asked why and was told my spending pattern wasn’t what they were looking for. (It was 90% HMRC). So that was the end of that. Card (blue) in a drawer until the clock resets at 12 months. Sadly I realise this will be after 24.1.20. I will ask again but don’t expect much luck.

    • Lady London says:
      24 Nov24 November 23:24

      Looks like Curve have gone to great lengths to try to define a category or particular rule that will only distinguish the HMRC merchant. Their current definition is not successful in doing this. As of course there are many more merchants than just HMRC that won’t accept credit cards and only take debit cards. And yet, Curve has said it won’t be charging a number of merchants who do match the description. This does not make sense.

      And let’s not forget HMRC does not even fit the description because actually, HMRC does accept credit cards as well as debit cards. It just charges 1.5% for credit cards.

      The only problem seems to be that Curve would like to charge 1.5% of these rather large payments too. So they’re doing triple Axels and backward double somersaults to try to define which precise category they want to charge 1.5% to. And failing. They really just want to say ‘tasty HMRC payments that we’d like to grab 1.5% of’. They,re not providing a credit card service yet they’re trying to grab some of the margin credit card providers get for taking higher liabilities overall (s.75 etc.) without providing much extra.

      Based on what Rob has commented below the line in this one about them making a tiny loss of 0.1% if every HMRC transaction , then it would be very fair if they surcharged, say, 0.15% for say, transactions backed by a crédit card of at least £100. That would be sustainable on both sides.

      Only in an overheated fatcat finance market, if thé currency stays stable, can this type of tosh be attempted as a business.

      • Rob says:
        24 Nov24 November 23:49

        1.5% is odd. If it was 0.5% I think most HFP readers would grumble but pay up, raising more money overall.

        • Polly says:
          25 Nov25 November 01:24

          That’s what l suggested earlier today. If they suddenly lose 1000s of customers now, maybe they would reconsider and drop the fee to 0.5%. The 1.5% might be a sounding out figure…

        • Thomas Howard says:
          25 Nov25 November 07:33

          Is there any chance they offer an intermediate product for about £5 a month offering no fee HMRC without the third rate insurance products?

      • Polly says:
        25 Nov25 November 01:36

        LL, looks like your theory is correct. They basically just want a slice of that giant HMRC action!

        • Ian M says:
          25 Nov25 November 05:22

          But at 1.5% that will be a very small slice. People won’t pay it. If they accepted Amex, I would be willing to take a 1.5% hit on the SPG Amex. But of course they cocked that one up!

          • Shoestring says:
            25 Nov25 November 07:11

            Who pays? Let’s say I pay £1000 to HMRC through Curve to be funded by a credit card that will earn me 1000 points. Who is paying for the 1000 points?

          • Rob says:
            25 Nov25 November 07:42

            Assuming Curve pays pure interchange only (unlikely) it receives £2 from HMRC and pays £3 to your credit card company – which then pays £8-£10 for your miles at 1 per £1.

  • Brasov says:
    25 Nov25 November 00:12

    Imagine when the nice car rental chappie gives you a free upgrade from an Astra to a BMW 3-series and you have to decline it because your Curve Metal card doesn’t allow a car of that value!

    On the other hand, a HFP reader might well get a Black Friday bonus from their Curve card.

    • Rob says:
      25 Nov25 November 07:49

      I always decline car upgrades because I rarely drive and am not happy with anything big.

      • Harry T says:
        25 Nov25 November 07:54

        The first time I rented from Hertz in Australia, they upgraded me from a Corolla to a Ford Ranger – that was fun to park!

        • Froggitt says:
          25 Nov25 November 09:52

          I was upgraded in Vegas to this huge white “drug dealers” car

          • Doug M says:
            25 Nov25 November 10:56

            US upgrades so often the franchise or location putting mileage on another locations car left with them on a one way rental. So many upgrades have out of state plates.

          • Lady London says:
            25 Nov25 November 11:22

            +1. IME a one way is likely to have Out of State plates. Which does increase the risk of car break-ins dramatically.

          • Mr(s) Entitled says:
            25 Nov25 November 11:28

            Increases the risk from infinitesimal to negligible?

