Do you have pocket or wallet full of credit and debit cards? Do you occasionally use the wrong one and have to reclaim the expenses? Watch this to find out how the Curve Card can reduce your collection of cards to one, without streamlining your payment options!

Transcript:

Hi and welcome to another episode of Baranov TV, designed to demystify the world of accounts and tax and to help your business grow.

Well, as you can see, I’m not in the office today. I’m actually at Villa Park, which is the home of Aston Villa Football Club up in Birmingham. I’m here for an event and we’ve just arrived. I’ll tell you more when we get in but it’s a bit cold to be standing out here in the car park, so hang on and I’ll be back with you in a minute.

So here we are inside Villa Park; it’s much warmer in here!

What I wanted to do today is talk to you about a new type of card that’s on the market. It’s called the Curve Card and it’s linked to an app that you can have either on your iOS mobile or your Android mobile. It consolidates your existing credit and debit cards, so it means you only have to carry one card, which, if you’re anything like me and have a purse full, is going to be a huge advantage!

You add your existing cards to the Curve App and then you pay using one piece of plastic which is the only one you have to carry around with you.

There are various benefits of the Curve Card.

1. First one, obviously being the amount of plastic you don’t have to carry, but also, you can keep a check on your spending. The app automatically categorises the amounts that you spend per card. You can keep an eye on what you’re spending against budget.
2. You can also, the big thing, is the Go-Back-in-Time feature. So if like me you’ve ever used the wrong credit card to pay for something and regretted it later, you can actually switch that payment from one card to another. That means that you’re less likely to get in trouble with your bookkeeper!
3. It’s also very secure as it’s got military grade encryption within the system, so your card details are extremely safe.
4. You can also, if you mislay your card, cancel it through the app really, really quickly.  The beauty is if you later find it in that safe place that you put it, you can actually reactivate it really quickly through the app too.
5. From a business perspective, it tracks your receipts. So in the same way, with something like ReceiptBank, you can take a photo of your receipt, you can with your Curve Card as well as it allocates it directly.
6. The Curve Card also integrates beautifully with Xero which obviously is a huge plus for us, because we think Xero is so brilliant.
7. Also, you can draw cash abroad using the card. There are some charges affected with that but it does just mean that you’ve got less plastic cards to carry abroad as well, which is great.
8. You can also get 1% cash back on amounts you spend on chosen retailers too, and you can still collect your reward points that you might be collecting using your normal credit cards; that isn’t adversely affected.

There are a couple of things to watch out for with Curve Card, however. It’s not a panacea for everything.

1. You won’t qualify for consumer protection, Section 75. So whereas historically, if you were going to spend up to £30,000, if something went wrong, your credit card company is jointly liable with the retailer for that. That doesn’t apply on the Curve Card, so you do have to be aware of that if you’re making big purchases where you think there might be a problem. Make sure that you use your normal card, not your Curve Card.
2. Also, there is some discussion about whether Amex is included or not. According to the Curve Card, it isn’t, although some users say that they are using Amex. So I would double check that if Amex is an important consideration for you.

Finally, Curve is a debit Mastercard and the beauty, the fact that you can do the Go-Back-in-Time, and switch payments, may be a way around it if you are historically used to paying your personal tax through your credit card.

The Revenue no longer take a personal credit card as a means of payment for your tax payments, your Payments on Account. But if you use your Curve Card, you are effectively using a debit card so they will accept it and you can then switch that payment through to a credit card of your choice after the event. So that would be one way of making sure that your personal tax payment is on your credit card and not a debit card and hasn’t actually come straight out of your bank account.

It needs to be given some thought and obviously if you can afford to budget for that tax payment, you really should. It shouldn’t be an issue but it does actually give you another big means of flexibility.

So that’s the Curve Card which you can find by downloading the Curve app. There is a waiting list at the moment to get the Curve Card because it’s proving so popular, but we’re certainly going to get hold of them because it just means that we can carry less plastic and it gives you all of the other flexibility, all the other points that I’ve mentioned.

If you do sign up for one, do let me know how you get on, let me know what you think. In the mean time, I’m off to find a cup of coffee and I’ll see you all very soon.