Beginning in 2020, Plastiq will no longer allow the use of personal prepaid debit cards on their system. Basically, Visa and Mastercard gift cards will no longer work on their system. RIP
Until January 1, 2020, you can continue to use prepaid cards, up to $7,500 in total payments. You can read full details on the Plastiq site here.
They just sent out an email:
We would like to let you know about a change to our service that may affect you.
As of January 1, 2020, Plastiq will no longer support payments made with personal prepaid debit cards. However, payments made with business prepaid debit cards and payroll cards will continue to be accepted.
After this date, all scheduled payments made with personal prepaid cards will be declined by Plastiq. Starting January 2020, you will be unable to add a personal prepaid debit card to a Plastiq account.
From now until January 1, 2020, a limit of $7,500 in total payments will be enforced on Plastiq accounts that continue to utilize this payment method. Once this limit is reached on your account, further payments using a personal prepaid debit card will be rejected.
This change does not impact any payments made with credit or debit cards on the Discover, Mastercard, Visa, and American Express networks.
It’s not clear to me why they wouldn’t accept the cards, just take your cut with the 2.5% fee. Maybe fraud issues.
Just tired vgc, failed in the last step with message of “Plastiq no longer supports payments made with prepaid debit and gift cards. However, payments made with payroll cards are accepted.”
FWIW, Vanilla eGift Mastercards are charged the full 2.5% at Plastiq.
I have $1k in student loans left and they won’t accept debit cards… I tried paying down my balance using $200 vgc from office max… payment method declined… I registered the card online and triple checked all the numbers were correct… any I idea why I got declined?? thanks, Johnny
The VGCs sometimes can’t be used for loan repayments. I had a few VGCs which I used to prepay utilities (that usually charge 2% to pay with card, but I had some FFD to use up).
If you add a debit prepaid card a message will pop up about the cap, so Plastiq will know if it is a debit card or not.
On the Payment Review page, if I switch the card between prepaid debit and regular debit or CC, the message will appear or disappear. A data point I thought was interesting: a recent gc.com MCGC that gets the 2.5% fee shows the message.
First AA, then Plastiq….what’s next, Cracker Barrel???
What a week.
I consistently purchased $500 MCGCs at grocery stores earning 5/6%, then used plastiq to make monthly mortgage and car payments (and some other miscellaneous spend) to net a 1-2% spread, even after the gift card activation fee and plastiq 2.5%…sounds like that extra $100/mo income (without any promotions) is no longer a reality
yeah i am in the same boat as you. I profit paying my mortgage and all my bills that don’t take CC this way..
we can’t complain too much. they gave us a few weeks notice and a decent amount of $$$$ left. It’s not like they locked our accounts and/or cancelled flights…did you hear that AA?
Apples and oranges.
still, one completely alienated hundreds (or thousands?) of customers and the other one didn’t
RIP. Between this and all of my local Walmarts cracking down this might have been my last easy year of GC liquidation. Will have to dig up some new methods
The part about “$7,500 in total payments will be enforced on Plastiq accounts” is confusing, and their help page words it differently than their email.
If I pay $1 with a prepaid debit, can I then only pay $7499 with all types of cards, including credit cards (until January 1, 2020)? Their help page says “Once an account reaches this limit, Plastiq will decline all further payments submitted with these cards” which seems to reject that interpretation.
If I pay $7500 with credit cards, can I then not make any payments with prepaid debits? This could fit with both their email & help page. But the ideal interpretation would be that payments made from credit cards do not affect and are not affected by the $7500 limit; but their wording about the limit applying to the “account” makes it ambiguous.
“With these cards” seems to indicate that only prepaid debit card transactions will not be authorized after you’ve accumulated $7500 between now and the end of the year using those same cards. So I believe your ideal interpretation is the right one.