You can use Google Pay with any card using a Curve card as the wrapper. Not sure why Google don't offer this directly TBH.
The advantages of a Curve card
- Thread starter MugsGame
- Start date
I don't really understand what that means.
But I don't want any more cards in addition to my existing PTSB VISA credit and debit cards (and, if it was feasible I'd like to get rid of the former but I've never figured out if that is actually possible).
So that means that I can't use Google Pay.
PTSB were supposed to offer support for it in the first half of 2001 but obviously haven't.
I glanced at the Curve website but it seems a bit complicated.
And I presume that it would also mean yet another stamp duty charge?
The Curve website is a little unclear on the USP alright.
It's an app based payment card a little like Revolut - instant transaction notifications, cheaper fx, etc. BUT crucially in normal operation, Curve don't hold any of your money and you never owe them for purchases. Instead the Curve card act as a pointer to or wrapper for your other cards.
You register your actual bank payment card(s) in the Curve app. When you pay with your Curve Mastercard, Curve recharge the payment to your preferred payment card (or your backup card if your preferred card declines e.g. because your bank is having an outage, or they mistakenly tag the transaction as fraud). As the Curve card supports GooglePay, you could therefore use it to charge GooglePay transactions to PTSB by wrapping the PTSB card.
You can even go back in time and move a Curve purchase to another of your registered cards, after the merchant interaction has already happened (Curve reverse the original payment under the hood - I find this handy if I forget to pay with my corporate card on a business trip, whatever those are!).
It also allows you to change cards/providers without having to update online subscriptions/saved card details - merchants just see the Curve card which never changes (unless it expires or is replaced - but Mastercard now have account updater functionality which most large merchants are now using to transparently pick up renewed/replaced card details).
It's not really a debit card or credit card in the traditional sense, so they don't currently charge stamp duty - at least I assume that's their reasoning.
One disadvantage is that paying with Curve may mean you don't qualify for cashback bonuses from your underlying card issuer.
It's an app based payment card a little like Revolut - instant transaction notifications, cheaper fx, etc. BUT crucially in normal operation, Curve don't hold any of your money and you never owe them for purchases. Instead the Curve card act as a pointer to or wrapper for your other cards.
You register your actual bank payment card(s) in the Curve app. When you pay with your Curve Mastercard, Curve recharge the payment to your preferred payment card (or your backup card if your preferred card declines e.g. because your bank is having an outage, or they mistakenly tag the transaction as fraud). As the Curve card supports GooglePay, you could therefore use it to charge GooglePay transactions to PTSB by wrapping the PTSB card.
You can even go back in time and move a Curve purchase to another of your registered cards, after the merchant interaction has already happened (Curve reverse the original payment under the hood - I find this handy if I forget to pay with my corporate card on a business trip, whatever those are!).
It also allows you to change cards/providers without having to update online subscriptions/saved card details - merchants just see the Curve card which never changes (unless it expires or is replaced - but Mastercard now have account updater functionality which most large merchants are now using to transparently pick up renewed/replaced card details).
It's not really a debit card or credit card in the traditional sense, so they don't currently charge stamp duty - at least I assume that's their reasoning.
One disadvantage is that paying with Curve may mean you don't qualify for cashback bonuses from your underlying card issuer.
Last edited:
Thanks.
Way too complicated just to avail of Google Pay.
Which is not of any great imporance to me anyway.
Sorry if I made it sound complicated, it's really not once setup. I understood GooglePay wasn't a key feature for you, but thought Curve might be of interest to others (and hopefully not too off topic for this thread).
I was very sceptical of the various xPays, but I now exclusively use them in shops. Consequently I'm never prompted to enter a PIN on the terminal, which has been quite handy during COViD.
I was very sceptical of the various xPays, but I now exclusively use them in shops. Consequently I'm never prompted to enter a PIN on the terminal, which has been quite handy during COViD.
