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How to pay your HMRC bill with a credit card using Curve by the 31st January deadline 

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This article is sponsored by Curve

The deadline for self assessment tax returns is approaching fast. You need to file your return by 31st January 2024 to make the HMRC deadline and avoid any penalties.

If you are a Head for Points reader you are very likely to be keen on the idea of paying your tax bill with a Visa or Mastercard credit card to earn extra points, or even just to manage your cashflow or spread the cost.

Unfortunately HMRC has blocked the use of personal credit cards since 2018. Corporate credit cards are still accepted, but carry a fee ranging from 1.7% – 2.8%.

There is, however, a workaround that makes it possible to pay HMRC with a personal or corporate credit card – and that’s Curve.

You can find out more about Curve here.

How to pay your HMRC bill with a credit card using Curve

What’s Curve? 

Curve is a smart digital wallet that connects your debit and Visa and Mastercard credit cards into one single payment card.

As well as offering cashback rewards and eliminating fees abroad, subject to payment limits, Curve has a unique feature in the form of Curve Fronted.

Curve Fronted enables you to make credit card payments at places where credit cards are not accepted, like HMRC, but debit cards are. You can also use Curve Fronted to pay utility bills, school fees and even rent when debit cards are accepted.

How does Curve Fronted work?

Since Curve operates as a Mastercard debit card, the transaction will be processed by HMRC as a debit transaction, even if a credit card is chosen within the Curve Wallet.

How to pay HMRC with a credit card using Curve

It’s a simple process:

  • 1. Download the Curve app 
  • 2. Link your Visa or Mastercard credit card
  • 3. Switch on the Curve Fronted feature 
  • 4. Pay HMRC with Curve

Earn thousands of extra credit card points

The costs for Curve Fronted vary depending on your Curve Card plan.

  • Curve Metal (£17.99 per month) allows you to pay £3,000 for free via Curve Fronted per rolling 30 days, with a 2.5% fee thereafter
  • Curve Black (£9.99 per month) allows you to pay £1,000 for free via Curve Fronted per rolling 30 days, with a 2.5% fee thereafter
  • The free version of Curve has a 2.5% fee for all Curve Fronted transactions

If you collect Avios on the Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard, earning 1.5 Avios per £1, you could earn 4,500 Avios per month via Curve Fronted on Curve Metal. This is a good return on your £17.99 Curve Metal fee, even before factoring in other Curve Card benefits which we will cover in a minute.

How to pay your HMRC bill with a credit card using Curve

On Curve Black, you could earn 1,500 Avios per month on the Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard via a £1,000 spend on Curve Fronted, for a £9.99 monthly fee.

Just be mindful of your fee-free limits and weigh up the pros and cons to decide whether or not it’s right for you.  If you have large tax bills then you could make a part-payment every 30 days to maximise your Curve Fronted fee-free limit.

If you want to use your corporate credit card to pay HMRC, using Curve Fronted can eliminate the fees charged by HMRC.

A lifeline for freelancers

The power to pay your tax bill with a credit card can be a lifeline for freelancers and self-employed contractors who may want to spread the cost of their tax bill, particularly if they have underestimated the amount owed, or find themselves chasing overdue invoices.

While the 2.5% fee may not always be “worth it for the points”, it may be worth it to help manage your cashflow and most importantly, avoid penalty fines from HMRC. These can reach 4% of your tax bill at Day 30 of non-payment.

If you are using Curve Fronted to help spread the cost of your tax bill, make sure you’re taking advantage of the interest-free period on your credit card to avoid paying sky-high interest rates. These would cancel out the benefits of using Curve Fronted to pay HMRC with a credit card. 

Eliminate credit card fees abroad

Most people don’t use their credit cards on holiday because they know they’re going to be hit with fees every time they tap their card or withdraw cash. Using Curve can actually eliminate fees abroad from all your cards – for good.

You can spend up to £250 per rolling 30 days with the free Curve Standard card. The savings really start ramping up when you look at the premium Curve Black and Curve Metal plans.

With Curve Black, customers can spend up to £2,000 per rolling 30 day fee-free and withdraw up to £500 without ATM charges in the same period. You will also earn Avios or other points on purchases from your underlying rewards credit card.

How to pay your HMRC bill with a credit card using Curve

If you’re using a debit or credit card charging 3% in foreign transaction fees and cash withdrawal fees, using Curve Black could save you up to £75 in fees abroad, every time you travel.

For Curve Metal customers there is no limit to how much you can spend abroad with no fees and you can withdraw up to £1,000 per rolling 30 days. This beats Revolut Metal’s £600 limit and Monzo’s £800 monthly limit. Again, you will also earn Avios or other points on purchases from your underlying rewards credit card.

Curve recently removed weekend surcharges for €, $ and £ transactions. Customers won’t be charged weekend fees unless they’re outside of these currencies.

What really sets Curve apart is the fact you don’t need to change your bank or add yet another credit card to your wallet. You can maximise what’s good about your credit cards (rewards) and offset what’s not so good (fees abroad).

