Plastiq is a miles and points “fan favorite.”
It allows you to make payments to companies that only take checks using your credit card. Plastiq (pronounced Plastic, not Plastique) charges your credit card, historically with a 2.5% fee, and then mails a check to the business.
Plastiq is best used for meeting minimum spends for new credit card bonus offers (i.e. spend $4,000 within 3 months for 60,000 bonus points), especially if you can hit most of the spend organically but need a bit extra.
Now, for payments made to Canada, the fee will rise to 2.85% starting May 8th, 2020.
In this article
The good news: It’s only Canada and CRA is not Impacted
For now, this only affects payments to Canada. From the Plastiq FAQ, payments made to the Canada Revenue Agency, Gordon Foods Service Canada, Fresh Start Foods Canada Ltd., JG Rive-Sud Fruits & Legumes Inc., Intercity Packers, Neptune Fresh Produce, and Aviva remain at a 2.5% transaction fee. Payments made to Mount Royal University, and MRU Child Care Centre remain at a 2.62% transaction fee.
US Payments are still 2.5%
There’s no change or hint of a change for US users paying US businesses. Plastiq indicates this is a result of interchange fee increases within Canada, so unless the landscape changes in the US in that regard, I would think it is likely to remain at 2.5%.
“Fee Free Dollars” Remain the Same (And How They Work Cross-Border)
Remember that you can refer friends and colleagues to Plastiq. When they make payments totaling $500, your referral will receive 500 FFDs and you’ll receive 1,000 FFDs.
A “fee free dollar” is just what it sounds. If you have 1,000 Fee Free Dollars (FFDs) in your account, you can make a payment of $1,000 with zero fee.
Interestingly, when you make a payment using FFDs, it is the same whether paying in US or Canadian dollars. The exchange rate right now is roughly $1.40 Canadian for a US dollar. But if you pay $1,000 Canadian dollars and want to use your Fee Free Dollars, it still “costs” 1,000 FFDs.
Interestingly, this is about a 15% increase in the fee so it still probably makes sense to save your FFDs for US payments as you “lose” that 40% in the exchange rate.
New to Plastiq?
I can refer you just as I spelled out above. Here’s my referral link.
Thoughts?
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.
