I have been having an issue with online transactions and the only one I have got to work is on Amazon, all the rest have failed but with the charges hitting my card. Amazon don't take the payment immediately which could explain it - perhaps they have a higher tolerance on the response time.

I have had a 2 declines in shops, but for these no transactions hitting my card.

Approximately 30 successful transactions in the UK and abroad including 4 ATM withdrawals, biggest transaction of about £230.

I do notice how much slower this card is on getting a response back at the tills and I expect this is going to cause rejections - I just hope as volume increases they are able to cope!

I don't like the way they appear to be sneakily backtracking on terms and conditions - they should be advising any change to cardholders.

I got my card today and the email I got after activating my card included the following:

So far I've had a successful ATM and online transaction (charged to Amex) with no failures although I accept that this is a small sample size.

For me at the moment this still has some value in giving Amex acceptance in the UK at outlets that don't normally take Amex. Keeping my Supercard for overseas ATMs and transactions (although goodness knows how that will change after the pilot period) and my regular ATM card for UK ATMs.

So definitely not as useful as promised, but I'm inclined to hang on at the moment and see how things pan out. Not very impressed that the £200 monthly limit on ATMs was hidden away in Fair Use - I withdraw more than that in a normal month, so I'm not manufacturing spend, it's just my real-life spend... Likewise the £2 fee on international ATM withdrawals.

And as rjn21 says, the payment limits make it difficult to do a lot of business transactions like paying taxes...

So disappointed but not giving up on it yet.

I'd like this advice to go out to all customers that online transactions are not working. The first failure I have is from 17 April, then a few early last week. I have stopped using it online as I can't trust it currently.

From curve

The language used suggests that payments have actually been taken from the funding card despite the transaction being declined, but it will be "refunded" in 2 weeks. The money has gone from Amex,not gone to the merchant, so who knows where it is. If my £1400 of declined transactions hit my Amex as proper charges, I will be disputing them and let Amex sort it with Wire. I am not going to be used as Curve's RCF provider.

My declined online transactions all hit my Amex card, total of about £150. Waiting on them being refunded.

"Please note online payments may not work for the next few days. We’ve recently identified a small bug with one of our partner systems where online payments requiring address verification are sometimes being declined. We’ve been assured a fix will be in place by Wednesday 27th April but will keep you updated. "

Isn't this alpha testing 101 to shake out simple bugs (and btw "small bug" is not a customer facing term)

Well its partially true - its a new feature they brought into the app - which i think is pretty good. Somehow they chose to hide many things in their website which i find more or less equal to false advertising as it forces the customer to decide based on partial facts.

It allows you to select the funding currency of the base card. ie, If you have a 0% fx card in your wallet - say Hfx Clarity / Santander Zero - and you are travelling in Iceland - you can select the base currency of funding card to be ISK (instead of GBP) and thereby avoid Curve fx fee (1%).

But again - this is risky as Curve processed the payments based on the funding card selected at the time when they actual process the transaction with the funding card and not when customer makes the payment.

So any contactless transactions are subject to glitches.

The bug certainly is a critical one; I wonder why they didn't block CNP transactions in the first place if they knew the existence of bug from last weekend. Basic understanding in any domain (esp in Banking) is isolate the affected piece and protect the rest. Instead, Curve somehow decided to take everyone for a ride despite the known bug !

My Amex got charged with 3.5K (600GBP marked as final) and rest pending due to the bug - as transactions with a particular retailer got posted twice. I am liaising with Curve at the moment to get it reversed.

Further, Curve boasts to allow any Visa / Master / Amex cards to be added to the wallet provided their currency is in the supported list. But most (if not all) of my Indian Cards fail to get added. I believe its because of 3D secure verification (for all CNP transactions) imposed on any cards issued in India. I had an initial discussion with Curve and they are of initial opinion that their acquirer may not support 3D secure. !!!

This makes me believe that the feature list in their website should be taken with a pinch of salt as they haven't done proper research or hands-on on the cards & payments space across geographies.

Despite all the cons - I should admit that their team is pretty supportive in resolving issues / understanding and prioritizing issues.^

£1965 of declined charges (1 transaction, but merchant tried to put it through 3 times, failing on each attempt) have matured from pending to real charges on my Amex. Curve don't answer phones. On calling you get Option 1 for stolen card, option 2 for all other enquiries, which then says see the website.

Currently disputing with Amex as "2 weeks" to refund would cross my billing cycle so I would have to front the cash.
ETA: Amex credited the amounts instantly on the phone, formal paperwork to follow to resolve it.

Guess i need to do the same if my pending 2800£ mature. I have a 100£ on my halifax debit too - quite uncertain if halifax entertain the dispute like amex !

Tbh 20 days for refunds is a joke - will Curve compensate for the interest charged for 20 day window ? :P

Edit : got an email from curve support stating that all debits will be reversed to funding card in 3 days from today. :)

I understand your argument (and I think Curve will appreciate it when the get ombudsman complaints if carry on charging 1%) but the (current!) Curve Terms of Service are clear they have a conversion fee as in the table of transaction fees it describe the "Currency Exchange Rate and Currency Conversion Fee" as being wholesale rate + 1%.

The top of the Curve website has a link to this video, which makes it pretty clear there's no currency conversion fees when you're using it with regular cards (sorry, I don't know how to do the fancy embedding!).


Hopefully Curve will push this no conversion fees through the rest of their site - they may as well, as there's no way they can justify it to the ombudsman if challenged.

My first online failure where my card was still debited was returned today. This was rejected on 16 April so just under 2 weeks to return it....now for the other 4 to be returned!!

Positive it's been returned. I'm out a revised total of £2.5k, as of today, on declined but still charged transactions with a billing date looming at the end of the week. I consider that it is appropriate for me to dispute them all, otherwise I'll end up funding the £2.5k until I burn off the resulting credit that would likely arrive in 2 weeks after the billing date. Once this gets sorted the concept seems good provided the card limits (not cash ATM, just ordinary merchants) are increased. I'm not sure I follow there is any credit risk as the underlying card has to approve the charge, so curve should never end up with non payment as that risk lies with the funding card issuer. I fully admit to not knowing the complexities of funding risk on this scenario with 1 card being funded by another card.

I've noticed a mention of a £2 fee for International ATM withdrawals :
https://www.imaginecurve.com/tech-spec

Is that new?

Section 3 of the T&Cs https://api.imaginecurve.com/terms.pdf points to the Fair Use Policy ( https://api.imaginecurve.com/fair-use.pdf ) for limits, yet the Fair Use Policy doesn't really contain the limits people are reporting.

Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.

From curve:
Progress. Online and cardholder not present transactions will still decline and charge. ATM worked today and physical retailer transactions have gone through over £200.