Plastiq Eliminating Gift Cards As A Payment Option
I have talked about Plastiq a lot in the past few weeks. If you remember I used them to hit my World of Hyatt card 15K free night while sitting at home. I also threw out some ideas for hitting some big spend bonuses. But some bad news has come out today that will affect the people that use them the most. Visa and Mastercard gift cards will no longer be a payment option in 2020 on Plastiq.
What They Said
Here is what the email said:
As of January 1, 2020, Plastiq will no longer support payments made with personal prepaid debit cards. However, payments made with business prepaid debit cards and payroll cards will continue to be accepted.
After this date, all scheduled payments made with personal prepaid cards will be declined by Plastiq. Starting January 2020, you will be unable to add a personal prepaid debit card to a Plastiq account.
From now until January 1, 2020, a limit of $7,500 in total payments will be enforced on Plastiq accounts that continue to utilize this payment method. Once this limit is reached on your account, further payments using a personal prepaid debit card will be rejected.
This change does not impact any payments made with credit or debit cards on the Discover, Mastercard, Visa, and American Express networks.
What Does This Mean & Why Does It Matter
It was a well known “secret” that certain gift cards would code as debit cards and that offers a lower fee. If you could purchase these with little or no out of pocket cost or with a credit card that earned a bonus on them then it was a good way to rack up points.
It appears that this will no longer be possible and if you were sitting on some for this purpose you may want to use them before January 1st. Just remember to not go over the $7,500 threshold.
It will be important to wait for their targeted payment offers now where the fee drops to as low as 1%.
Final Thoughts
This has been a rough week with the American Airlines account freezes and shut down emails and now this.
Joe Cheung said it best, what’s next are they gonna kill baby Yoda on The Mandalorian on Friday? Don’t worry folks that won’t be possible since he is alive in the movies. However, it is Star Wars so they don’t always make sense…let’s just hope Joe didn’t just curse us some more 😂.
All joking aside this is a noticeable loss in the passive points earning department. If you had it properly set up you were able to rack up a nice chunk of points without doing much work with this play. It appears that 2019 is coming to a really bumpy end, hopefully 2020 doesn’t pick up where this year left off.
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[…] And the MS avenues (one of the only bright spots in this hobby) also continue to get hit! Another Devaluation – Plastiq Eliminating Gift Cards As A Payment Option. […]
The character referred to as “Baby Yoda” isnt actually Yoda and the Mandalorian show takes place after the Return of the Jedi where Yoda passes on. So Baby Yoda hasnt been in the movies and it is still very possible for me to be killed off. My nerd 2c
Haha thanks Luke – truly thought that was the real Yoda
If it happens we can all blame Joe.
Does this mean that the mastercard debit cards will no longer work come January 1? I do register my name and address before entering them in Plastiq.
The Mastercard Debit card associated with your Credit Union checking account will still work just fine. You can go back to sleep.
Yeah the prepaid cards will no longer work. Normal debit cards should still be fine.
What is a business Prepaid debit card and how is it different from a personal Prepaid debit card. ? And how is plastiq able to tell the difference?
No idea – not sure. Maybe something like a Sakura card etc?