Curve Card suspended as the FCA closes down Wirecard UK, freezing customer accounts

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• Alan says:

  26 Jun26 June 18:47

  Update from Curve just published re what’s happening – https://discover.curve.app/a/wirecard-whats-happened-what-it-means-and-how-were-fixing-it

  • Genghis says:

    26 Jun26 June 19:39

    You must have been busy on the boards today! I’d have expected something about what’s happening to those paying for a subscription.

    • Alan says:

      27 Jun27 June 09:27

      Yep – question has been asked a few times but no info yet. Can’t see how they will be able to charge for the time it’s out of action although of course if it ends up being only a couple of days it will be less of an issue.

  • Jimbob says:

    26 Jun26 June 19:52

    When an update isn’t an update………

    • Jimbob says:

      26 Jun26 June 19:53

      Doesn’t tell us anything new

    • Alan says:

      27 Jun27 June 09:28

      Haha yep I know, just thought worth posting though as it was an official update from them 😉

  • Andrew L says:

    26 Jun26 June 20:49

    What another farce from Curve and maybe the final nail in the coffin of a completely inept business. Clearly their previous statements about being up an running in-house by the 28th June just wasn’t true.

    Curve really have been caught with their pants around their ankles this time.

    Yes, other businesses have been affected by this, but no other mainstream card providers in the UK have!

    • Chris K says:

      26 Jun26 June 20:53

      My watch only makes it 26th to be fair. Given this goes right to the core of their ability to function as a company, I, for once, believe them when they say they’re working round the clock for a fix.

      • Andrew L says:

        26 Jun26 June 21:27

        Haha. Read the statement again. Does that really sound like they will be up and running again by the 28th?

        The concept of Curve has always been very good, especially Go Back in Time, but unfortunately, the people operating it are completely useless and unless that changes they are destined to fail.

        • J says:

          26 Jun26 June 22:53

          Don’t really get the hate for Curve. I’ve never had any problems – the product works fine for me, and although the email customer service format is a bit odd I’ve found them very helpful and quick to solve issues. It’s a useful concept and living abroad is great for being able to use my Hilton Barclaycard and avoid FX fees.

        • Craig says:

          27 Jun27 June 10:11

          Isn’t the main issue and reason it might not be up and running by the 28th now is that the *transition* from a provider to in house is now compromised, rather than them not having the ability to do it in house at the moment. I’m not expert but I imagine there are all sorts of “mappings” of process being set up and things being “switched” to ensure continuity from one source of transaction processing to another, now to find that one side of the “mapping” has disappeared.

          I am with J and not sure what all the hate is about

        • Doug M says:

          27 Jun27 June 10:58

          Agree. Curve is excellent, well it seems to me that way, unless of course you’re an investor 🙂

        • Lady London says:

          28 Jun28 June 13:03

          @Craig +1. I have no doubt Curve will sort it though. Although any transactions caught between the back to back @Genghis mentioned, and any recurring transactions due that fail, might have a very long tail (3-5 months?) to sort out. But on a going-forward basis I would expect Curve to get it sorted out relatively quickly.

    • MD says:

      26 Jun26 June 23:05

      @Andrew L
      What a ridiculously stupid take. Because Curve are totally responsible for Wirecard, right? Imbecile.

      • Dezbez says:

        26 Jun26 June 23:58

        I work in Risk Management (in financial services) and trying to be objective about the situation… Firstly I can’t believe that Curve doesn’t have a contingency plan for this (it would seem pretty rudimentary where your whole business model has 100% reliance on one third party). And secondly that the Regulators ie FCA hasn’t been more challenging about it (as well as any internal assurance functions eg Internal Audit). This is 101 stuff, not hindsight talking. Appreciate Curve was working on transitioning away but that seems like a strategic decision rather than contingency planning.

        • John says:

          27 Jun27 June 05:38

          What contingency plan can you come up with then?? It sounds like (if you believe curve) they did have a contingency plan which they were implementing which was supposed to be done by tomorrow.

        • David says:

          28 Jun28 June 20:41

          “I work in Risk Management (in financial services) and trying to be objective about the situation… Firstly I can’t believe that Curve doesn’t have a contingency plan for this (it would seem pretty rudimentary where your whole business model has 100% reliance on one third party). ”

          I’m sorry, you may work in Financial Services, but you clearly know nothing about cards.

          “This is 101 stuff,” – indeed it is, you need to do course 101 in how cards work as it’s clear you don’t understand the role of the parties, what is utterly normal setup.

