Curve chat

That’s the issue with all e-money license fintechs. You’re safe from whatever happens to them, but you lose your money if the bank where the funds are held goes bankrupt

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Purely repeating what someone said on the Curve forum, but I believe Wirecard have a full banking licence in Germany.

However, I have no idea on the specifics of the situation and the epic disaster at Curve!

Other than this being one hell of a … curveball.

Thank you, thank you…

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Reading around it seems your Curve funds within Wirecard aren’t protected by its deposit protection scheme (which is German, but this would be the same if Wirecard was British) but the money is ringfenced and wouldn’t form part of Wirecard’s assets for creditors if Wirecard went bust.

In theory your money would just be returned to you in the event that Wirecard, or Curve, collapsed. In theory.

On a different point, this sentence in Curve’s most recent communication stood out:

We believe consumers should be able to decide how they wish to access their money…

which is all well and good, except you’re not accessing ‘your’ money when you charge a credit card through Curve, you’re accessing Amex’s money. Seems like a fundamental point which the founder of Curve, in their exasperation, has forgotten.

Curve has seemingly made a shocking mistake by launching anyway when something so major was amiss. Add in the GDPR concerns after it automatically enrolled users into third party insurance without consent, and moving users onto a subscription model, again without explicit request and an appalling lack of communication beforehand, and Curve really does appear to be in a proper mess.

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Full blog post

I’m sure Amex also spoke to legal before doing this, so I wonder what they are backing themselves on,

As curve said they aren’t a small start-up anymore and will probably take this all the way up.

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As far as I can aprehend that is the main point in all of this. Amex could, like any bank can, block their credit cards from engaging with certain kinds of businesses or even specific merchants, however that is not what Amex has done. Amex blocked Curve’s access from the entire global amex card scheme which, as Curve argues, they cannot do as payment system providers have to ensure a level playing field when it comes to merchants accessing the network.

This looks like an uninformed move commanded by Amex’s main office in the US, whose legal counsel is apparently not familiar with the intrincacies of EU’s payment regulations.

That assessment is backed up by Curve’s allegations that after the new payments directive came into place Amex Europe had to start playing ball so that they would at least have input on the final implementation, then suddenly Amex radically changed their stance on the whole thing. I would think after Amex US caught wind of it

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One week later after considerable effort and the threat of a complaint, I’ve finally been downgraded to Blue to get off the insurance I never wanted or asked for in the first place. Phew!

Then this:

k9

Are you kidding - new card every time you change subscription?! :scream:

Then two minutes later another, now irrelevant reply…

k9

A mess :man_shrugging:

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God that is a mess.

Why doesn’t Curve ask you to activate your new card, and only deactivate your old card then?

Can you imagine being told that the other way round? “Thanks for upgrading! We’ve charged you £15 and sent you a new card, but until it arrives you can’t use your new service!”

The fact that Curve only provides a shitty transition on the downgrade route shows you they don’t really give two fucks.

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I thought you could be grandfathered (so you’d have the legacy Black plan)?

Yes, I think you can.

I got Black on a free promo - it would never have been worth paying for it for me.

Basically, I get almost nothing in rewards, because they don’t cover the places I shop, so Black without any fee-free Amex has no real benefits for me. I’m not keen on the topup system they’ve implemented anyway…

All in, it just made more sense to switch to Blue and continue using its core benefit - lots of my cards in one place. It seemed like the easiest way to get off the insurance quickly too.

Plus the total fiasco this week has made me very circumspect about Curve altogether. The communication and delivery have always been a bit scratchy in places, but this is a whole new level.

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It’s a terrible way to treat your customers, as well as pointless and wasteful for Curve, so poor service and expensive! :astonished:

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The really weird bit is the request for a screenshot.

They trust their own systems so little, they’re relying on me to confirm what subscription I’m on?! :thinking:

I think I’ll see what happens if I just don’t reply. Card hasn’t been blocked yet! Maybe if I never confirm my address, it never will be :joy:

Closed mine down requested a refund will be in next 7 days :wink:

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I feel like the main and perhaps only valuable use case - is if you’re SUCH a prolific user of AMEX that you playing the long game for Points.

If you’ve got the AMEX BA Platinum card, you can use Curve to rack up a greater spend more quickly, so you hit the free companion voucher sooner. At the low cost of 0.65% / £15 a month.

Same with Points, it could be a viable way to earn them faster.

Edit: Should have read more before commenting… Pour one out for Amex on Curve I guess?

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IF they ever get Amex back!

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Whoops, I should have read more. That’s a devastating turn of events.

There must have been a huge breach of the t’s and c’s somewhere for this to happen so quickly… Or something not quite being as Curve have said.

To be fair, Curve has more or less tried to carry on as though nothing had happened. It’s a massive issue for them though, now they’ve pretty much built their subscription around Amex

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Indeed, seems difficult to justify the remainder of the premium package if Amex was your thing.

Having just read through the post on the Curve Community page, I wonder if part of the issue is Curve almost ‘acting’ as an ‘Amex Partner’, and therefore invalidating the Merchant Services Agreement for payment processing.

Interesting to see how it pans out.

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The Amex topup I did before Amex pulled the plug has been pending in my Amex account since Monday. Just noticed its now been cancelled and removed from my Amex account. Has this happened to others?

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I just noticed this on mine too! What’s going on?

Had you already spent the money through Curve?
I still have the funds sitting in my Amex wallet in Curve and assume Curve will remove it at some point.

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