nope, just that its resolved
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I’ve had the same thing happen today. Called up my credit card provider first, and they said that Curve had changed their processing and it’d be a new process for them. They were so quick in pointing this out, without even appearing to look at my account (I queried that I got a cash fee, when I hadn’t withdrawn cash. Immediate question whether I used Curve.) that I assume this is happening to a lot of people…
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So, I actually got quite a detailed reply:
Hi [redacted],
Thank you for getting in touch.
What happened is that on 24th April, we changed our Merchant Category Code from 8999 (Professional Service) to 6540 (Non Financial Institution) because MasterCard thought it would be a better fit for us.
However, we quickly found out that this was not the case and the change in MCC caused an increase in declines and some users found that their transactions with Curve attracted cash advance fees. We moved quickly and reverted to our original Merchant Category Code on the 26th April.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a slight delay in the way some systems update. We are working with our payment processor to reset this across the board but in the meantime, deleting your card and re-adding it is a good solution.
We are sorry for the inconvenience, please let us know if there’s anything else we can help you with.
Best wishes,
[redacted]
Team Curve
So, that explains it. I’m slightly concerned about this being reported to the CRA as “cash advance”, and seriously annoyed, that it took them over 48 hours to respond to my inquiry.
Unlike @Lewisoc I was not offered any further compensation, beyond a refund of the 5p “cash fee” I incurred…
Edit: there is some discussion of this on the MSE forum, as well, where someone else got word for word the same response as me
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Do you have evidence that cash advances are reported to CRAs? I don’t even think they have a way to store that data - all they seem to be able to store is accounts with start date, balance and a flag to say whether it’s outstanding or not.
Also in my case when I got my credit card (my first one) I regularly used it for cash as I didn’t expect them to be that nasty and charge for that - no impact on my report as far as I can see. That was with Capital One.
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Yes. I’ve had a foreign cash withdrawal reported with the CRA a while ago - forgot which CRA though. To be fair: it didn’t seem to have much of an impact, though: I still got my mortgage just a few months later.
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How was it displayed on your report? I didn’t think they had support for that, unless it’s in a free-form text field which is only taken into account during manual processing.
I don’t remember the details, sorry. I only remember it showed up.
Is there really anything stopping a credit card provider from changing its Ts&Cs to state that all transactions that come via a secondary card service (such as Curve) get put down as cash advances?
I genuinely wonder if credit card providers perceive Curve as any kind of threat, or if they’re relieved as it gets them off the hook for consumer protection.
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No, I don’t think there is, and I did originally think that’s what happened here. Alternatively they could of course just block them outright, like AmEx did a while ago.
Yes, me too! I guess for now they aren’t too worried, as the incentive to recycle cash is low in a low interest world. But I guess should interest rates rise to a level were the incentive is higher, I could see more card providers doing something about this.
Having used Curve I’m not really a fan, as I don’t see any use for me.
It seems to be a business model built upon the apathy of other (real) service providers not to change the goalposts. It’s very much ‘tech because we can’.
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For TfL, once you know which card is yours from a journey made yourself, you can edit the card and give it a nickname so that you can differentiate the different cards. (I do this as when I use apply pay on the phone, apple pay on the watch or my First Direct visa debit card, they all come up as three card with identical details in TfL until I’d nicknamed them).
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Tried using my curve card at a link ATM - Declined, went to a shop and tried to get cash back and it came up saying the card doesn’t support cash back 
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Weird - I’ve used my card to get cash back (and at ATMs) on several occasions.
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Is it their old prepaid card by chance? Their normal debit cards should work like any other debit car,d but I believe these were only introduced earlier this year.
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ATMs in past have been fine, i think its like Monzo and wont work at link ones,
Im sure i’ve had cash back in the past but last night the lady tried twice and it was saying the card wouldn’t work with cashback, don’t know if she was just being awkward
It may depend on what card your Curve card is linked to at the time. If the card that is currently active allows for cashback it may work but if the active card does not allow cashback it won’t. Just a thought!?
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Partially right…
NOT at Link machines that are ONLY connected to the Link network but NOT connected to the MasterCard network.
They DO work at Link machines that are connected to the Link network AND also the MasterCard network.
I can confirm they work as I used the new Curve Debit card, that replaces the old Curve Prepaid Debit card, in a CashZone brand of Link ATM outside the East of England Co-operative Society supermarket.
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Exactly the same reasoning as to why I’ve just downloaded Curve; only difference being I’d probably use it to spend on via Monzo.
Thus, my main concern: will using the Curve MasterCard to spend on via Monzo affect the Spending Analytics, Transaction Feed or Coin Jar within my Monzo app?
Example: will Curve - Tesco still be categorised in Monzo as Groceries, or will all my transactions with Curve come under Online Shopping?
P.S. Apologies, haven’t read through whole thread so if anybody can provide an answer would appreciate it.
Curve transactions in Monzo are completely transparent (for me at least). They have the right logos, locations and categories and the “CRV” bit is masked.
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