A few days ago I wrote that payments made via Platiq with your Chase Ink Preferred credit card is no longer coding as 3x points. This was an extremely lucrative way to earn free money or purchase points for a ridiculously low rate, even with the fees that Plastiq charges. While it is unfortunate that this method is no longer working, I wanted to point out that there is still another option! For a few months now Plastiq has been offering an awesome promotion where you could pay up to a $250 bill through their system with no fee – you just need to use a MasterCard through the Masterpass payment option. While you’ll earn the standard points on your particular card for every day purchases, you will not have to worry about paying any fee at all – EARNING YOU FREE POINTS AND MILES! Sign up for Plastiq here.
What is Plastiq? Plastiq is an online bill payment site where you can use credit card to pay bills where you typically couldn’t use a credit card to pay direct. Ultimately, it is an awesome way to earn points and miles! These bills include rent, car loans, utilities, school tuition, taxes, mortgage, contractors, etc. If you take advantage of this promotion you’ll save on the 2.5% fee. And the best is you can actually pay your mortgage with this promotion since MasterCard allows you to pay your mortgage through Plastiq (while Amex and Visa do not allow you to pay your mortgage through Plastiq). This promotion goes through September 30, 2018 and you are able to make as many $250 fee free payments as possible! Here are the details of this promotion.
Some things to note:
- You can make as many payments as you want and take advantage of the fee free payments
- You must have already made $500 in payments to be eligible for this offer. So if you are new to Plastiq you’ll need to make a $500 payment first (and pay the fee) and you can then take advantage of this promotion. This initial fee will only be $12.50 which is well worth it to then take advantage of this offer!
- You cannot pay friends and family via Plastiq, you actually must be paying some sort of bill. Plastiq will many times ask for proof of a bill.
Using Masterpass with Plastiq
After you enter your payee information and the amount you want to pay (no more then $250), you are able to select an existing credit card or add a new credit card. Add a new credit card and click on the “More Ways to Add†button.  
You can then select the Masterpass option.
Sign into your Masterpass account (or create a new account) and add your MasterCard information. Select your MasterCard as your form of payment and you’ll see that your fee has dropped to $0.
Since this is limited to just MasterCard’s, pick the MasterCard that provides you with the most value – whether it be points or cash back. I only have two MasterCards – JetBlue and IHG. JetBlue points are worth way more then IHG points so I personally used my JetBlue credit card.
My Experience with Plastiq Overall
I’ve been using Plastiq for over a year now to pay anything from preschool tuition, my mortgage (I can no longer use a Chase or Amex card), my accountant, contractors, etc. There were times last year when I used my Southwest credit card so I could earn points for the Southwest Companion Pass, but no I’ve exclusively been using my JetBlue card until the promotion is over.
I have personally never had any issues with bills not being sent/received, but I always suggest keeping a close eye on it to ensure payment is received. I find Plastiq to be extremely easy to use, especially for a merchant that is already saved to your account. Typically bills take about a week to be received by the merchant.
New to Plastiq?
Now, if you are new to Plastiq there is a referral program where you can earn FFDs (Fee Free Dollars) towards your payments. After your first payment(s) totaling $500 or more, you’ll earn $500 in FFDs. That means on your next $500 in payments you will not pay a fee at all! You can actually hold onto this credit and wait until the MasterCard promotion is over to use it (and you can actually use it with any credit card you want). You must sign up for Plastiq through a referral and then you can go ahead and use your referral link to get friends/family members to sign up. This is my referral link, thank you in advance for using my link.
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If someone wanted to pay off a car loan of ~$12,000, could they make 48 daily payments of $250 with Masterpass to avoid paying fees? Asking for a friend.
@Nathan – Haha! You can tell your friend that I’ve made multiple payments for a single bill, but not 48! Although I do not see any restrictions on the number of payments you can make, so I do not see any reason it wouldn’t work, but I am not sure.
For bills over $250 have you had experience splitting them up into smaller amounts and sending multiple through Plastiq? Does that work ok?
@Albert – I’ve had a few bills where I’ve sent multiple payments.
Can you make partial mortgage payments under this option?
@Fokat – If your mortgage company will allow partial payments then yes.