In process to sign up for CURVE. I entered my mobile number last night - twice, they were to text me a link but I got nothing. This AM I downloaded the app, got the text to sign up and it needs to debit a transaction (.93 cents) and am awaiting a debit transaction code to finalize. I like the concept here, so hopefully it goes through okay.
What is an "xPay"?
Edit: somebody just told me that it's probably a placeholder for Apple Pay/Google Pay(/ANOther Pay?)?
I presume that Curve requires a phone with NFC capabilities so you scan the phone at checkout?
(I don't have one as it happens).
Their site really doesn't do a good job of explaining their product/service clearly.
Their video says "speakers on, watch now" but produces no sound for me on my computer even though sound is fine everywhere else!
Last edited:
I don't understand - the Curve card comes with a PIN.
Yes, xPay is a placeholder for the various contactless smart payments - from Google, Apple, Samsung, Apple, FitBit, Garmin, etc.
I agree the Curve website is unclear. If someone hadn't recommended it to me, I wouldn't have seen the point. The wikipedia page explains it better (along with some less positive content).
Kind of similar with contactless device payments to be honest - for years I didn't have a phone with NFC and didn't see the point of looking for that, but now I'm a huge convert.
Most xPay devices have local Strong Cardholder Authentication in the form of biometrics or a pin used to unlock the contactless device. This means you never have to enter a PIN at a terminal, even where the underlying physical card would have required a PIN (because you're over the €50 contactless limit or you've done too many unauthenticated transactions in a row.).
I agree the Curve website is unclear. If someone hadn't recommended it to me, I wouldn't have seen the point. The wikipedia page explains it better (along with some less positive content).
Kind of similar with contactless device payments to be honest - for years I didn't have a phone with NFC and didn't see the point of looking for that, but now I'm a huge convert.
Most xPay devices have local Strong Cardholder Authentication in the form of biometrics or a pin used to unlock the contactless device. This means you never have to enter a PIN at a terminal, even where the underlying physical card would have required a PIN (because you're over the €50 contactless limit or you've done too many unauthenticated transactions in a row.).
Last edited:
I tried the app but the registration of my PTSB debit and credit cards triggered a security check/call from PTSB (not what I expected and something that makes me nervous), an online "verified by VISA check" (which I did expect), and then got stuck in the app at "Verifying card, please wait" and never got any further. I think I'll give it a miss as this is far too complicated. Thanks all the same.
Edit: if I had not taken the call from PTSB (I usually don't answer calls from numbers that I don't recognise) then my cards would have been locked.
Edit: if I had not taken the call from PTSB (I usually don't answer calls from numbers that I don't recognise) then my cards would have been locked.
Sorry to hear that, and completely understand - I'd be reluctant to continue after that experience too.
I should mention that while I work in payments I don't have any vested interest in Curve - I just think it deserves to be better known as it has functionality that many would find useful.
I should mention that while I work in payments I don't have any vested interest in Curve - I just think it deserves to be better known as it has functionality that many would find useful.
I also triggered the security check and got a text to call PTSB and my cards blocked temporarily. They cleared it when I confirmed I was activating the CURVE app, and in passing mentioned that the app had made repeated attempts to authenticate a payment hence the alarm bells ringing in PTSB. I was also "stuck on verifying, please wait, " but after engaging with PTSB, I got beyond that to a request for the debit code on the transaction. I suppose we can be grateful for the level of security.
You'll find that the low value verification charge will be authorised but NOT settled - it has temporarily reduced your available spend balance, but will vanish after 7 days or so (or sooner if Curve explicitly reverse the charge before then).
PTSB's anti-fraud rules engine is probably over zealous in this instance. Curve aren't doing anything particularly dodgey to trigger this and it doesn't indicate that Curve are seen as risky in general. Low value payments from a merchant/device you haven't used before are often treated as more suspicious by card issuers (as a low value payment is sometimes used as a way to validate stolen card details before a larger transaction elsewhere).
