Mine wasn’t blocked (yet) but wouldn’t work in a shop when the underlying card worked fine. It’s happened a few times in Costa.
A cash wash? hmm…that is suspicious to be honest…(I assume that’s an autocorrect typo?)
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ahaha yeah it is, doh! Car wash*, I have the exciting hobby of jet washing my car at those self-serve jet washes once a week 
Not really. Something similar happened a few months ago when I went to Tesco to do my weekly shop, and my underlying card flagged the transaction as a fraud attempt and blocked the card.
I was lucky I had my Revolut as a backup to pay the bill.
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Does anyone know if Curve still offers metal cards?
They definitely still do. They offer them on their Curve Pro + plans.
I’ve had curve for years - the product has become so messy and confusing.
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I gave up on Curve because I didn’t want to chance something going wrong and being stuck with their awful support, but to be honest, Curve is a solution looking for a problem these days.
They launched so strong then either through bleeding cash, regulation or external factors, have chipped away at the whole point of Curve.
Apart from GBIT, there’s nothing it really offers now.
Now the CEO says he wants to build the Apple wallet alternative, but why would anyone go for that? There’s literally no reason to.
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There is always reason for competition, especially if it gives people a chance to use a non-US service. I know Curve is still a Mastercard so part of every payment goes to the US, but still, instead of Apple/Google, you can use the physical Curve card and give the Apple/Google part of your payment to Curve in the UK instead.
It is also good to have a service that does not rely on a specific platform.
I don’t understand. The underlying card with Apple Pay will still be Mastercard as well (or whatever the card you’re using is?).
Also not sure what you mean by platform specific? Google pay would be the alternative for a different platform. And if somewhere online doesn’t accept Apple Pay I just use the card?
I’m struggling to see the use case. But maybe I’m just not getting it.
Apple and Google take a cut of every purchase, as well as Mastercard and Visa.
Using Curve Pay Wallet would mean that cut goes to a UK business, not a global corporate paying 0 tax in the UK (at least one of them anyway).
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I seeee.
Well as long as my relationship is still with the underlying card and not with Curve then that would be a better proposition for me.
I think curve literally have a couple of people working on customer support.
Curve has been quite useful when abroad and wanting to use cards with FX fees. Specially with the 1% back outside Europe in Curve Cash (that doesn’t seem to work when spending in anything other than GBP).
I’ll get rid of it after my next trip in April.
It depends what you mean relationship?
If you paid for something over £100 on your Amex expecting section 75 protection you would not receive it.
Curve have their own weird protection thing not the same as Section 75.
Day to day? Yeah sound.
Anything you want protecting with? Use the direct credit card.
When you use curve in its current format, the transaction shifts from the underlying card to Curve. That means if anything goes wrong, the underlying card couldn’t care less ie it removes the section 75 in the case of credit cards.
You’re right with Amex in that you don’t get section 75 with all their cards, but they provide their own cover and their customer service is amazing. Curve, not so much. So their protection isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
So as long as the relationship through curve wallet stays with the card, then that’s ok.
Amex was probably the wrong card to use then; but any card that does offer Section 75 wouldn’t be eligible, being used through Curve.
Also, because using Curve isn’t a direct purchase from your underlying credit card, you aren’t covered by Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act.
Yes we’re making the same point. I don’t trust Curve enough to lose the section 75 protection and have to use their ‘curve cover’.
It’s great for day-to-day purchases where it allows you to use banks such as Triodos & Zero with Google Pay, but I’d not trust it for anything big.
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From using a Curve a year or so back, I’d also be highly unlikely to trust them over any promise of protection. As I’ve found their customer service to be nonexistent, incredibly slow response times and very little attempt to solve the problem. I’d say they have offered to worst customer service of any financial organisation I’ve dealt with. Ended up closing my account.
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Amex does provide S75 protection on all their cards apart from the basic one which is a charge card.