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What is Plastiq?
For those unfamiliar with Plastiq, it’s a service by which you can pay a bill with a credit card for a 2.5% fee (sometimes 
less – there was just a promo to pay three bills with a 1.5% fee).
It’s often and primarily used in our world either to 1) meet minimum spend on a new card organically (i.e. rent is your biggest expense but they don’t take cards), or 2) when you have a card that earns more than the fee. For a long time Chase Ink Business Preferred cards earned 3x which was a net gain on each purchase, but no longer.
New Plastiq Payment Types for Personal Visa Cards
For those that are familiar with Plastiq, you know that for quite some time, there has been a block on using personal Visa cards as they would post as a cash advance rather than a purchase. Mastercards were fine, as were Business Visa cards.
According to an email from Plastiq yesterday,
All Visa personal cards on Plastiq are now unblocked in the following payment categories:
- Residential Rent & HOA Fees
- Commercial Rent
- Taxes & Government Fees
- Utilities (Electricity, Cable, Internet, Telecom)
- Tuition (including daycare and camp)
They go on to say:
“The change is a part of a new processing program with Visa. The above five categories of payments will process in their respective MCC’s as standard purchases.
Under this new processing program, Visa personal card payments in these above categories should be treated with full rewards (if applicable) and not subject to cash advance. However, purchase and reward treatment is ultimately up to the card issuer.
There are no changes to how we treat Visa business card payments, Canadian payments, nor Visa personal card payments in other categories.”
Of course, most of the above are actually bonus categories for any card I can think of, but I’d be very curious if these do indeed post with the MCCs indicated and if Utilities is a blanket term or might Cable/Internet/Telecom post as MCCs – since those do have associated bonus categories with quite a few cards.
If you try it, let me know, though my suspicion is that angle will be a bust.
If you missed it, I also have a post showing exactly which cards can pay which kinds of bills with Plastiq.
Don’t have a Plastiq account? You can sign up using my referral here.
Do You Use Plastiq?
Let me know here, on Twitter, or in the private MilesTalk Facebook group.
You can find credit cards that best match your spending habits and bonus categories at Your Best Credit Cards.
New to all of this? My “introduction to miles and points” book, MilesTalk: Live Your Wildest Travel Dreams Using Miles and Points is available on Amazon and at major booksellers.
