More on Curve Card and cash withdrawals and earning points

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• MDA says:

  22 Sep22 September 05:21

  Is there still a free £200 atm allowance for credit cards?

  Also, strangly enough my hilton card is being rejected at atms since last month. Tried twice now

  • Rob says:

    22 Sep22 September 12:15

    We’ll tell you on Monday …

• Roger says:

  22 Sep22 September 06:14

  I feel curve need to be fully demystified here 🙂

• John says:

  22 Sep22 September 06:35

  So are there eight types of Curve currently circulating?
  – commercial vs personal
  – blue vs black
  – with vs without embossed numbers – any practical differences between these?

  Does every combination exist?

  • the_real_a says:

    22 Sep22 September 12:03

    I`ll try to give it a go…

    Personal Vs Business – this is a legacy thing as Curve’s original liscence meant they could only issue business card. They get 1.5% from the interchange fee on these cards. The personal card came later and they only get 0.3% on the interchange. Business cards are only meant to be used for commercial transactions. I mention this as a business card user Curve has been good to me and given me a few things for free. I would guess business card customers are the only profitable customers right now.

    Blue and Black – Blue was the free card giving 1.5% on the reward partners, with the Black (£50 one off annual fee) card giving 3% on the reward partners. No other difference.

    Embossed / not embossed – just card design to excite millennial’s who are confused as to the real purpose of the embossed numbers. No practical difference if your eyesight is working as the numbers are printed on the back for online transactions.

    Annual fee card coming in 6 weeks – a feature packed new card that may be metal and offer innovative features such as Insurance, enhanced free ATM and FX limits and maybe a small AMEX allowance. they have also been desperate to launch some kind of credit product so i would not be surprised if you could not go “back in time” to loan.

    Prepaid Vs Debit – i think everyone is now forced onto the debit card so wont go into this.

    • Boo says:

      22 Sep22 September 12:09

      The most confusing part is that the free “Blue” card may be physically black

      • mr dee says:

        22 Sep22 September 17:48

        yes

• Jo says:

  22 Sep22 September 06:41

  Any tips for getting around the annual limit?

  • swhostring says:

    22 Sep22 September 06:46

    his ‘n hers ‘n Gran’s

    • Alex W says:

      22 Sep22 September 07:02

      And a bucket of vindaloo

      • Peter K says:

        22 Sep22 September 10:33

        ????

• John says:

  22 Sep22 September 06:56

  OT (from FT) passenger fuel surcharges will be permitted ex-HKG starting 1st Nov, in order to “enhance competition”. The date refers to ticket issuance, not date of travel.

  Unlike the previous system where the amount was capped it seems that airlines can now charge what they like. The minor positive is that advertised prices must now include all taxes and charges.

  • KevMc says:

    22 Sep22 September 08:01

    Read this last night. Very disappointing. I would have hoped more countries would join the fight against these, rather than giving the airlines the ability to do what they want. In my view, if they want to add them, they should have to be against the ticket type, and always be the same as each other, whether you are paying in cash or points.

    So am I correct in thinking this leaves just Brazil and the Philippines that actually outlaws them? And Japan and Korea remain capped, meaning YQ on redemptions is low?

    • John says:

      22 Sep22 September 15:20

      I think YQ/YR is usually the same whether you pay with points or money.

      The issue is that it devalues points because to the passenger paying with money, there is no difference between £1000 fare + £50 taxes and airport charges, vs £500 fare + £500 fuel surcharge + £50 taxes and airport charges. But there is a big difference to someone paying with points.

      Under the previous system the HK Civil Aviation Department would set the maximum fuel surcharge that could be levied every month. This was at least somewhat related to the price of fuel. Now, like in most of the world, it will be unregulated and there is no easy way of actually finding out the charges short of querying the GDS for every combination of airports.

      I wonder how much the HK government paid those consultants to tell them this.

  • RIccatti says:

    22 Sep22 September 10:02

    I think Brazil does not have it anymore (zero fuel surcharge), in any case it was not really enforced: Avios.com and BA always priced with full surcharge out of Brazil.

• Alex W says:

  22 Sep22 September 07:01

  Thanks for the warning Rob. This could have caught a lot of people out. It’s either very sneaky from Curve, it they are just not thinking through the consequences of what they are doing and how they are communicating it.

  • Alex W says:

    22 Sep22 September 07:03

    *or they

  • swhostring says:

    22 Sep22 September 07:05

    they are a bunch of amateurs in some respects, got a lot to learn about clear comms, compliance, don’t let the CEO bully his way to changes without letting other people say: hang on, have you thought about this?

• Mark2 says:

  22 Sep22 September 07:16

  Perhaps they had no choice. The card companies may have insisted on receiving the correct code or not accept transactions. But badly handled.
  (total speculation).

• The Streets says:

  22 Sep22 September 07:38

  For Curve to work on a method to allow credit card companies to receive the correct code has worked in their favour. This will then lead to a cut down in the number of people purely using it for cash withdrawals

  • the_real_a says:

    22 Sep22 September 12:06

    As the Chinese say: If you cut off the chickens foot, you often kill the chicken…

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