Update 5/7/19: Plastiq has clarified that, “if a Plastiq customer was quoted the 1.5% promotional Plastiq fee on the payment review page and then submitted the payment successfully, we will honor that promotional pricing – as long as it was in compliance with our terms of service. This includes future scheduled or recurring payments that saw the promotional fee upon payment submission. Please note that future scheduled payments will lose promotional pricing if they are edited.”
Update 11:04pm ET: Plastiq has now clarified with us that the promotion is an official promotion, but only for targeted users in Canada on select payments. It was a system error causing it to work on all Mastercard payments, and that’s now been fixed. Far as I know, whatever payments were sent already are locked in at the lower rate, but I guess we’ll find out.
Update 9:36pm ET: A few readers are reporting this is now dead.
The Offer
- Plastiq is offering processing on Mastercard credit card payments for a 1.5% fee, down from the typical 2.5% fee.
The Fine Print
- Mastercard only
Our Verdict
A reader sent this one in. It appears to be some sort of specific promo for Mastercard payments, as shown in the screenshot above. From what I’ve checked, payments with other card types like Visa are showing the regular 2.5% fee. This makes sense as Plastiq has run such specials with Mastercard in the past.
The odd thing is that Plastiq has always sent out information about such promotions. We’ll see if we hear anything on this one, maybe it’s an official promotion starting soon that went live a bit early or it’s a test phase.
If anyone is signing up for a new Plastiq account, there are two referral offer options going on now is you signup with our Plastiq referral link: (1) standard offer to get $500 in free processing after you process $500 in paid processing; (2) special offer through May 31 to get $10,000 in free processing if you signup as a business and process $10,000 in paid processing. (All Plastiq users can refer friends for the standard referral offer, and some people have the business referral offer attached to their referral link as well.)
Hat tip to reader William and Jon
Received email from Plastiq with 1% promo fee with Mastercard payment (in CA), I already had scheduled Mastercard payments (mortgage) at the mistake 1.5% fee to the end of this year. Interesting that the email specifies I haven’t used Mastercard recently as I have. I discussed with Plastiq and they specified:
Three (3) payments must be scheduled before 11:59 PM EST on May 31, 2019, as a series. The last payment must be processed by 11:59 p.m. EST on August 31, 2019. You are permitted to schedule as many payments as you like, but this promotion discount will only apply to the first three payments within the series. This promotion will not apply to any payments you’ve scheduled prior to the start of this promotion.
Editing, altering or rescheduling any of the scheduled payments in the series will forfeit the promotional fee discount.
Nice that they’re honoring it, but would have liked to see them allow us to edit payment method. Is there much cost difference for them to do that? I suppose if our original payments were set up using a regular mastercard and we wanted to change it to a world elite, that might increase costs a bit. Still though, they know why we use their service. And again, definitely nice that they’re honoring their price mistake, but would be nice if they threw us a bone on this.
When Plastiq first came out there were some 0% fee promotions for as long as you want.
I jumped on it – free points on a mortgage for over a decade!
Than a year later the card expiration date comes up and *poof* the promo is over – can’t switch to the new card.
After that I saw that not allowing switching payments is a smart move – prevents the IT or Ad department from accidentally on purpose blowing the business up.
As a DP: I did have a fraud induced card change and they let me switch the payment up, but it was only for like 6 months.
Yeah, pretty much makes using prepaid cards useless in this case.
Thanks @Chuck. I was able to schedule 3 years of rent and car payments.
Adding my thanks as well. Now that it’s clear that they’re going to honor it, I can count my chickens. I use a MC for my $2,000 mortgage payment – so by grabbing this promotion and lowering my fee by 1 ppt, I am saving $20/month from now until my card expires in 2 years. $500 total savings – that’s why I check this site regularly – good, timely, money-saving information.
Thanks a lot Chuck. Was able to schedule payments for the next 2 years and looks like they are honoring it.
Same here; think mine are scheduled til 2022 though. Unfortunately, my ‘best’ mastercard at the moment is hsbc cash rewards (1.5% + 10% anniversary bonus = 1.65%) so not much benefit to me as it stands. Hoping theyll let me change payment method as I acquire new mastercards. Who knows, they might not honor these long term payments at all.
Wow, that’s awesome! I also scheduled my mortgage payment for next 2 years as well with my Barclays Arrival card. I really hope they honor it.
Enjoy it, fellow Canadians!!
Not working on Canadian payments to the CRA using a Canadian Mastercard. :/ Interesting though that CRA payments are treated differently from other vendors.
It’s dead.
did this deal just die? I was scheduling the 2nd payment and realized the fee is a full 2.5%.
Dang. Just finished watching GoT and jumped onto Plastiq website. 2.5% fee !!
Looks like the deal’s dead.
Is the deal expired? It now shows 2.5% for me. It was showing 1.5% in the afternoon.
Full 2.5% fee with Barclaycard Arrival and Citi AAdvantage Mastercards on my account. 🙁
Great! I didn’t see any info on Plastiq on this when logged in but when you schedule a payment you get the 1.5% fee on a MC. I pay my mortgage on Plastiq with my Paypal 2% MC, so the standard 2.5% fee cost me a few bucks. I just scheduled mortgage payments through December, all got the lower 1.5%, so I’ll make a few bucks. I didn’t reaffirm my mortgage in my 2010 BK7, thanks to my incompetent attorney, so I can’t use autodraft, I have to send them the payment by check or bill pay and I don’t do checks. It’s BMO Harris and they’re touchy on mortgages included in BK.
I used to pay alot more through Plastiq when I could use my Paypal Debit with Cashback MC for combined 3%, but now that’s gone just my mortgage.
Ok… don’t know why we needed your life story though lol
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Carry on DaveInAZ, I missed out on the deal but at least your musings made me chuckle.