Plastiq is out with a new promotion that may be targeted: schedule 3 months of bills with your Mastercard, Discover, American Express, Visa Business or JCB card from now until the end of May and lock in a 1.75% fee on those payments. That rate could make Plastiq payments profitable on a range of cards for everyday spend (and could work out even better if you need to meet a spending requirement). I’m not sure whether or not this is widely available, but it came in as an email with the subject line, “PROMOTION: Send payments for 1.75%“.
The Deal
- Targeted Plastiq promo to lock in a 1.75% fee when you schedule 3 months of bills with your Mastercard, Discover, American Express, Visa business, or JCB card from now until the end of May
- Check for an email with promo code, “PROMOTION: Send payments for 1.75%“
Key Terms
- Excludes Visa personal cards
- To be eligible for the promotional Plastiq fee, all 3 payments must be scheduled by May 31, 2018, 11:59 p.m. ET and must be part of a recurring series. The first three payments in the series must be delivered by July 31, 2018, 11:59 p.m. ET
- Promotional fee will only apply to the first three payments in a series.
- Promotional fee can apply to multiple bills.
- Future editing of scheduled payments will result in the cancellation of the promotional Plastiq fee.
Quick Thoughts
This looks like a pretty good deal if you have payments to make and have a card that earns a better return than 1.75% (which should apply to most of the rewards cards in your wallet). That said, it is targeted and the email contained a unique link, so I’m not sure whether or not this will be available for many people.
Also note that there are restrictions in place on American Express payments — Amex can only be used for certain types of bills (see our Complete Guide to Plastiq credit card payments for a full chart). One of those types should be government services, but I have been unsuccessful in making a tax payment (the system says Amex can’t be used for it despite the fact that it is coded correctly) and I have been waiting nearly a month for the Plastiq team to fix it with no success this far. I understand that I am not the only person who has had this problem, so be aware that there is a known glitch currently affecting some Amex payments. Hopefully, Plastiq gets it resolved.
Still, with the included cards it should be easy to beat the 1.75% fee on a wide range of bill types, making this a solid promotion if you were targeted. If you have not yet signed up for Plastiq, consider signing up with the Frequent miler referral link: http://plastiq.com/frequentmiler. As a new user, you would get 500 fee-free dollars after you make $500 in Plastiq payments. That means you would pay the normal 2.5% fee on the first $500 in payments and then your next $500 in payments would not have a fee — you’ll pay a net 1.25% on that first $1K in payments.
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Not targeted either. Too bad. 2% is about my cutoff point for when I’ll use Plastiq.
0/2 in our family accounts. Thanks for the alert, but really annoys when plastiq (et. al) skips us…. Master, what must I do to be…. targeted? 😉
ps, had a really unhappy experience with plastiq paying taxes last November — paid a local property tax well over a week in advance of due date; got assurances from plastiq of “deliver by date” (and it went electronically, not snail mail) — but the taxing authority apparently took forever to process it and then assessed a nasty late fee…. (and they’re not as yet impressed that I have a written assertion from plastique of the date they delivered by…. grrr….. have yet to fight hard enough on the appeal)
Come to think of it, similar serious frustrations lately using “checkfreepay” bill pay service at walmart — when paying Chase business cards….. (chase — on the business cards — can seriously delay processing — making mincemeat out of Walmart’s definition of “next day delivery.” By contrast, CFP/WMT payments to Chase personal cards always process next business day….. )
Hi Escot – If your payment arrived late, we’d like to reimburse you for any fees covered under our Plastiq. Can you please contact support at support@plastiq.com with the details?
Landon at Plastiq (landon@plastiq.com)