New Plastiq promo: 1.75% fee when you schedule 3 months of bills [Targeted]

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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