Curve Card

callum9999

NFH wrote: »

The cash withdrawal manufactured spend won't work any more, but all the other benefits of Curve apply equally for non-GBP cards. For example, I've added my EUR and USD denominated Amex cards to my Curve account, and they assure me that they'll recognise the billing currency of the card via the BIN/IIN and charge transactions to each card in its billing currency.

Cash withdrawal MS was the only major benefit for me. I have cards (including a points earning Amex) with no Forex charges and the only foreign cards I have are debit cards.

planteria wrote: »

:undecidedyou mean As Cashback, when making a purchase?

No, they mean exactly what they said. Use a Tesco debit card with Curve in an ATM and you'll get 1 point per £8 withdrawn.

maryapple1993

I suspect that it is for business owners only as these are the only cards exempt from the new EU fees cap which would seem to be the only way to fund it. Of course the definition of business can be stretched to all sorts of things.

Mean_moose

callum9999 wrote: »

No, they mean exactly what they said. Use a Tesco debit card with Curve in an ATM and you'll get 1 point per £8 withdrawn.

Even if you withdraw £5000, thats only £6 back per month? On top of that you need to pay 0.5p per withdrawal > 10 so that quickly becomes an unprofitable trade.

callum9999

Mean_moose wrote: »

Even if you withdraw £5000, thats only £6 back per month? On top of that you need to pay 0.5p per withdrawal > 10 so that quickly becomes an unprofitable trade.

Well you could triple it to £18 which isn't an insignificant amount (over £200 a year...), but I wasn't the one who suggested it as a money making scheme anyway.

NFH

maryapple1993 wrote: »

I suspect that it is for business owners only as these are the only cards exempt from the new EU fees cap which would seem to be the only way to fund it. Of course the definition of business can be stretched to all sorts of things.

The T&Cs make it clear that it is only for businesses, but it appears that Curve isn't enforcing this. It's not in its interests to do so, only to be seen to be complying with MasterCard's rules for commercial cards.

Curve is reviewed briefly on page 47 of Which magazine in May 2016, which is a publication aimed at consumers, not businesses. Which says "It's only available to business users at the moment, but will be generally available in the near future".

DeeWestern

callum9999 wrote: »

Well you could triple it to £18 which isn't an insignificant amount (over £200 a year...)

The trouble is you then run in to monthly limits, which were decimated just before the cards arrived so £6 a month is the most you can make. Will take a while to make a profit when even the cheapest card costs £35.

NFH wrote: »

The T&Cs make it clear that it is only for businesses, but it appears that Curve isn't enforcing this. It's not in its interests to do so, only to be seen to be complying with MasterCard's rules for commercial cards.

It's not just a case of turning a blind eye to personal use, but actively encouraging it. They're paying thousands to bloggers to get their cards promoted to personal users as a way to fake spend from Amex and get cash from ATMs. This is a great situation for consumers, but if I was a Curve investor or working for the card companies I'd be spitting tacks.

JLED121 wrote: »

I use headforpoints all the time, and I really don't think Raffles would be bought out that easily.

Probably not, but it certainly stinks that the blog promoted the card as a way to scam more points from Amex by sneaking a few thousand out of cashpoints - and sold thousands of cards with £10 commission as a result - but although there's been 9 articles published since the rules changed there's no warming that I can see telling people to cancel their orders if they wanted it for the ATM points aspect.

callum9999

DeeWestern wrote: »

The trouble is you then run in to monthly limits, which were decimated just before the cards arrived so £6 a year is the most you can make. Will take a long time to make a profit when even the cheapest card costs £35.

No it's not... The limit is 10 withdrawals, which would mean they'd have to be a maximum limit of £500 for their example which seems a little high. Regardless, it's a hell of a lot more than £6 a year. A £300 maximum would be £45 in Tesco points, possibly tripled to £135 depending on how you use it.

DeeWestern wrote: »

It's not just a case of turning a blind eye to personal use, but actively encouraging it. They're paying thousands to bloggers to get their cards promoted to personal users as a way to fake spend from Amex and get cash from ATMs. This is a great situation for consumers, but if I was a Curve investor or working for the card companies I'd be spitting tacks.

No they haven't... I can't see why they'd specifically pay any bloggers - though it's certainly not in the thousands... I'd imagine any payments are via the "refer a friend" system, i.e. not specifically designed for bloggers. I also assume you have no evidence whatsoever that they've encouraged bloggers to promote Amex withdrawals. It certainly would make little sense given they don't advertise it themselves, it loses them money and they've put a cap on it.

DeeWestern

Sorry, am being a moron as my coffee hasn't kicked in - meant £6 a month was the most you could make, before Curve's new fees.

You can make as many withdrawals a month as you like (albeit with an extra fee after no 10), but there's an absolute limit of £5000 per month. So you can't triple your spend to £15000 unless you have 3 cards - which of course cost 3 times as much!

Withdrawing the maximum each month (£5000) to earn the maximum number of clubcard points (625) is going to cost you £7.50 in Curve fees.

Going to the cashpoint on 25 different days in a month to earn £6.25 worth of points whilst paying £7.50 in fees is not going to have to people rushing out the door.

callum9999

DeeWestern wrote: »

Sorry, am being a moron as my coffee hasn't kicked in - meant £6 a month was the most you could make.

You can make as many withdrawals a month as you like (albeit with an extra fee after no 10), but there's an absolute limit of £5000 per month. So you can't triple your spend to £15000 unless you have 3 cards - which of course cost 3 times as much!

I didn't say triple your spend, I said triple the value of the Clubcard points.

DeeWestern

callum9999 wrote: »

I didn't say triple you spend, I said triple the value of the Clubcard points.

Ah I see what you meant - you just said "Well you could triple it to £18" so I assumed you meant taking more cash out. Be careful with the 'triple value' assumption - it's popular with the click-bait emails that scream "make XXX in cc points from this deal" but you see that actually the triple offers are so limited you are not really getting triple value from them (for example, they exclude discounts that are widely available, making you pay the full menu price or fully flexible rate). There's many people that would love to sell you their clubcard points at 2.9x value