Double up on rewards with cashback

As well as features like Curve Fronted that can help you earn points on your bills, Curve offers cashback, which you can earn on top of your current credit card rewards programs.

Even on the free standard Curve plan, customers earn instant cashback every time they shop at places like Argos, Primark, IKEA, Waterstones and more.

There are also one-off cashback offers that change regularly. You might get 8% cashback at Sainsbury’s one day, and 10% cashback at Costa the next. The good thing about Curve Cashback is that it all builds up neatly in one place – your Curve Cash card. You can save it up over time and spend it pretty much anywhere.

The cashback offering gets stronger as you move into premium Curve plans. Curve Black now offers 1% cashback at six retailers of your choice (up from three) and Curve Metal now offers cashback at 12 retailers (up from six). The list of available retailers includes all the major supermarkets from Aldi and LIDL to Marks and Spencers and Waitrose, your travel essentials like TFL, Trainline and Uber, and global retailers like Apple, ASOS, Amazon. If you have quite high monthly expenses, the 1% cashback alone can offset the cost of your Curve plan. 

Can I get Curve before the HMRC deadline?

Yes, you can download Curve and order your physical card in time to meet the HMRC deadline of 31st January.

Additionally, Curve offers a virtual version that can be added to your mobile wallet, supporting Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung, and Huawei devices.

Find out more about Curve here or download the app here. 

Category

General

Comments (213)

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

  • poole.ben says:
    19 Jan19 January 04:15

    I closed my Curve Metal plan (this month, actually) after they raised the monthly/annual subscription plans, whilst also reducing both the Curve Fronted feature from £10k per month to £3k and removing the included travel insurance.

    • Greg says:
      19 Jan19 January 05:18

      Me too. Having milked the system for what it was worth over the last 5 years, I find fiddling about for 4500 avios for £18 not worth the hassle.

      For me, losing the 90 day travel, gadget and car hire insurance while increasing the fee was the decider.

      • NPWharf says:
        19 Jan19 January 06:31

        Agreed, a downgrade to £3k per calendar month would be bad enough but the rolling 30 days is designed to catch you out and I can’t be bothered to keep track of it.

        • Chaz says:
          19 Jan19 January 11:16

          If you have a large HMRC bill, I still think Tesco Clubcard plus is the way to go. Not fabulously generous but 1 point for every £8. No fee / no monthly limit etc. My bill in 12 days time is into six figures (I appreciate this is not the norm) and this will get me north of 12,500 Tesco points. Spend wisely with partners (x2) and that’s £250.

          It works as a debit card and you can do chunks of at least £50k per time (it might be limitless but I’ve not gone above £50k per shot) so even if you have to load the card a few times, with online banking that takes maybe one minute each time.

          Easy, no fees, no paying each month to avoid a cap nonsense either.

          • poole.ben says:
            19 Jan19 January 11:45

            With a £5k to £7.5k monthly spend, I was caught out on the Curve Fronted restructure just before Christmas. I had used my Barclaycard Avios as the underlining card to pay off my Amex monthly statements, so the fees kicking in were unwelcome. Having contacted Curve’s Customer Support (a three to five day turnaround) to question the changes, I was told an email had been sent out a month or so prior and that was that. I requested a downgrade, citing the changes to both Curve Fronted and the withdrawal of the travel insurance mid-plan term and a refund for my Curve Metal of £150 (at the time, the yearly fee) was issued.

    • Tariq says:
      19 Jan19 January 05:23

      Yes, I thought the fee free limit for Fronted was £10k/month. I don’t recall receiving any notice of a change…?

      • CarpalTravel says:
        19 Jan19 January 06:54

        It was sent under the subject “we’ve updated our terms”, an email that then tells you “What’s changed?”.

        After two puff paragraphs about making terms clearer and security recommendations, a third one refers to “introducing some new products”, and eventually mentions “our subscription schedules have changed to reflect our new pricing”, along with a link where you can finally find out what those changes are.

        That to my mind should have been the top paragraph and phrased more clearer. People can bang on about T&C’s and making sure you read ever character in every email, but many of us get “updated terms” emails and I would suggest that 99% of the time it is a fine tuning of T&C’s.

        If Vodafone were to increase my line rental by 25% whilst halving my data allowance, I would expect that to be made VERY clear and am sure it likely would be. Certainly it was when they did the annual inflation increase. Curve however, have been very stealthy.

        • Tariq says:
          19 Jan19 January 09:18

          Thanks. Doesn’t sound ‘fair’ in relation to the regulations. Might test it in court…

          • JDB says:
            19 Jan19 January 13:55

            @Go197 and @ Tariq – ‘fairness’ is a key FCA Principle but that doesn’t mean card providers can’t change terms as long as they give you two months notice and the option to cancel the product. Most of these cards don’t actually operate annual contracts, even if they charge you an annual fee, it’s a rolling contract of indeterminate duration rather than a contract that runs from fee anniversary to fee anniversary. A firm can’t change eg an annual travel policy mid term; the terms are fixed at the outset.

