Plastiq payments now show up on your credit card statement with the details of precisely what was paid, e.g. if you paid rent with Plastiq, it’ll show up on your credit card statement at ‘Plastiq – Rent’. This was for American Express, I’m unsure if it’s the same with other card issuers.
Reader Abey sent in an image from their recent AmEx transactions:
Rent should be a legitimate form of spend, but I suppose it would always be better if the precise nature of the payment was ambiguous so as not to give any customer service reps ideas. See our review of Plastiq here.
I used Plastiq IQ a couple of times and they are very suspect.
Can’t get a hold out them.
They delay payments without any notifications and you have to chase them via their chat before 5pm PT. (2pm ET!)
They never follow up when you have a request.
And don’t refund for their delayed payments if you have paid the expedited fee.
Quick correction: 5pm PT is 8pm ET
What is Plastiq, and what is it used for?
At the end of the article above is a link to “our review of plastic”. Did you go to that link and read it? That linked article should answer your questions.
I see it, and have read it. Thank you.
What is the difference between Plastiq and PayPal? They both charge a fee. Is one better than the other?
It depends what you’re paying for. Plastiq can pay ANYBODY by writing a check (including businesses that don’t accept credit cards, don’t accept PayPal, etc). I’ve not heard of PayPal being able to do that.
I use it once a year to pay by auto & rent insurance with AAA SoCal which otherwise only accepts bank payments and debit card payments. I plan credit card applications so that I’ll be using a MasterCard (Visa from most banks don’t work for many payments at Plastiq) where I’m earning 10x + on everything during the minimum purchase period at the time I have to make those payments once a year, so that makes it work out despite the fees.
If you have to use it with a card you already have (with no big earning bonus on EVERYTHING), it can indeed be tricky to justify the fees.
Thank you. How do I sign up, is there an App? I read, that there could be decent sign up offers or referral offers.
Sorry, I don’t know if there’s an app or not. I’ve always just used https://www.plastiq.com.
I’m not aware of signup or referral offers, but then I only use it once a year and I’ve been using it for just that one purpose for several years.
Everything I learned about it I learned in this discussion group on FlyerTalk:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/manufactured-spending/1885614-plastiq-rent-tuition-utilities-etc-2018-onwards.html
https://churning.rankt.com/referrals/plastiq/
@scottie we wrote about the signup offer details in the review as well
Not quite true, I’ve had certain plastiq payments cancelled as due to being personal payments.
Why do you want to infringe my privacy?? FUCK YOU Plastiq!!
That’s annoying what about personal privacy.
Pay with cash.
Plastiq was already doing merchant specific MCC coding.
If you want personal privacy, you shouldn’t be using a credit card.
As a data point, my mortgage payments on Plastiq are counted toward the Back of America Cash Rewards Online Shopping category, but my condo fee payments are not. The condo fee payments are (incorrectly) classified as a utility payment, which is one of the exclusions for that category.
What am I missing here? I thought you can’t pay your mortgage with visa.
My BoA Cash Rewards card is a MasterCard, not a Visa.
Do you have a MasterCard Cash Rewards card? I thought the mortgage option was not available for Visa cards, and that is what my Cash Rewards is. Or maybe your mortgage codes as something other than mortgage.
My Cash Rewards card is a MasterCard.
If you don’t know what I am talking about, you might need to educate yourself.
I have 3 personal and 3 business, and still consider that to be a cap. So maybe I need to educate myself since you have no theoretical limit to 5.25%. But either way, most people don’t have that much cap. It’s possible to be denied for more boa cards and many may not want to risk having that many due to shut down risk. I’m saying even if Sebastian had, let’s say one cash rewards and one premium rewards (like a normal consumer), he could be optimizing by putting the $2500 elsewhere and using the large cap of the premium rewards on rent. Maybe his 3-month totals exceed $2500. My mortgage certainly does. Your attack on him is unwarranted.
It makes no sense why you are defending a dumbass bragging about 0.65% when you know slightly better. Why are you giving this idiot the benefit of a doubt?
This is my scenario as well. Since I’m a Platinum Honors customers, my BofA Cash Rewards Visa Signature card is getting 5.25% on ONLINE purchases which is what Plastiq codes as… However, under Merchant Description, the transaction says “REAL ESTATE AGENTS AND MANAGER–RENTALS” and the transaction automatically categorizes to “Home & Utilities: Home Improvement” but the category is an editable field probably more for using BofA’s own budgeting software which I never mess with. The transaction title itself still says nothing other about what the payment was for.
Intriguingly, if I was to somehow able to process my Plastiq transaction in person at Plastiq’s HQ in SF, swiping the card physically, all those descriptors would stay the same, but it would NOT be an ONLINE purchase and I wouldn’t get the 5.25% cash back. So at the very least, if Amex or Chase or whoever makes Plastiq harder for us to leverage, maybe BofA will be the slow learner and we can jump on their bandwagon till they get wise too.
The $2500 quarterly cap is rough though since my rent for 1 month wiped out the whole category for the quarter. Thank goodness I have roommates to subsidize my rewards though!
