The Offer
- Pay your mortgage with Plastiq using a Mastercard and pay just a 1.75% fee
The standard fee for Mastercard is 2% and for other payment types it’s 2.5%.
The Fine Print
- This rate is only valid if you schedule out 6 or more payments. You can schedule out more than that too and lock in the rate.
- You must schedule the payment before September 30, 2016, 11:59 p.m. PT to get the reduced rate. (Rate will be valid on all payments scheduled out to the future, even payment after September 30.)
Our Verdict
Nice deal for racking up points on the cheap as we usually consider anything under 2% to be good. For example, you can set your rent or mortgage to be paid monthly with the Citi Double Cash card or the Barclay Arrival+ card and profit over .25% per month without effort. Or use it to rack up points at the cost of 1.75% per point on another card.
It is limited to Mastercard so that makes it less useful, and you need to schedule out six payments so not too useful for meeting minimum spend requirements (six mortgage payments is probably more than a spend requirement).
I’ll reach out to Plastiq to find out if we can switch out payment methods after the payment is scheduled which would make this more useful for meeting spend requirements. [Update: Plastiq replied that the promo is meant to be used with one card. However, if a card gets lost or otherwise needs to be replaced with different card, you can reach out to the Plastiq team and they’ll see what they can do.]
I suspect this is Plastiq’s response to the Radpad debacle from yesterday. Pretty good marketing, to be honest; they just lose .25% and gain customers.
If you are new to Plastiq, grab a referral from this thread and save yourself a bit of money on your first payment.
Found a big software bug on their system when using the promotion. Plastiq doesn’t even realize it. Their operations people need to get fired
Probably a good idea to letthem know
Hello William. It appears that they have fixed that bug since last week. Previously, what happened was that, as long as you have some fee free points in your account, and you schedule a payment then it does not use the fee free points but still charge no fee for the portion within the fee free limit. For example, you have 200 fee free points:
1) you make an instant payment:
we know fees are the based on the portion that exceeds 200, that being said, $190 pay no fee, $220 pay fees on $20 (depends on the card)
Now, this 1) is not in the discussing, what I want to point out is the below.
2) you make a scheduled payment:
you have 200 fee free money, scheduled a payment of $200 for 99 times (weekly/monthly), then all these 99 scheduled payments do not charge you a single fee. Also once the first scheduled payment is executed, it does not use your fee free points 200 at all. So say after 5 scheduled payments, you end up still having 200 fee free points and also the 5 payments do not come with a fee.
I guess it’s an calculation error in the logic of the mathematics of their programming. They fix the ratio of fee at 1.75% for mastercard under a promotion setting, so all future payments fee = initial payment fee = 1.75%, but when there is a fee free money value in the formula, the system input the value not 1.75% but plug in the way to calculate it so fee y= (X-fee free money amount) *1.75%, where y is the fee amount for EACH of the scheduled payment and x is the amount to pay. And you can imagine if fee free money is 600 and you take advantage of that…
That’s why I said their operation people should all get fired. Never fully tested their own program/system but only care about screening payment and account by their own criteria. They think they can monitor users’ account activity but I can simply know their pattern of screening payments by simply inputting info in an excel sheet.
Somewhat annoying, the escrow on my mortgage changed, causing my monthly payment amount to change. However, Plastiq tells me I can’t adjust the amount of my recurring payment without losing the promotional rate, even though I’m using the same card.
Bummer. I’m surprised they won’t accommodate. They told me it might be possible to make small changes via support (but not guaranteed).
How is the charge (to Plastiq) coded? What “category”? I have a Huntington Bank MasterCard that, combined with a checking account and private banking bonus, exceeds 3.5% on a self selected category per quarter (limits apply).
MiscellaneousREAL ESTATE AGENTS AND MANAGERS RENTALS
Any problems with CA fees or fraud alerts w/ BA+ ? Do you have to call them before 1st charge? I am assuming it shows as “plastiq” or some such…
Any Data Points if Citi Premier gives 3x for mortgage to Plastiq?
You can try $20 and see it when charge is posted.
How do they determine what you are actually paying is a mortgage?
You can switch up between cards whenever you like or are committed to one card for all your payments for 6 months?
One card
I have 3 out of 4 payments to my mortgage company fail with Plastiq.
Only the first payment ever went through, and none of the subsequent ones did.
Plastiq blames the post office. That’s very unlikely.
These were just prepayments, so no big deal. But if it was the minimum bill due, it could impact your credit. Definitely not worth it ! Do NOT trust them.
FMI, how is Plastiq categorized on each credit card? (What kind of purchase)?
Citi AT&T Access More + Citi Pretige are crucial here. Will work out to almost 50% discount on flights, not including deducting bill pay expenses for things that are office related.
Agreed, ATT is the main angle. I think it’s YMMV, some purchases work and others don’t.