More points, less fees = winning.
If you haven’t heard of Curve card, you’re not alone. It’s not advertised on your television, or invading your commute – yet. It is however, one of the very best ways to maximize your airline miles, hotel points and credit card points, while also saving money abroad in the process. Here’s how the Curve UK travel card can add points and subtract pesky fees from your next trip abroad. Oh, and it’s free…
Curve Is…
Curve is an electronic payment card, which simply mirrors any of your other Visa or Mastercard’s. Via their app, you can load all your cards in, and whichever one you select in the app, is the one that will work when you swipe your cool, black Curve Mastercard Debit Card. It’s free, by the way. So yeah, if you have a TESCO card, a Virgin Atlantic Mastercard and an IHG card, you can load them all onto your one Curve card, allowing you to bring just one card out, and use all three, with the flick of a finger in the app. Cool trick, sure, but that’s not what makes it valuable.
Now to be very clear here, if you’re not interested in points, there are options for UK travelers to spend abroad without paying any fees, Revolut is leading that charge – but you won’t earn any points on those transaction. If you’re into your points and miles, and would love to turn those hotel purchases, dinners, and everything else you buy abroad into a heap of points, Curve is your go to. Curve converts every charge in real time into your local currency, only charging a flat 1% fee for all foreign transactions. Even if your credit card would usually carry a 3% fee for foreign purchases, like most do, since you’re swiping Curve first, you pay just 1%. That’s a 2% savings, instantly! If you spent £1000, it would save you £20, each time, and being able to pay just a 1% foreign fee on purchases makes it far more lucrative to use a rewards earning card that gives you points while abroad.
Curve is offering £5 after you sign up and make your first transaction. It’s incredibly easy to get started, and entering code C5CFD will trigger £5 in Curve Rewards, which can be used like cash when you do. Whether you’re into airline miles, hotel points or not, saving up to £20 per every £1000 you spend abroad is lucrative reason enough, but when you add in the points factor, where you can spend on cards such as the Virgin Atlantic Premium Mastercard, which earns 1.5 points per £ spent, you can rake in 1,500 points per £1000 too. Because it’s digital, Curve is one of the safest payment methods in the world, and can be locked or frozen in a heartbeat. There are quite a few other good reasons to get Curve, which are a bit nerdier, so if you’re looking for the juicy stuff, head here. Either way, we recommend Curve, we use Curve and you probably should too…
or you can have a Halifax Clarity or the PostOffice credit card and pay no FX transaction fee when buying abroad or taking out money from an ATM. Why complicate your life?
A) the post office charges consumer rate of exchange, which is almost worse than paying forex fees on credit cards.
B) this allows you to earn points. Your two options don’t.
Halifax is interbank rate. But of course, no cashback. Always a conundrum for me as I have both. So, in case of your£1000 eg, the decision is whether to save the £10 that curve will take or pay £10 for 1000 or 1500 points of whichever bank/airline card you wish to use. Either or could make sense.
1% fee to earn 1% cashback makes Revolut the same price and much less complicated.
But points are often valued at over 1p per point, which makes it not equal. And I specifically offer Revolut in the post as an alternative for people who don’t care about points.
I use Curve, but it’s worth noting that due to the way it works there’s no Section 75 credit card protection. Normally when you buy something costing between £100 and £30,000 and pay for any of it on a credit card, you get Section 75 protection which means your card firm’s jointly liable with the retailer if things go wrong (see Section 75 for full info). Using Curve invalidates this protection, though you will still be able to use Mastercard’s chargeback scheme.