The ATM fees for Curve (blue) have become less and less transparent over time, and, unless I am reading something totally wrong in their new terms, can go up to 8,5 percent! Let me give you an example for this:
Let’s say you are travelling in Switzerland, using cash Swiss francs CHF and your underlying payment card s a EUR based true credit card. Let’s further assume that you already withdrew 200 Euro worth of CHF from an ATM in Switzerland. Let’s further say that you already had 10 ATM withdrawals before that (Curve terms do not say if that is 10 per month or per year or ever…)
Now worst that could happen to you is if you would need further CHF cash (value 50 Euro) from an ATM in Switzerland on a weekend, because no less than FOUR different fees kick in at the same time, according to Curve standard terms (!):
- 2% because you use an underlying credit card instead of a debit card
- another 2 Euro, which in this example is another 4% of the 50 Euro withdrawal value, because your ATM limit is used up
- another 1,5% because you are using ATM in FX on a weekend
- another 0,50 Euro which is this example another 1% of the 50 Euro value withdrawal because you already had made more than 10 ATM withdrawals
So in this hypothetical 50 Euro (in CHF) withdrawal, Curve would hit you with 8,5% of fees!
Even if you assume that the withdrawal would be 100 Euro value in CHF, and that it would only be your second ATM usage this month, you would still face a steep curve fee of 5,5% for this ATM transaction.
So wherever you would need more than 200 Euro of foreign cash from ATM per month when traveling, one should absolutely avoid using Curve (blue, at least).
I am making a case here for more transparency and a more consistent ATM FX fee structure for Curve blue, for example as follows:
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do away with the 200 Euro limit for ATM and make a consistent limit of 500€ applicable for spending FX, regardless if payment or withdrawal
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do away with the punishment fee of 2% for using ATM with an underlying real credit card. Or at least raise to 500€ and lower the fee to 0.5% or so
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cancel the stupid weekend fees, or at least unify for all currencies to 0.5% like for USD and GBP
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or at least add a cap like “no Curve ATM transaction will ever charge morel than 3 percent of fees in total matter what”
Best,
Corduroy