PayPal has announced that they’re relaunching their Mastercard credit card and it has the potential to be very interesting for big online spenders and those with large tax bills.
The existing PayPal Mastercard credit card offers 2% cashback everywhere. That’s made it a solid cashback card, especially seeing as it has no foreign transaction fees. (Update: Apparently the PayPal credit card added a 3% foreign transaction fee in 2021.) Many people will have preferred the Citi Double Cash and/or American Express Blue Business Plus cards though seeing as they earn 2x transferable points.
The soon-to-be revamped PayPal credit card will become far more interesting because it’ll offer 3% cashback on PayPal purchases. Many online merchants accept PayPal as a payment method, so there’ll be a lot of opportunities to earn 3%. It’s not only online stores that accept PayPal payments though; some bricks and mortar stores accept payment via PayPal using QR codes too.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this will be for people with large tax bills. Two IRS payment processors – ACI Payments and payUSAtax – accept PayPal as a payment method with a 1.98% and 1.96% fee respectively. Provided PayPal doesn’t exclude these kinds of payments for 3% earnings, that means you’ll be able to earn 1.02% or 1.04% 1.08% or 1.1% cashback respectively after fees. While many people will prefer using tax payments to meet minimum spend requirements for new credit cards, earning 3% cashback is a good backup option for anyone not working on a welcome offer.
The biggest drawback of the PayPal credit card is that it’s issued by Synchrony. They’re notorious for providing low credit limits, so there could be a limit as to how beneficial this card will be seeing as Synchrony isn’t known to like people cycling their credit limits.
When this card is relaunched they’ll be offering a $100 welcome offer when spending $500, presumably in the first three months. If you have the existing PayPal credit card, it’ll automatically be converted to the new earning structure. If you’d like to apply for the new card, they’re not currently taking applications but you can join the waitlist here.
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