I was (still am) excited about the NFC payment supported by Curve which works totally fine on GOS. I came to know about it from discussions here in GOS forum - this forum is like a newspaper of the olden days for me lol; I scan/read so many things almost daily and have come to know so much on many diverse topics.
Anyway, the other points raised about Curve were to do with privacy and the amount of info they collect and share with "partners". They have an opt-out email but who knows how much they honour that. So I thought I'll just continue using my bank cards physically for sometime more. The hassle is that it asks for chip-and-pin every 8th (or 10th) transaction (as do most bank cards here) which is also bad for privacy as all cctvs record it, the fellow customer, the person at the till who's eyes are glued to your fingers typing the pin - all make me feel a bit uncomfortable, but that's what I live with right now. Also card-NFC payments have much lower limits before you need chip-and-pin. Cash and change is too unwieldy (given I've a family who are mostly impulsive-buyers once we step outdoors - so can't really pre-plan anything).
I just read the privacy policies of a few banks I randomly chose, just for fun. While I'm no terms-and-condition expert (and most of them are written in a very arcane fashion), I think just about every bank shares almost everything with either google or social media or whatever. Unlike curve most of them don't even have an opt-out (though that doesn't really mean anything - who knows what happens behind closed doors).
Here are a few (just random ones - not to say anything specific about these banks in particular - they're all the same anyway) :
Starling Bank:
https://www.starlingbank.com/legal/privacy-notice/
Who do you share my information with?
There are certain organisations we might need to share your information with so we can do the things set out in the 'How do you use my information' section above. This includes:
Organisations we work and connect with
Affiliated companies, including companies within our group
Partners, suppliers, subcontractors
Social media platforms <<<<<<<<< Yeah, kudos!
Fraud prevention suppliers and analytics providers
Google Maps and Google Earth <<<<<<<<< High five!
Monzo:
We share your payment details too [...] To learn how our partners use your information, please see their privacy notice's below.
We:
show where you bought something with Google maps
and their partners are for instance "Greggs" https://www.greggs.com/legals/privacy-policy#privacy-policy who in turn:
(among many other words, I just chose the following)
We will also share your personal information with the following categories of third parties:
Service providers acting as processors who provide insight services, delivery of marketing and communications services, customer services, competition administrators and IT and system administration services. <<< System administration service... hmmm, possibly AWS and thus Amazon? I don't quite follow
Nationwide:
https://www.nationwide.co.uk/-/assets/nationwidecouk/documents/about/dp17-how-we-use-your-personal-information.pdf?rev=8c08d9d5212d4c48beb9f3c731c4b2a9
Do you ever send my information outside the UK?
Sometimes. For example, if we use a 'third party' to help us manage your account. Don't worry though – your safety and security is the most important thing to us. <<<<< lol, so probably all the time because can't think of a company not using a single "3rd party".
Anyway, even if not shared directly, they'll share it with someone who will have a different set of privacy-policies and they will share it with someone different and so one. Ultimately I'm guessing everyone just gets all data from everywhere.
I suppose most know this already, but it's just so .... well sad. Using something like curve etc probably doesn't harm your privacy more than it's probably already f'ed up. In one way, it's a relief, I don't have to keep thinking about all this, it's already past the point of gloom-and-doom. I only need to make sure my phone is secure and my OS is not a spyware and thank my stars that something like GOS exists today! At-least I can be confident my OS isn't just keylogging or capturing everything I enter in my signal apps, browsers, password managers and so on.
No question, sorry, just venting :)