Curve Review 2023
Curve Review this is not anything new but the companies so far the startups in the us that have tried to do this have crashed and burned mostly before they ever ever even got a real product on the market so people have been excited about
it but it actually has not come to fruition now curve has already done it in the uk and it has had some uptake they have now come to the united states and they are uh setting up the curve card with a number of beta testers
if you don't know what beta means it basically means you're sort of the initial people that they are using it with to see how things go which means sometimes things don't go maybe as well as you would hope with a finished product so i'm going to try to take that into account here as well
so when i knew curve was coming to the us i got myself on the waiting list and then recently got an email inviting me to be a beta user when you get that invitation you have to download the curve app and then you set everything up through there which is a pretty common thing these days especially in the fintech financial technology space
so once i had things set up and you know essentially said yes i want to be a beta user they automatically send the card out to you so as you can see it is just a white envelope it's not really an unboxing so much
but i'll show you at least what they gave me here pretty minimal in terms of presentation inside here you have your curve curve uh logo on the front and then you open it up and it's just got a little bit of uh text here along with the card
it says new kid on the blocks which i don't really know what that means maybe because there are blocks on the card i don't know maybe that maybe maybe i'm missing something here in terms of what that means and then underneath there
it says just landed you're officially ahead of the dot dot dot yeah we won't go there so i assume what that means is like you're officially ahead of the curve right but that must mean that i'm ahead of the curve on curve because i'm a beta tester that's how i what i take that to me
that's how i understand their marketing and then you can see the card on there it does have all of these uh black and red and white blocks you can also see that it is a master card and then i can't show you all the back because there's all kinds of numbers on there but i will tell you it is just a regular old plastic card
it is not metal i think it might be metal in the uk or maybe you can get it in metal because i think there are different levels it's a little bit different product here in the us and then on the back
it's got all the numbers and says curve back there and i'm not going to show you all those numbers but anyway a pretty minimal product in terms of what they actually send in the mail
so the idea behind the curve card is that you take all your other credit cards all your other debit cards you load them essentially onto this card you do that through the curve app and then you only have to use this one card
but you can still maximize your rewards while you're also maximizing your convenience because the charges that go on to this card are going to funnel through essentially to the correct credit card in order to maximize your rewards or for whatever reason
you might want to choose one card over another and debit cards as well and so there are two ways that this can happen in terms of the purchase getting on the correct card number one is you can set up what they call smart rules
which basically says if it's a grocery purchase use this card if it's a gas purchase use this card if it's a purchase over a thousand dollars use this other card that you know maybe has a higher credit limit or has a zero percent offer or whatever so for whatever reason you want to use any particular card you can
set up these smart rules and it is supposed to you know check the rules and make sure that the charge goes to the right card now again we're in this beta testing stage here in the us and from some what some of what
i've seen online things don't always get funneled into the correct place or in some categories for whatever reason they can't make them go on the correct card not quite sure what is going on
so obviously these are some of the things that they are probably trying to work out now the second way that your charge can go on to the correct card and hopefully if things don't go right in the first way you can just correct
it in the second way because you can go in and say well this card was or this purchase was charged to card a i really want it on card b and you can actually make that change after the fact so if it went on card a you can be like nah i wanted that on card b take it off of that put it on to that
so that i'm not really sure how curve is working that but that is the concept there and you have some sort of window of opportunity maybe 14 days after the purchase if you want to switch from one card to the other now that all sounds great as a promise
but here in the beta stage there is one huge hurdle that the curve card is going to have to overcome in order for it to be something that has any chance of being used widely and that is the fact that not all of the payment networks can now be used with this card so i have loaded some of my credit cards onto it
but right now the only credit cards that can be loaded onto this card are mastercard or discover card so no visa no american express and then on the debit card side you do have visa mastercard and discover no american express there either
so i don't know if american express is ever going to hop on board with this concept but at the very least i think they need to have visa mastercard and discover are not going to cut it in terms of the credit cards
