Getting Started with Payments

What possibilities does the Payments functionality offer?

Our Payments functionality is designed to largely automate the process of paying royalties to your artists and writers. It enables your artists and writers to provide their payment details through their Curve For Creators portal. It then enables you to securely pay the balances of your statements straight from within your Curve account.

Steps when using the Payments functionality

Speak to our Team about access to Payments (One time only)

Before you are able to access the Payments functionality on Curve, you will need to speak with the Curve team to see if you are eligible. Below are the main minimum requirements for a Curve client to be eligible for making use of the Payment functionality:

Your business is based in the US, UK or EEA.

If you wish to discuss this functionality and gain access to the Payments functionality, please email us at [email protected]

Complete the Setup Form (One time only)

To comply with financial regulations, we will need some further information about your business. Once the form is completed, it may take up to 48 hours for this to form to be reviewed by our financial partner. It is possible we will require more information based on the information you have provided, so please note it may take up to a few weeks for this process to be completed.

More information about how to complete this Setup Form and which kind of information we'll require can be found here: Completing the Setup Form for Payments

Penny Test (For businesses based in EEA only, One time only)

Before you can make payments, you will need to add sufficient funds on your Curve account. Any businesses based outside of the EEA (the European Economic Area) can do so instantly as per the instructions in the next step: "Top Up Your Balances". However, for businesses based within the EEA, a so-called penny test is required. A list of countries within the EEA can be found here.

As part of a penny test, we will approve your first top up. Please top up your balance with $/£/€/... 0.01.

Please note, the Bank Account Holder Name must match the name of the business entity provided on the Setup Form in order for this transaction to be approved. It is possible that certain name suffixes (such as Territory Codes, eg Music Records Ltd GB instead of just Music Records Ltd) are automatically added to your Bank Account Holder Name by your bank when transferring funds into your Curve account, which would mean the automated test by our financial partner would fail. If your top up is not approved within one working day of the transfer, please reach out to [email protected].

More information about how to top up your Balances can be found here: Payment Account Balances, Currency Conversions & Penny Tests

Top up your Balances

Before you can make payments, you need sufficient funds on your Curve account.

Please ensure you have adequate balances in each of the currencies in which you create statements on Curve, enough to cover the total amount that needs to be paid in each of these currencies. Please make sure to include some headroom or potential transaction fees.

More information about how to top up your Balances can be found here: Payment Account Balances, Currency Conversions & Penny Tests

Add the Payment details to your Payees

For each of the Payees that you are looking to send Payments to, please provide their Bank Account Information. There are two ways for Bank Account Information to be provided/updated.

Admin users can enter this information via the Payment Details form on the Payee
Artists/Writers can provide this information independently via their Curve For Creators portal. If you wish for your Artists/Writers to provide their bank details independently via the portal, please send out a mailer to inform them that this is expected, as well as include this information in your Custom Statement Email Text in your General Settings.

Create a Payment Group with Payment Transactions

To bring yourself into a position to create Payment Groups with Payments, please go over the usual Curve process to create your Period & Statements. Once the Statements are final, you will be ready to complete this step of creating a Payment Group with Payments.

A Payment Group is a group which includes all the Payments from a respective Period on Curve.

There are a few ways to create a Payment Group with Payments on Curve.

Using Auto-Payment functionality - If Auto-Payments are enabled on your Contracts, a Payment Group will be created when the Period is processed, and a Payment will automatically be created for each Contract with a payable balance which has "Auto-Payment" enabled.
Hitting "Pay" in a Statement - If you go into a Statement and hit the "Pay" button, if the statement has a positive balance than this will create a Payment matching the Closing Balance amount. We will automatically create a Payment Group for this Period if one does not yet exist.
Manually creating a Payment Group and Payments - It is also possible to create Payment Groups and all of its Payments manually. These payments would be created loose from any Periods or Statements on Curve.

Review if you're ready to make Payments

Before going over to the final step of making the payments, please review:

If your Statements and their Balances are correct and final. We have a list of best practices to review your Statements for Labels and Publishers respectively. Please note that once at least one Payment within a Group is made, that it will no longer be possible to Reprocess the Period that this Group is for.
If all Payments have a Pending status. Only Payments with a Pending status are actually payable. It is possible that Payments have a Missing Info status if the Payee does not have valid Bank Account Information stored. Though rest assured you will be able to pay the Payments with a Pending status and revisit those Payments with a Missing Info status at a later stage.
If your balances are sufficient to cover the total payment amount in this group. Please make sure you have sufficient balances for each of the payment currencies in this group. Please also keep enough headroom for any potential transaction fees.

Make Payments

Once you feel confident your Statements and its Payments are accurate and final, you can progress with making the Payments. This will take the amounts from your Payments Balance and make the payments to the Payees as per their Bank Account Information.

To complete this step, please go to your Payment Group and hit the "Pay" button in the top right of your screen. This will give you the option to pay either All payments or All Selected payments.

Review if all Payments have been made successfully

Once you have made Payments, please review the outcome of this process. It is possible that some or all Payments have failed due to an insufficient balance in your account or incorrect bank account details.

If this is the issue, please resolve the issue that is flagged by the Status of these failed Payments and try again.

Review your Payment Group for any outstanding Payments before starting your next Payment Group

When you are ready to start your next Period and Payment Group on Curve, please review if there are any Payments that are still unpaid. You will want to make sure that these Payments are either paid successfully, or deleted so that this unpaid balance amount of this Statement can be included in the Payment amount of the upcoming Period instead.