          • Lady London says:
            25 Nov25 November 14:58

            Yup. Think about it. Which car is more likely to contain stuff worth nicking? A local car, or one from Out of State? It’s about ROI. And while we’re hete, which car is a more susceptible target for carjacking?

            Sumilar reasons why i alxays request an unbranded véhicule if hiring a van.

      • Lady London says:
        25 Nov25 November 09:09

        Plus they grab a much bigger deposit off your credit card. Even if you didnt book the higher grade of car they want to foist on you because they’ve got it spare.

        If i’m really serious about not taking an upgrade then as well a making sure it’s noted on the booking, i phone the location directly around 4pm local time the previous day. Try never to pick up a car late at night or the giant car you didnt book, may truly be the only set of wheels they have left (or in one occasion in my case, the car with a bullet hole in the headlight).

      • pauldb says:
        25 Nov25 November 10:40

        One of my “best” upgrades was to a Focus to a 3-series estate in Norway. Yes please. However after 200km we punctured a runflat tyre and after using 30km of its range trying a few local garages who couldn’t replace it, there was no way I was driving 120km (2hrs) to the nearest BMW garage. In the end I had to try Enterprise’s breakdown service (a local garage) and once they drew a blank basically had to dump the car with them. Enterprise hit me with the full excess but Amex blocked the charge. Fortunately I managed to hire a cheap car locally and then fly back to Bergen instead.

    • pauldb says:
      25 Nov25 November 08:36

      Being pedantic, I think the T&Cs are meant to express that Curve will only cover the excess of your CDW up to £25k (are they ever more than £2k?), whereas Amex will completely replace CDW if you can decline it. The actually car value limit is seperately stated as €35k – still not 3er cover.

  • Max says:
    25 Nov25 November 00:53

    Remember you can still use a Tesco current account debit card to pay HMRC and collect Clubcard points which can be converted to Avios/Virgin.

    • Polly says:
      25 Nov25 November 01:26

      Yes Max,
      Think there will be a sudden rush for Tesco debit cards and account openings in the next few weeks.

    • Amit says:
      25 Nov25 November 06:44

      Thought payments to financial institutions didn’t earn clubcard points

      • Richmond says:
        25 Nov25 November 07:09

        I certainly earned points last year, when I run out of limit on Curve and they didn’t want to up it above £50K.

        Can you pay by Miles and More Mastercard (pre-paid) card on HMRC?

        I will certainly cancel Curve after January change, only got it for HMRC payments.

      • Genghis says:
        25 Nov25 November 07:44

        HMRC isn’t a financial institution.

    • Nigel says:
      25 Nov25 November 08:36

      Ah, I was never sure about this regarding Tesco and their debit cards!

  • BJ says:
    25 Nov25 November 05:49

    Thanks for update, hopefully they will forget to add certain merchants to the list for a very long time 🙂

    • LewisB says:
      25 Nov25 November 09:11

      +1 May be worth doing some tests anyway for certain merchants… small numbers of course 🙂

    • Harry T says:
      25 Nov25 November 14:53

      Even if they add them, there is no guarantee their own rules. Apparently they rarely punish people for exceeding the vast withdrawal limits.

  • Patrick says:
    25 Nov25 November 06:01

    The real reason may be pressure from HMRC as they want access to the pot…

  • First Last says:
    25 Nov25 November 06:34

    RIP CURVE… yet another mess up

    • Doug M says:
      25 Nov25 November 11:01

      Their inability to do things right is what makes them so attractive. Don’t think mess think opportunity. If they got things right they’d lose customers much faster. Curve serves its management looking for their payday, and its opportunistic customers, the people I don’t see it serves are its investors.

  • Rooster says:
    25 Nov25 November 08:41

    Well this is a good move for Curve as a business model but obviously sucks for the consumer!

    I guess counting the Tax, PAYE and VAT will need to be done now to see if its worth bothering, with the IHG car you also get the points towards the status for that year so that is often worthwhile!

  • LewisB says:
    25 Nov25 November 09:10

    HMRC only to begin with… okay. Will need to keep an eye on this banned list! May do some tests on the day of with small amounts.

    • Andrew L says:
      25 Nov25 November 09:40

      Yes, I’m going to test it too just to make sure it’s not like their ATM rule that they never charge for.

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