Curve just screwed themselves over

Was just about to utilise my Curve card to pay off a credit card tonight and then see this, luckily. Shame as I've only just got it too.

darren72 wrote: »

That should be OK though (shouldn't it??) - I thought it was just cash withdrawals that would now be chargeable ?

Curve card was far more useful than that.

It allowed punters to turn a credit card in to a debt card.

I see Curve have now sent out emails trying to put a positive spin on the change. And that the introduction of their "new technology" was quietly postponed from 14th September until 17th September.

Really bad timing for me. Only just received my two cards and was going to do some major stoozing.

I've been using it to pay off my credit card bills. So at the moment there is no way of knowing whether this is going to be treated as a cash transaction going forward.

I presume the only option is to try it out with a small payment to see ?

PRAISETHESUN wrote: »

All they've changed is how they pass along the merchant code from the original payment source to your CC company. I personally haven't used it to withdraw cash on my CC, but something tells me this was something that the CC companies could've sorted out by themselves (eventually).

It still lets you use a credit card in situations where you could only use a debit card which is still useful, but I agree that without a little trial and error, it's going to be confusing to figure out how individual merchants categorise transactions through curve

The MCC is assigned to a retailer by his processing bank when they sign up to process their transactions. There are hundreds of different MCCs (search MasterCard Merchant Category Codes online). When you transact with a retailer (with any card) the transaction will be processed through to the card issuer with that MCC.

Curve acts as a card issuer in the first part of any Curve transaction and will receive an MCC in the transaction message from the retailers bankers. Curve then 'converts' itself into a retailer/acquirer and sends the transaction through to your actual card issuer. All they need to do is replicate the MCC in the original transaction message. For ATM cash the MCC is 6011.

This piece of data alone isn't necessarily what drives the cash advance handling fee. I suspect it is impossible to send a transaction with 6011 as the MCC unless you also include a Transaction Code of '07'. If they try to send 6011 with a Transaction Code of '05' (purchase) the transaction will likely be rejected back to Curve.

Sorry if this is boring but the whole issue is likely connected to fees payable by Curve. It is likely that when you take ATM cash on Curve, Curve may have to pay the ATM operator a fee. If that transaction is then sent on as an '05' (purchase) Curve will have to pay another fee to the card issuer (an interchange fee). If Curve sends the transaction on as '07' (cash) with an MCC of 6011 (ATM) they will receive a fee from the card issuer.

It is this fee mechanism that drives your issuer to impose a cash advance handling charge. This fee is also part of what enables your card issuer to offer you cashback on purchases.