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8 Reasons To Get a Curve Card For Travel!

This post may contain affiliate links. I will receive a small commission if you use these links.

Having a good bank card for travel is really important no matter where we are in the world, what kind of trip we’re on and how much we have travelled, and a good card for travel should keep our money safe, save us money and save us stress.

When I heard about Curve I was really excited about their wide range of travel benefits including many that I have not seen in a travel money card, or normal debit card before, … hello included travel insurance!

In this travel blog post, I’m going to give you reasons why a Curve Card is great for us travellers to use when we are away, how our spending at home can help our travels, my overall Curve Card review and how to get a Curve Card yourself.

Curve Card

Curve Card for Travel

What is a Curve Card?

Curve really cleverly combines all of our cards, including debit cards, credit cards and loyalty cards.

This means we only have to carry our Curve Card with us, yet we are able to spend on all of our existing cards because we connect them to Curve using the app.

Curve Card is not an additional bank card that we need to top up or change all of our direct debits to in order to spend money on it.

Curve Card for Travel

How does a Curve Card work?

Curve offers 3 types of Cards and they vary from how much the monthly fee is – starting with a card that is FREE, what benefits they offer and the colour of the card (yes, I got a pink metal one!).

Once you have chosen the Curve Card you want (which you can do here!) and registered on the app, you’ll be sent your Curve Card in the post.

Curve Card works by adding all your cards in your wallet / purse to the app, this includes debit cards, credit cards and loyalty cards so the next step is to add all of your debit, credit and loyalty cards into the app.

Curve Card for Travel

You can then pay for items using the physical Curve Card, or connect your Curve Card to your phone and pay using Apple Pay, Google Pay or Samsung Pay.

What I love is that if you happen to pay using your debit card via Curve but the transaction was meant to go on your credit card, you can switch payments from one card to another up to 90 days afterwards!

Sign up for Curve here and when you sign up using my link you’ll get a £5 reward for your first transaction!

Why is a Curve Card good for Travel?

1. No Need to Top it Up

Travel money cards require money to be added to them from our main bank account which can be annoying when travelling.

There’s nothing worse than trying to withdraw money or pay for something on our card only to realise we forgot to top the card up after our last spend, and I’ve been in that situation a few times!

Because Curve connects to our existing cards these are the cards that we spend from, it means we don’t have to think about topping up a card, we spend from the money in our bank accounts as normal.

Curve Card for Travel

2. Free Withdrawals at ATM’s Abroad

The first thing I look for in a travel bank card these days is whether withdrawals are free.

Although I’m used to tapping my card at home and never withdrawing cash, when I’m away a lot of the countries I visit, especially in Asia, accept cash only.

The fee-free withdrawal amounts depend on the Curve card you choose to get. The free Classic Card gives you £200.00 a month to withdraw abroad with no fee’s, Curve Black gives you £400.00 and Curve Metal gives you £600.00 a month which is a fantastic and helpful amount.

Read more about the 3 Curve Cards you can get here, and remember when you sign up to Curve using my link you’ll get a £5 reward for your first transaction.

3. Locking the Card on the App

If you do happen to lose your Curve Card whether it has been stolen or you simply misplace it, you can go straight into the Curve app and lock the card so if anyone else picks it up, they can’t use it!

This is a great safety feature and I know it will keep a lot of travellers feeling much more safe and confident about their money.

It’s also a great feature to tell your perhaps worried parents about to give them confidence that your money will be extra safe on your trip!

Curve Card for Travel

4. No Need to Carry all Bank Cards

The basic nature of Curve is that you don’t have to carry all your bank cards around, you use the Curve Card only and this is so helpful when travelling.

This means we can keep all of our main bank cards safe in our room when we travel and in a safe place in our bag on travel days and use the Curve Card only when we’re out exploring or at the airport for example.

Sign up for Curve here and when you sign up using my link you’ll get a £5 reward for your first transaction!

5. Real-Time Alerts

These days, most of us will have constant internet access when we travel because it is so easy to get local sim card’s when we land at an airport or we have roaming included in our plans.

Whenever we use our Curve Card we get instant notifications on our phone of how much we have just spent in the local currency and our own currency. So with internet access when we’re away we’ll be able to see this straight away, just like at home.

I love this because I often get worried that I might have been charged too much or an extra 0 might have been added when I paid.

Before I wouldn’t know this until I checked my statement however getting instant alerts enables me to see what I just spent before I’ve even left the shop and can question it if there is any need.

6. Earn Extra Money Using Cashback

As travellers we love to have more money to spend on travel and I love the cashback scheme that Curve offers. I think it’s really unique and a great way to use our spending at home to benefit our travels.

With Curve Cash, we earn 1% instant cashback every time we spend with our Curve card at one of our chosen retailers.

You can look through the long list of retailers that work with Curve Card, think about which ones you spend the most money with and carefully select your chosen retailers to really maximise the cashback reward.

Personally, the top retailers I use and love that they are included are: Asda, Tesco, Amazon, H&M, Just Eat, Booking. com, The Train Line & TFL.

7. Travel Insurance Included

Travel insurance tends to be that extra fee and cost that we don’t plan into our budget and sometimes forget about altogether, especially for short weekends away,

So I was really impressed to see that Curve Card includes worldwide travel insurance when you purchase Curve Black or Curve Metal and it is valid for as long as you have a valid card.

Insurance is provided by AXA and was emailed to me with all the details straight away so this has now saved me money on travel insurance.

8. Clear Transaction Spending in the App

In the Curve App you’ll clearly be able to see how much money you’ve spent recently and all transactions no matter what card you used.

This is great for travel because we can see a clear picture of how much we spent on a trip including flights and accommodation that we might have put on a credit card and food and shopping on our debit card.

Sign up for Curve here and when you sign up using my link you’ll get a £5 reward for your first transaction!

Curve Card for Travel

I hope this post has helped you see why Curve is great to use for us travellers and we can benefit from its unique features away and at home!

This post is sponsored by Curve and includes affiliate links but all thoughts, opinions and experiences using the card are my own.