      • Andrew L says:

        27 Jun27 June 00:38

        Not really, the guys running the joint are useless. Revolut haven’t had to cease trading today. What does that tell you? Please refer back to my first sentence…

        • Patrick says:

          27 Jun27 June 06:03

          You can’t have a contingency for everything.
          Utter non sense
          Actual risk managing is moving providers which was on it’s way. Given no customer money is linked tonthe card, that us actually good risk managenent.
          Also the real scandal here is the FCA who makes a fool of themselves. These cards are critical infrastructure and thus should be rung fenced operations and the regulator needs to step in instead of shutting it down. Extremely poor…

        • Secret Squirrel says:

          27 Jun27 June 07:42

          True, Revolut still running today. Curve should of been in place before this but we rely on good old curve for exotic transactions so we have to wait.

        • Doug M says:

          27 Jun27 June 11:01

          @AndrewL – Maybe if Curve were as structured and professional as you’d like them to be they’d be a lot less useful…….

  • Venting says:

    27 Jun27 June 02:15

    Wait, they are now Curve os Ltd?

• Andrew L says:

  26 Jun26 June 22:57

  The introduction of ‘Curve Fronted’ introduced a lot of hate towards Curve.

  • J says:

    26 Jun26 June 23:06

    Those affected are mostly people trying to play the system though so Curve won’t miss them.

    • Luckyjim says:

      26 Jun26 June 23:39

      Does anybody else use curve? Their USP has always been to enable users to game the system.Use Amex at places that don’t take Amex, disguise a Credit card as a debit card etc.

      • Graeme says:

        27 Jun27 June 00:06

        The idea of ‘only having to carry one card’ has never really rung true for me. One, it really isn’t hard to carry two/three cards (I carry two of the cards my Curve is linked to as well as Curve!) and two, there’s no way I’d ever solely rely on Curve as it has problems way too often.

        • Eugene says:

          27 Jun27 June 07:40

          Yes. While there is the opportunity to use a curve in a debit card only vendor, those places are few and far between. But as to carry only one card? I have 6 or 7 on my phone. Can’t recall when I needed a physical card in most of the first world. Physical cards are dead men walking, tomorrow’s chequebooks.

        • Crafty says:

          27 Jun27 June 08:37

          It’s a proposition without the demand for one. Apple, Samsung and others have already gone a step beyond this for anybody who would actually find it useful.

        • John says:

          27 Jun27 June 12:06

          Chequebooks are very useful very rarely. Saved my house purchase for one

      • Secret Squirrel says:

        27 Jun27 June 07:43

        Amex? Long time ago now!

    • Andrew L says:

      26 Jun26 June 23:59

      The whole concept of Curve is to play the system, isn’t it? What else is it useful for??

      • J says:

        27 Jun27 June 09:11

        Avoiding FX charges while still earning non Amex points seems a legit use. Less cards to carry around – I would never rely on a smart phone given how poor my battery is…

        • Doug M says:

          27 Jun27 June 11:04

          Maybe consider a phone with a decent battery life.
          The weight and bulk of a couple of credit cards is hardly a game changer when you’re carrying a phone.

  • Ashish says:

    27 Jun27 June 01:16

    But this just down to Germany terrible lax regulations? To allow is terrible. Germany changed a lot.

    • J says:

      27 Jun27 June 09:15

      It is not that the regulations are lax though – there’s a major fraud scandal and now a criminal investigation.

      • Genghis says:

        27 Jun27 June 09:50

        BaFin has not exactly been a darling though:
        – inaction in some areas
        – banning short selling of Wirecard instead of tackling problem
        – them siding with Wirecard vs the FT investigation
        – wasn’t Wirecard classed as a tech co and not a FS co?
        I’m no expert on German regulations to say whether it’s the regulations themselves or application thereof but questions still need to be asked.

        • RWJ says:

          27 Jun27 June 14:18

          BaFin seemed to act to protect a German company that could appear to compete with US and UK fintechs, rather than actually investigate or regulate much!

  • Lady London says:

    28 Jun28 June 21:48

    That’s hat 🎩 now.

• Nick says:

  26 Jun26 June 23:06

  If no one trusts Curve to be up and running all the time and therefore everyone has to carry a ‘backup’ card, their main business model is trashed. They can’t make money from a few ‘niches’ (such as HfPers and their MS), and mainstream users will very quickly lose trust. I’d be very pessimistic about Curve’s future.

  (Then again, I’ve never really seen the fuss anyway, and have been wrong before!)

  • TonyT says:

    27 Jun27 June 00:08

    Can’t quite see why HFP has got into the curve type of thing? The site really does well reporting core airline/hotel etc.. stuff. This whole “Curve Ball.” Is best left elsewhere with all due regard to commission

    • The Urbanite says:

      27 Jun27 June 01:03

      Some people use credit cards to generate hotel and airline points – Curve facilitates that and is therefore of interest to some readers on here.

    • Secret Squirrel says:

      27 Jun27 June 07:47

      Eh? This site revolves round airline / hotel loyalty points. Using Curve to generate this is not for this type of site??