I’ve been enjoying net 0.65% cash back on rent, condo fees, and other stuff like that for the last year using BoA Premium rewards w/ Platinum honors.. My best guess is that BoA counts plastiq in its entirety as a service for writing travelers checks? In any case, this change on plastiq’s end makes me think the gravy train might be stopping soon 🙁
Yeah, not a good sign. I’d bet the Over that Plastiq becomes a cash advance on Amex by the end of 2021.
LMAO you are so close to getting it but too dumb for this. You are using the wrong BofA card.
BofA Cash Rewards w/ Platinum Honors is 5.25% for online shopping, capped at $2500 each quarter
Unfortunately it’s less funny to read such impolite comments. Leave out the “but you …” and it would have been a rather helpful comment.
There has to be a minimum IQ test to post here and one of the questions should be can you get more than 0.69% Cashback when you pay rent.
For anyone curious, the answer is always yes.
Care to elaborate?
Of course not.
I have another way of getting 4.62% from mortgage payment with Plastiq. It is very involved process, needs a bank account in Caymans. Do you want me to elaborate? No.
See – this is not a helpful thing to do, troll.
Of course
Think how he’s getting 0.65% and then try and do better.
Derr okay what BOA card gives more than 3.5% on travel. You people need to be spoon fed everything.
First of all your statement, to make sense, should have read a minimum IQ or tested IQ, not a minimum IQ test. Secondly there should be a minimum EQ to post on here, and one of the questions should be do you act like a dick and make fun of others on a public forum? For anyone curious, the answer is always no.
> Make fun of others
The guy literally took the time to calculate that he was getting 0.65% and decided to brag about it on a public forum. OP’s dumbass deserves ridicule and did everything in his power to earn it. In fact he decided to put $100k+ into a bank account with BoffuckingA to earn the measly 0.65%.
brokerage accounts have had a pretty good ROI. You, Harry are a DB if you think the OP has $100k in cash sitting in a savings account.
It’s a pretty safe assumption that OP is a dumbass and did deposit $100k in cash since he did so much work for 0.65%. 0.65% is slightly better than what BofA pays with their Savings accounts.
You’re the dumbass, Harry
Amazing comeback there, P. I am guessing words are hard for you considering the single letter username.
Harry, just FYI, I am a BofA platinum member and my $100K+ is strictly in my brokerage. I have less than $2K in my savings. So, no, you don’t need $100K in a bank account to qualify. His calculation would only take seconds to do. Not sure why this is such a big deal? 99% of the people who comment here are polite and informative. I have no idea where you came from? Must be the Fox News comments section or Yahoo! Answers… please go back there to mingle with like-minded people.
> brag
Dude was just sharing his experience. If you think that is a brag, you’re reading too much into it. You must feel so insecure with yourself that you feel the need to ridicule him LOL
I have been enjoying net 0.00% cash back on my mortgage. I opened Merrill last year for BoA Platinum Honors and as of today my $100K investment has grown to $146K. If you ask nicely I can share with you the stock ticker.
It’s actually quite possible that Sebastian is optimizing here. Let’s just say that the cash rewards card’s $2500 can be utilized rather easily and efficiently (and maybe you just don’t know about it) whereas the premium rewards card cap is much larger. So it’s very possible that one could max out (even multiple) cash reward bonus spend and the next best option is utilize the premium rewards for whatever is leftover for rent. That’s actually what makes your comment so poor. It might actually be you that’s using the wrong boa card.
Do you just mean VGCs, or something else?
I cap my 5.25% at 2500 pretty consistently with no mfg spend. BoA cash rewards has an online category, Kickfurther also qualifies as online. Hitting $2500/quarter is actually so easy to do that paying rent with plastiq makes 0 sense to me.
One rent payment would max my quarterly spend, and I’d have to pay 2.5-3.0% for that ability. I’ll definitely reserve my cash rewards for where you can earn >$125/quarter without having to incur fees.
Bingo
Be nice Karen
How do you get a net 0.65% cashback?
Plastiq is 2.85% fee. The premium rewards gives 1.5% back with 75% Platinum Honors boost. So that’s 2.625% right? Which means an effective 0.225% fee.
I pay my rent via BOA Premium Rewards and somehow it counts as travel which means you are getting 2% + 1.75X2% = 3.5% so that’s how he gets 0.65% profit.
I didn’t realize this was getting coded as travel the whole time, I’ve been coming out further ahead than I realized.
Note, some people are paying 2.5% because before plastiq raised their fees you could pre-schedule payments and they’d grandfather you to their previous fee schedule.
Wouldn’t Cash Rewards be a better choice for rent?
Cash Rewards with “Online Shopping” selected should give 5.25% cash back assuming Plastic falls into one of the many MCCs that qualify as consumer spend and assuming, of course, that the transaction comes through as ‘card not present.’ I can’t say I’ve tested Plastic to know for sure whether it would work or not based on MCC, but my experience is that only government and very business-centric charges don’t qualify on the Cash Rewards.
How do you get Plastiq fees down to 2%?
Instead of worrying about you 0.65% profit, you should spend some time collecting the chromosomes you’re missing.
Well said
Chuck
Although you call others a dumb ass, but you are a dumb ass that you can’t even distinguish real Chuck from fake Chuck 😂
But how much wood would a wood Chuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck Wood?
delete me