            In relation to the terms, yes, regulators expect customers to read the terms. Imagine if they allowed people to plead ignorance of the terms or pretend they didn’t know.

          • James says:
            19 Jan19 January 14:19

            But Rob will still say Curve is great and you get a £5 referral for every sign up

          • Rob says:
            19 Jan19 January 14:43

            We haven’t run any editorial, at all, on Curve since December 2021, so over two years ago. But feel free to keep on making stuff up if it makes you happy. It does also make you look stupid though.

        • jjoohhnn says:
          19 Jan19 January 09:26

          Yes i got caught by this with the new fee on cash withdrawls being £2 or 2%. I couldn;t find notice of this until i found this email and went digging in the t&c’s. It stunk of bad form, clearly trying to catch people out to make a few quid. Ditching my free curve now, as it serves no purpose.

    • Toppcat says:
      19 Jan19 January 06:58

      +1 – I have done the same for exactly the same reasons. It was good while it lasted….

  • His Holyness says:
    19 Jan19 January 04:46

    What’s Curve? 🙃

  • PaulC says:
    19 Jan19 January 04:56

    I’ve loved Curve for a long time now but with a monthly fee of £17.99 and a £3k monthly limit I will be cancelling when I get back off holiday a the end of Jan.
    Not sure what I will use for my next holiday but I don’t have any booked yet, probably my none points earning Halifax Clarity card.
    Ashame but it was good whilst it lasted.

    • SteveJ says:
      19 Jan19 January 08:20

      Use Chase

    • Erico1875 says:
      19 Jan19 January 08:41

      You can load Monzo every 6 months with £100O via paypoint. COOP take Amex. So potentially 3000 Avios per Monzo card

      • Yorkie Aid says:
        19 Jan19 January 19:08

        Doesn’t Monzo charge a £1 fee per topup and each topup is limited to £300 so a minimum charge of £8 to “earn” the potential 3000 Avios per annum via the BAAP? I suppose it could be useful to try and hit the £10k spend for the 241 voucher if you were struggling.

    • RT says:
      19 Jan19 January 09:20

      You can no longer get anything out of a cash point for free, using the free card. That changed last year (coming from me living in Spain until my butt gets Brexit’d out next month!)

  • Jetset Boyz says:
    19 Jan19 January 04:59

    “a workaround that makes it possible to pay HMRC with a personal or corporate credit card – and that’s Curve.”

    Important to be aware that Curve quietly made another change… they introduced a 1.5% fee on all transactions made using a personal Curve card (which is what most people now have) funded by a commercial card, for all but the Curve Metal tier. For Curve Metal there’s a £1,500 fee-free limit per rolling 30-day period with a 1.5% fee thereafter.

  • Jonathan says:
    19 Jan19 January 05:00

    I got stung by Curve as their app said unlimited free FX transactions so I did my holiday spending abroad on it. When I got back I saw I was charged an FX fee. The customer service is non-existent and it took weeks of chasing just to get a response. In the end the response was that their app was wrong and needs updating and the terms on conditions were previously advised changing the benefits so tough luck. They were unapologetic to the incorrect details on the app.

    I also understand for fronted transactions they advise the card issuer of the MCC? Code which means that’s there’s a health warning that the card issuer may charge these types of transactions as a cash advance.

    Has anyone tried curve fronted recently with the usual suite of Frequent Flyer favourite cards ie Barclays BA, Virgin, HSBC or Hilton? Thanks

    • Csr says:
      19 Jan19 January 07:51

      Curve wouldn’t work for me with a Tesco card, transactions always declined. Before it closed, my IHG stopped working with curve. I read somewhere that Hsbc would honour transactions, but not issue points for them. I never tried curve with my hsbc card – don’t want any problems. I just got rid of it….

  • Eli says:
    19 Jan19 January 05:26

    Still waiting for them to kindly remove the block from my card.
    Their service has become rather horrible recently

    • ChasP says:
      19 Jan19 January 11:04

      It took me 6 months to get a block removed ! They gave 3 false reasons for the block. Gave me £10 for the inconvenience !

  • Bryont says:
    19 Jan19 January 05:31

    I have been a curve metal customer for years but the new fees on fronted over £3000 and complete lack of customer service means I’m also abandoning ship. It’s such a shame as it’s an amazing concept. They just got greedy.

    • daveinitalia says:
      19 Jan19 January 08:45

      I’d not say it’s being greedy just them trying to find a way to actually make money.

    • Lawro says:
      19 Jan19 January 09:25

      Feel exactly the same way. They have over complicated and then completely devalued and diluted the product – while raising fees! As for premium support for Metal customers, forget about it. Their policy of replying and then immediately closing a CS ticket before you get a chance to respond might well be the single most annoying customer service feature across any of my cards. Shame as I’ve been with them since the very start.

  • S879 says:
    19 Jan19 January 06:05

    Did you cancel via the app? Did they issue a pro rata refund? My card year ends in May.

    • poole.ben says:
      19 Jan19 January 15:10

      I contacted Customer Support via app. Automated replies. They emailed around five days later. A full year term was refunded, posted within two weeks.

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

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