Payment Services

[CostantinoA]

Hello everyone:

I know all of us enjoy getting perks and stuff when using our cards.  I found a few websites that offer for you to be able to use your credit card to pay bill when the merchant does not allow you to use credit.  Yes there is a fee with it and you have to look and make sure that you are going more value for rewards than the fee. 

My question is.  Lets say I use my Amex card to charge my car payment which is $903.15 per month.  I use one of these services.  Will this look bad with Amex that I am using one of these services instead of using cash/debit?  I don't want the CC company to look down on me becuase I am using these services.  It isn't that I do not have the money, it is I want to get more reward points and/or perks.

Thank you.

[K-in-Boston]

I've used Plastiq to pay preschool tuition in the past when the rewards outweighed the benefits and have paid taxes with other services. No problems at all.

[simplynoir]

The way I see it if they even have the smallest issue with it if you pay your bill every month those concerns blow away and they couldn't care less as a result.

[Anonymous]

Apart from obvious things like defaulting, the thing some issuers look out for is "perk/reward abuse", usually some form of manufactured spending where you are getting more rewards than you "deserve".

While in theory using these services might have some of that flavor (because the whole point of using the service is to get rewards from the issuer that you would not normally get!) it's not usually an issue because it's nearly always not a bonus category (such as 5x)  and unlike MS, not unlimited, it's your real money that your are spending.