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.With PTSB for all of my adult/working life bar an initial period with National Irish Back back in the day and have had no reason to change.
Some specific points
- Still no support for Google Pay but they support Apple Pay. Annoying but not a huge deal for me personally.
I don't really understand what that means.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.
Thanks.The Curve website is a little unclear on the USP alright.
It's an app based payment card a little like Revolut - instant 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 wrap PTSB cards.
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.
I was very sceptical of the various xPays
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 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.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.
I'm happy for PTSB to be over rather than under zealous.PTSB's anti-fraud rules engine is probably over zealous in this instance.
It wasn't stuck on the verified by VISA check.The stuck on Verified by Visa issues sound like a problem on the PTSB side to me
You’ve activated Curve, added your cards, and now you’re ready to pay. To choose which card you want to pay with, just swipe through your digital wallet in the app and tap the card you need. Then, you can use your Curve card like you would any other card in your wallet.
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