I’d be really interested, if any of you has already experience with this new fintech, and if they really can beat and offer more than Revolut and/or Transferwise. Befor I’d open up a new personal account, I wanted to read your thougths, comments, hints first.
I’m personally using Transferwise, and this working me perfect as well, but the offer of Curve is not that bad. I’m pretty curious regarding:
There are no transfers - your just add your existing cards
their killer feature is ‘to go back in time’. So you can change the card for a given txn - quite handy if you forgot that another card would have given you more cashback etc. For that they refund card a and do another charge to card b for the same amount
The business model of Curve is simple: They give you a “business card” for which they can charge the merchant in the EU higher fees than with “normal” credit or debit cards. (because of stupid EU regulations). You than add your normal cards to the curve app and if you buy something in a store with your curve card they charge that store the higher “business card” fee. Afterwards curve is acting as the “merchant” and they simply recharge what you bought (in full) to one of your normal credit cards. Here the lower “non business fee” applies (0.2% for debit, 0.3% for credit), and this is where curve makes money as they get to keep the difference. Also this is how they can afford to give you additional cashback. The real problem is that if you have to dispute a transaction you will have to do this with curve and not your cc company, also you cannot use the insurance on your normal card etc., your normal credit card company will simply see curve charging the card. This is also why e.g. Amex refuses to support Curve. Curve simply has a normal merchant contract with the CC companies, there is no magic happening at all. It’s rather stupid and only possible because of the flawed regulations and because Curve takes the liberty to classify all it’s customers as business customers. In Switzerland the EU regulations don’t apply and afaik there is no differentiation between normal and business card fees, therefore this business model will not work and this is also the reason why curve is not available in Switzerland and also not even supporting swiss cards and probably never will.
If you want to take advantage of this arbitrage with an EU card: fine, but don’t expect this to be sustainable. If the regulations change curve will be dead.
Curve works particularly well for pushing the monthly Fx and ATM withdrawal limits of a free Swiss-based Revolut card. You just need to have a valid EU address from which to open a free Curve account, then add your Swiss Revolut card to curve.
Then make sure your Revolut card currency in Curve is set to CHF. All in all, you get EUR 200 (e.g ~CHF 215) more a month in free ATM withdrawals above the already existing monthly CHF 200 limit on your Revolut.
And what’s even more handy, is that you get EUR 500 (e.g.~CHF 535) more a month in non-fee FX (at interbank rate) in addition to the monthly CHF 1000 non-fee interbank FX of your Revolut. Being a Mastercard, Curve is naturally accepted widely everywhere around the world. Great for long vacations overseas!
So overall, that’s what I use my free Curve account for: pretty handy. I know MP uses (Transfer)Wise after hitting the CHF 1000 Revolut FX limit, but using Curve is definately the cheaper option as you don’t get charged the more expensive FX rate of Wise and stay at the interbank FX rate.
My 4 cents.
Edit: the monthly limit of EUR 500 non-fee FX and the monthly limit of EUR 200 ATM withdrawal are non-existent in the country where you opened your Curve account. This means that if you are an expat living in Switzerland and go back see home for a while you virtually have a free Revolut card acting as a metal Revolut card - unlimited ATM withdrawals and FX interbank exchange - provided you use Curve to operate your Revolut. Good deal if you ask me.
My exact thoughts hifly. Extra fx free chunk of £500 per month.
Used mostly for spending from accounts with an fx loading without paying the fee of transferring to Revolut/Wise.
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