  • Andrew L says:

    27 Jun27 June 00:09

    I don’t think that the credit card companies would lose any sllep if Curve were to fail.

    The only thing I would really miss is ‘Go Back in Time’ . That is now a great feature since they increased the benefit to £5,000 and the time you can go back to 3 months. Oh, and the money I pull out of cash machines a couple of times a month on mine & the wife’s cards.

    • Pat the Postie says:

      27 Jun27 June 00:23

      I can’t see mention of 3 months anymore just 14 days

      • Andrew L says:

        27 Jun27 June 00:43

        It changed in April to 3 months and from under £1,000 to under £5,000.

      • Andrew L says:

        27 Jun27 June 00:51

        Here you go Pat the Postie. This has been lifted from Curve’s help pages….

        Which transactions can I move with Go Back in Time?

        You can move any of your transactions onto any of your payment cards that are added and verified with Curve. It’s worth noting that you can’t move transactions to or from your Curve Cash card.

        Also, to move a transaction, it must be less than 90 days old, under £5000, completed and not pending and you can’t have used Go Back in Time on it before.

        • Pat the Postie says:

          27 Jun27 June 00:59

          yes I read that but site still shows old info, doesn’t seem to be implemented. Has it worked for you?

        • Andrew L says:

          27 Jun27 June 01:10

          Yes, it works perfectly well….until this afternoon, of course.

  • CV3V says:

    27 Jun27 June 11:41

    How about paying Amex bill by Curve linked to Lloyds Avios credit card? I earn a good few thousand Avios per year at no cost. I can spell this method out now as it is being closed down! Sure there are other methods too.

    • The Urbanite says:

      27 Jun27 June 12:37

      What is changing to close this down?

• Dave Winchester says:

  27 Jun27 June 00:25

  Migrating all of that under sudden and immediate time pressure – spare a thought this weekend for the Curve dev team who are likely sleeping at the office.

• Andrew L says:

  27 Jun27 June 00:45

  They’ll be fine with the air conditioning and the endless take out pizza! 🤣

  • @mkcol says:

    27 Jun27 June 11:43

    Why on earth would they need aircon this weekend? Presuming they’re in the UK.

• Will says:

  27 Jun27 June 00:57

  Think we can give curve a break here.
  They relied on a DAX 30 listed company with an FCA license to process payments.

  It turns out that they somehow managed to convince shareholders, EY, Bond holders and regulators that they had almost 2 billion euros that didn’t exist.

  To all the curve critics, is every company who contracts out to an FCA licensed 3rd party expected to do more due diligence than the FCA to ensure the FCA license is issued correctly? What’s the point in the FCA in that case.

  • Roy says:

    27 Jun27 June 01:55

    And, to Curve’s credit, they saw the problem and were well advanced in their plans to ditch Wirecard.

    • NigelthePensioner says:

      27 Jun27 June 07:29

      Ah well, maybe they can use “Creation Bank” for whatever it is they need? That should be very scarey for all Curve-ites!
      They need to get AmEx back on board to be worthwhile IMHO. Then, they need to go in-house and THEN (and only then) they would have a great product. Until then, you will all have to look elsewhere for your metal card! :- ))

      • old bob says:

        27 Jun27 June 08:58

        Look on the Brightside eh Nige, As a fellow pensioner, we need something to moan about!

    • Axel says:

      27 Jun27 June 07:39

      The way I see it Curve are standing at the flight gates being told they’ve missed final boarding.

      Curve had over two years to move their processors or create a contingency. The FT has been onto Wirecard for years and years. The German authorities know Wirecard execs are hiding funds in Labuan. The DAX should be ashamed of this.

      The Curve management are young and naive. They didnt understand how Amex’s were used by old hands for example, as they probably had bever churned one.

• Erika says:

  27 Jun27 June 02:04

  I have a Payoneer Master card issued by Wirecard and now it’s frozen and I’m a freelancer and won’t be able to get paid for the next few … weeks? months? who knows.

• memesweeper says:

  27 Jun27 June 09:05

  I’ve been a long time Curve user. I used to enthusiastically promote it, but with Curve fronted it’s core USP now requires an investment that is hard to sell the benefits of, apart from niche use cases. I am in one of the niches, so in my circumstances (untill yesterday) it served me well, although I’ve found the customer service patchy.

  It’s really not their fault they bet the farm on wirecard. It was an apparently legitimate business, and they had plans to move away as they reached the scale necessary to make that an affordable and sensible next step. Trouble for them might be that migrating cleanly away from a card provider like Wirecard might involve data and other support that Wirecard can no longer give now Wirecard is insolvent — even if Curve are only days away from migrating. This insolvency is likely to kill stone dead many companies and services built on Wirecard and I really hope Curve isn’t one of them.

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