The stuck on Verified by Visa issues sound like a problem on the PTSB side to me, which may have led Curve to retry (probably not a good idea on Curve's part!). There is potentially a perverse incentive here for traditional banks not to fix issues with Curve, as the Curve revenue model is to get more of the transaction processing interchange fee by injecting into the process early, and reducing the cut to the issuing bank.
I suppose this presents another potential downside to Curve - it's ability to (optionally) failover to a backup card could be an easy way to block all your cards at once should a real Curve transaction trigger fraud checks with multiple banks.
PTSB's anti-fraud rules engine is probably over zealous in this instance. Curve aren't doing anything particularly dodgey to trigger this and it doesn't indicate that Curve are seen as risky in general. Low value payments from a merchant/device you haven't used before are often treated as more suspicious by card issuers (as a low value payment is sometimes used as a way to validate stolen card details before a larger transaction elsewhere).
The stuck on Verified by Visa issues sound like a problem on the PTSB side to me, which may have led Curve to retry (probably not a good idea on Curve's part!). There is potentially a perverse incentive here for traditional banks not to fix issues with Curve, as the Curve revenue model is to get more of the transaction processing interchange fee by injecting into the process early, and reducing the cut to the issuing bank.
I suppose this presents another potential downside to Curve - it's ability to (optionally) failover to a backup card could be an easy way to block all your cards at once should a real Curve transaction trigger fraud checks with multiple banks.
Last edited:
I'm happy for PTSB to be over rather than under zealous.
It wasn't stuck on the verified by VISA check.
It got past that but the Curve app itself was stuck at "Verifying card, please wait" and never budged so I uninstalled the app.
Weird. I reinstalled the app and when I logged in my cards were there this time! So now it's set up, my Curve card is on the way and Curve has been added to Google Pay ... but I still have no idea how to use any of this to pay for stuff and their website doesn't help. I tried the video again, this time on mobile, and still no sound.
Edit: so this...
www.curve.com
... presumably means that I have to wait until I get the physical Curve card and then use *that* rather than Google Pay to pay for stuff? I don't really get how adding it to Google Pay addresses the original issue of PTSB not supporting Google Pay "directly"? Is Google Pay irrelevant to me because I don't have an NFC capable phone? I've only ever used Google Pay to store Ticketmaster tickets up to now and then scan the QR code from the phone screen on entry to the venue. (Ticketmaster advised storing their tickets in Apple or Google Pay even though the tickets were already in the Ticketmaster app and I never understood that either.) I've seen people tap their phone at the POS terminal in supermarkets so I presume that they're probably using one of the Pay apps/services with an NFC capable phone?
Why is technology often so complicated/confusing when it's supposed to make life easier?
Edit: so this...
Curve Digital Wallet App | All Your Cards in One App: Curve
Combine your debit & credit cards into one Digital Wallet App. Track spending, 1% cashback, FX rates and more across all your cards in one app.
www.curve.com
... presumably means that I have to wait until I get the physical Curve card and then use *that* rather than Google Pay to pay for stuff? I don't really get how adding it to Google Pay addresses the original issue of PTSB not supporting Google Pay "directly"? Is Google Pay irrelevant to me because I don't have an NFC capable phone? I've only ever used Google Pay to store Ticketmaster tickets up to now and then scan the QR code from the phone screen on entry to the venue. (Ticketmaster advised storing their tickets in Apple or Google Pay even though the tickets were already in the Ticketmaster app and I never understood that either.) I've seen people tap their phone at the POS terminal in supermarkets so I presume that they're probably using one of the Pay apps/services with an NFC capable phone?
Why is technology often so complicated/confusing when it's supposed to make life easier?
Last edited:
You need NFC if using it as a phone payment method. You add your various cards to the curve app, and select the one you want to use to pay this or that, you can switch to different cards easily. The PTSB cards which can't be used on Google pay can be used via the curve app, but you will need an NFC capable phone.
keving1989
Registered User
- Messages
- 53
I use the Curve card with a aib business credit card loaded on the app, saves me 2.75% (€500 free fx per month) when paying in GBP and USD