if you want to have one card to rule them all and you have two major payment networks that are not part of it well then obviously that is a hurdle that i think is you know kind of a business killer so they have to make at least visa get on board with this card in order for it to work
so far i've loaded four credit cards onto this it was mostly an easy process although you do have a verification process where you have to go in and find a certain code that curve has uh sort of put in your either your bank statement or your credit card statement
you have to find that code and then give it to them in order to verify that that actually is your account which is no big deal except for with the discover card it took a lot of searching for me to find that code because discovers online you know sort of default way that they show things did not show the code
so i had to like kind of monkey around for a while and finally find that if i went to like i think the last year of transactions somehow i could click a uh you know plus button and something would finally come down that showed me the code but it was not a parent with the other cards
it was apparent right off the bat i think i did chase and city for the other cards and i could find the code with no problem now one of the other aspects to this card and it's something that i don't know if curve totally made it clear in the onboarding process
but not only are you putting your credit cards onto this card but this is sort of a credit card a little bit on its own or at least has sort of like a backup credit line and so you actually are getting a credit line of at least in my case and i assume this is true of other people for the most part
it's what i've seen of 500 and an apr is shown of 12.99 now my understanding is the only time that would kick in is if maybe you know your credit card was declined and there would be a way for you to still be able to have a purchase go through but in my mind i didn't really want a new credit line
so far i haven't seen any sort of hard inquiry uh or any inquiry to be honest with you on my credit report from this so that in that way it hasn't hurt my credit but i assume i'm gonna have a new account showing up on my credit report with a new 500 credit line
i'm not really thrilled about that to be honest with you because i wasn't really going after this card to get a new credit line i was going after it for the sort of you know consolidating all your cards into one aspect so that's really it i'm going to use the card for you know i don't know probably the next month
so see how it goes see how easy it is to set up those smart rules and if they actually work and how easy it is to switch between cards if you find out that you want your rewards from a different card than the initial purchase all that kind of stuff and i will report back on that
now as i look at this card today sort of two big questions that i have about it and i've sort of talked about them number one is do enough people want a card like this for this to be something that can work i'm not sure what the business model even is here on this card
because not only am i getting the rewards but i think on the front end for like the first six months or so i'm getting an extra one percent cash back on all of my purchases as well as sort of a bonus
so i'm not really sure where they're making their money maybe it is somehow they are getting a cut of the transaction by sort of inserting themself into the middle of the transaction or maybe it's sort of a loss leader for the fact that you know curve is going to start by offering this and then just like everybody else does they're going to move into all the other banking products and soon enough
they'll want you to be getting your checking and your savings and all your other stuff from them as well so i'm not really sure how that is going to go but how many people want this to begin with i don't know i don't know how many people really care about consolidating all of their consolidating all of their credit cards into one
then number two obviously like i just said is if they can't get visa on board i think this is dead in the water it would be nice to have american express but maybe you could still have a successful product without american express but obviously if they had all of them that would make it way better
so that is it i'm pretty interested to use this card to see how it works and to see if it's something that uh you know i find to be a great convenience right now i don't really care that much about pulling out a different credit card and thinking about which credit card to use
so the idea of consolidating all of them isn't that much of a revelation for me but maybe if i set up these smart rules and only have this one card and i use it all over the place and it really works and you know maybe i'll feel like it really is a good thing my worry is that what will actually happen is instead of having to think about what card to use on the front end
i will find out that either these smart rules didn't work the way they were supposed to or i have to spend the time you know switching a purchase from one card to the next and that's just time to spend on the back end instead of on the front end when i was actually making the purchase
so we will see how that goes i'd love to hear your thoughts on the concept of this one card to rule them all and if this is something that you would want and that you would spend the time to load your cards on and all that kind of stuff put your thoughts in that comment section below.
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THANK YOU SO MUCH
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