I have been using the Curve card for a little while now and I must admit, it is extremely useful. In this post I will review what Curve is, the features of the curve card and app, how easy to use it is, and whether the premium version is worth it.
What is Curve?
Curve is a digital ‘card wallet’ where you can add all your credit and debit cards. You then are sent a physical Mastercard® (it also is effectively a ‘master’ card which is amusing). You can then use this as you would a normal debit card. I want to highlight that curve is not a bank and you can’t actually ‘store’ money on your Curve card, although some money can end up in ‘Curve Cash’ which I’ll elaborate on later. The whole aim of the Curve card is to allow you to only carry one card and lighten that wallet up.
Curve card features?
Free
Access to all your cards with one card
I think I already explained what this is in the introduction section so I won’t elaborate too much on this here. You can pay with all your debit and credit cards using one card.
Anti-embarrassment mode
Have too many cards and accidentally paid with the wrong card and it gets declined. No problem if you have a Curve card. You can set a backup payment option so if your original card would have been declined it will charge the backup card instead. No more red faced scramble to find the right card.
One tip: I use this with my prepaid Crypto.com card, since sometimes I forget to top it up and it gets declined. I can then use ‘time travel mode’ – I explain this later – to move the purchase back on to my Crypto.com card and still get my Crypto.com cashback! You can read my article about top cashback options if you are interested.
Spending insights and timeline
This feature is pretty self explanatory. The app will allow you to see a timeline of all the purchases you made on each card, and also a collective timeline of all the purchases together. There is also a section called ‘insights’ which groups up purchases in different ways for a summary view of your spending.
Retailer offers (‘Rewards’)
In the curve app, once you have used your Curve card for three purchases, a section of the app called ‘rewards will activate. This allows you to activate cashback offers for specific retailers. Some are quite large – I have seen 25%+ discounts . The range isn’t that large but you might be lucky and chance upon a discount for something that you actually want. Don’t get too excited though.
Integration into your bank accounts
Not too useful of a feature but maybe offers some simplification of the process. In the Curve app you can link up your bank accounts with Curve so you can view all the bank balances from one place.
‘Curve Send’
Send money to your friends on Curve. Unfortunately for this to work you have to have friends on Curve (or friends full stop).
Lock Card
This feature may be useful if you lose your card or don’t trust yourself not to spend lots of money. With this you can stop your card being used to pay for anything.
Time-travel
Another useful feature. Maybe you accidentally set the wrong card to be used in the app and you want to change which card was charged. No worries, as for each purchase you make you are allowed one ‘time-travel’. You’d think they’d sell time travelling for a lot of money but it’s free! This means you can retrospectively change which card was charged for a purchase you made. I have used this a few times as I generally separate my ‘necessity’ and my ‘luxury’ purchases onto two different debit cards.
Fair FX access
Fair exchange rates on all cards up to £500 per month. Good if you are travelling though probably (almost definitely) won’t be enough for a month of travelling.
Fee-free Foreign ATM
You can withdraw up to £200 per month without incurring fees. Not that much for a month but would save you a bit of money.
Paid
Fair FX access
Now unlimited, which is useful.
Fee-free Foreign ATM
Unfortunately this is not unlimited but on the lower cost plan you can withdraw £400 per month and the upper cost plan you can withdraw £600 per month. This will probably allow you to do most of what you need in combination with the unlimited Fair FX.
Travel Insurance [Both paid plans]
Worldwide travel insurance for you and your family. Also includes medical bills up to 15m, cancellation costs of 10,000 and baggage costs of up to 1,000. It is worth actually reading the terms and conditions if planning on using this. Note that if you are 70+ years old or have pre-existing medical conditions that relate to the claim it does not cover you.
The £14.99 plan also includes 25,000 excess waiver insurance on car hire for if you damage a rental vehicle.
Mobile Insurance [£14.99/mo plan]
This covers accidental loss of, or theft, or damage to the cardholders phone up to £/€800 per claim.
1% Curve cashback
Get a 1% cashback from 3 or 6 selected retailers respectively for the lower cost and upper cost plan. You get to choose your retailers from a moderately large list of retailers. This is a pretty good offer if you spend a lot of money. i.e if you spend £1000 per month on the retailers you select you can pay for the lower cost plan, just out of cashback.
Curve Fronted
Allows you to pay taxes or credit card bills with another credit card. For the lower cost plan this has a 1.5% fee. For the upper cost plan there is no fee. Not bad, though the use cases may not be that large.
Metal Card [choices available]
Only for the upper cost plan, you get a brushed metal card from a selection of colours. For the lower cost plan you will get a normal plastic card but it will be black. Although plastic, it’s still quite a nice looking card.
Airport Lounge discounted access
Only on the upper (metal) plan. Once again good for travelling. This is an up to 60% discount for LoungeKey when paying with your Curve metal card.
Priority support
This is self explanatory. You get priority support.
How easy is it to use?
It takes a little while to add all of your debit cards to the app and some things in the app are hard to find. However, once you have got the hang of it, it is exceedingly easy to use. Tap your card, and it will pay with the card that is selected in the app. If you don’t have enough money on that card it seamlessly charges your backup card instead. If you retrospectively then want to move your payment back onto the original card when it has enough money, this is possible.
You can also add your Curve card to Google Pay as well if you want, though Google Pay allows you to pay with any card you want anyway, so Curve’s card switching doesn’t really change much here. It does allow you to get your cashback though, so if you are paying for the premium version of Curve, then make sure to use the card whenever you are shopping to maximise the money back.
In terms of the cashback this is also easy to use. Once the payment has gone through (not pending anymore) to one of your selected retailer offers – either the 1% or ‘rewards’ – your cashback will be paid onto a card in the curve app called ‘curve cash’. You can then select this as a payment card for payments under this ‘Curve cash’ balance. You can also set this card to be used automatically for payments under this balance.
Is premium worth it?
I’d suggest that for an everyday user, the premium is not worth it. If you are spending more then £1000 in three retailers it is probably worth upgrading to the £9.99 plan since it pays for itself, and if you spend over £1500 every month between 6 retailers then the £14.99 is worth it.
For someone who travels, the premium plan is definitely worth a thought. You get lots of benefits with it. Most of these are specifically useful when you are travelling. With the cashback, retailer offers, Fair FX and travel insurance it probably pays itself back. I don’t think there is that much difference between the £9.99 and £14.99 plan but the extra mobile insurance and waiver on rental cars may make the upgrade useful to those heavy duty users.
Also, if you want a nice looking metal card, you could just upgrade for that, though paying £14.99 a month for a good looking card may or may not be worth it depending on your point of view.
An idea for Curve to think on would be a custom Card design feature, where you can pay an extra one-off fee to get a Card created that is custom to you.
Conclusion
My concluding remarks on this is that the Curve card is a great piece of technology to be able to use. It makes my life a lot easier – and I also just enjoy having the latest pieces of ‘tech’. I also got £10 for signing up with an affiliate scheme. Unfortunately the best I can offer you from here is a link to where I got the £10 cashback (I’m not an affiliate).
I hope this article helped you. If it didn’t, thank you for making it to the bottom, that is some serious dedication.
Here is SaveTheStudent’s £10 affiliate deal: https://www.savethestudent.org/student-deals/bills-utilities-deals/free-10-on-curve.html