Lain
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2014
Plastiq is a service that lets you pay almost any bill with your credit card. Regardless whether the payee accepts credit cards, you can add your credit card to Plastiq, enter the information for who you want to pay, what category of business it's for, when and how much to pay. Plastiq will charge your credit card for that amount plus a 2.5% transaction fee (to cover credit card fees), then send a check or electronic payment to your payee within 5-7 business days. When you submit or schedule your payment, Plastiq will give you an expected delivery date.
Because of the 2.5% fee, it's not really economical to use Plastiq for every bill. Where Plastiq really makes sense for the purposes of credit card churning and points maximizing is:
(1) When you're trying to meet a minimum spending requirement organically, because you can move some big bills that might not otherwise accept the credit card for which you're trying meet spend to Plastiq. If the bonus is large enough, it doesn't really matter that you paid a fee for a bill that you had to pay anyway, or that you may only earn 1x points on the transaction, because the value of the bonus outsizes the cost of the fee.
For example, @wendow is paying her mortgage, which you can't typically pay using a credit card, using Plastiq to meet the minimum spend on her new Barclaycard Arrival+ MasterCard, which has something like a 50k bonus.
Plastiq occasionally offers lower rates or a fee free month promotions. Plastiq is currently running a promotion that offers a rebate or lowers the fee (?) for scheduling mortgage payments using a MasterCard. Plastiq also offers referral bonuses in the form of "fee free" dollars.
(2) When your bill is a type/category that earns you 3x points on your credit card when charged through Plastiq, effectively negating the transaction fee and even putting you ahead.
Data points, which are reported on points and miles blogs, flyer talk, reddit, here can tell you how something codes, whether the charge earns 1x or 3x points. YMMV! As I mentioned upthread, the Chase Ink Preferred earns 3x UR on so many of my major expenses. The CIP earns 3x on:
- Travel, including airfare, hotels, rental cars, train tickets, and taxis
- Shipping purchases
- Internet, cable and phone services
- Advertising purchases made with social media sites and search engines
There are several caveats:
(1) When you are making a payment using a Visa for the first time to a payee who you haven't paid before, or isn't in Plastiq's database of recipients, Plastiq will warn you that the transaction will be coded as a cash advance. You don't want this because cash advance fees are steep and you don't earn credit card rewards on it. You can and should secure message or call your credit card issuer to lower the cash advance limit to the lowest amount possible so you don't inadvertently trigger a cash advance. As for Plastiq, you'll need to "establish" a relationship with a new recipient before using a Visa. So you could make a small payment ($5?) to the new recipient, eat the cash advance but you're set. Or use an Amex or MasterCard to pay the new recipient first (a small or full payment, whatever), thereby establishing a relationship, then you can use a Visa without triggering a cash advance for subsequent payments.
(2) The CSR used to also earn 3x UR on rent and mortgage payments as "travel." Plastiq very suddenly changed how these charges were coding around June and they now earn only 1x UR on CSR. The CIP was earning 3x UR for the same kinds of charges at the same time, then suddenly changed to 1x UR around late July, and then returned to 3x UR around August. The CIP still earns 3x UR on rent and mortgage (again, if you can get it through) payments, but who knows how long that will last? Plastiq has shown that the way it codes things can and do change suddenly, and YMMV!
(3) Earlier this summer, Visa issued new guidelines to Plastiq forbidding them from accepting Visa cards for mortgage payments; recently, Amex also issued essentially the same rules, no Amex cards for mortgage payments. Despite this, some people are still able to pay their financial institutions (i.e., Plastiq hasn't blocked Visa or Amex payments to these payees), especially if your lender is a smaller credit union or bank, or a bank with a name that's not obviously "mortgage" related. So whether your lender is blocked, and if you can submit a "rent/real estate" type payment to your lender without getting an error message from Plastiq is YMMV!
(4) Plastiq charges a 2.5% fee, which you have to decide if that cost is worth the price of the points you'll earn. So for example, if your rent or mortgage is $2,000, 2.5% of that is a $50 fee. If you earn 3x UR, you'll get 6,000 UR from the transaction. You've essentially bought 6,000 UR for $50, at a cost of $0.0083/point. Since 1 UR = at least $0.01 in cash redemption value, you're coming out slightly ahead. But you've also paid more cash out of pocket than you had to and essentially converted cash to points, unless and until you decide to redeem those points back to cash or for travel.
As for student loans:
(1) Keep in mind that if you pay your student loan with Plastiq, you may be giving up an interest rate reduction that you might have gotten for setting up direct debit.
(2) Again, Plastiq charges a 2.5% fee, so you have to decide whether the additional money out of pocket (and possible loss of an interest rate reduction) is worth it.
(3) There are arguably cheaper ways to earn miles and points by using your credit card to buy Gift of College gift cards that you can use to pay your student loans. Toys R Us sells GoC GCs up to $500 with only a $5.95 purchase fee (or as low as 1.19% of the card's value). I haven't gone the GoC route, but here's a good write up, even though it's a bit dated: http://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/2016/11/08/pay-student-loans-529-plans-credit-card/ Several of the online options mentioned have lowered their max GC value to $300 while keeping the purchase fee the same (making it less of a value to you, and more of a money maker for them).
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that your next move should be to channel your wonderful enthusiasm for this hobby into formulating a plan first in order to accumulate more points 
This way, you don't shoot yourself in the foot so to speak. The rules of the game have changed drastically since I first started, which was a short 5 years ago. Chase's 5/24 rule didn't exist, until recently you could have 2 Sapphire products, you could churn Barclay cards to your heart's content, manufactured spending was much easier ... sigh. Anyhow, I've watched a few posters on this thread and elsewhere begin start out with guns blazing applying for whatever looked or sounded good. Then with time came dawning realization that they had wasted a lot of effort and spend to accumulate points and miles and what they did wasn't going to help them out once they decided they wanted to go somewhere. This board is not like the other forums out there. People here are super nice and really want to help each other. So it is ok to ask lots of questions and seek advice and guidance here. Flyertalk and redditt is where you'd get blasted, not here 
Needless to say I didn't book it. The OOP cost was $1843 per person and I did consider using MR points from the Amex Plat business card to pay with points and get 50% of them back before that option is off the table next month. It would have been 184,300 MR points and then I would have gotten back 92,150 in a few weeks. Chase UR points through CSR would have cost in the neighborhood of 123,000 UR. Either method would have also earned me miles for flying. Both are way less of a point requirement than using Delta Sky pesos and both are easier to accumulate too.
So, I really appreciate this thread! 
