How to Get Your Plastiq Bill Payment Fee Waived

Sign up for a free Plastiq account here

If you’re a small business owner, you may find that the convenience of using Plastiq is worth the price all on its own. However, if you’re a rewards junkie, you should keep in mind that there’s a cost to the rewards you earn by using the bill-payment service to pay your rent or other bills. In that case, there are a few sound reasons why points and miles enthusiasts would use the service:

• You need to boost spending to earn a sign-up bonus.
• You need to boost spending to hit an annual bonus.
• Plastiq is offering a promotion that reduces or waives its 2.5% fee on credit card transactions.

But there is a way to get your fee for using Plastiq waived in part or in full: Get your friends, family or business contacts to sign up and use the online payment service.

For each person you get to register and complete payments worth at least $500, you'll get 1,000 so-called Fee-Free Dollars (or FFDs), while your contact will receive 500 FFDs. The offer is valid for first-time users only.

You'll have to do this by sending your contacts a referral code. Sign in to your account, go to your "Rewards & Referrals" section from the pull-down menu on the top right-hand portion of the Plastiq website and click "Refer Friends, Pay Less Fees."

You can send your code to individual email accounts, look up email contacts or post the code via social media channels.

Once your friend or contact signs up using your referral code and makes payments totally $500, your Plastiq account (and your friend's) will be credited within two business days.

Making Payments Using FFDs

Once you have FFDs in your account, you can apply them to one-time or recurring payments. On the final review screen prior to payment submission, click the link that mentions FFDs. That will automatically apply to your payment, whether or not you have enough FFDs to cover your entire payment.

Here's how it works:

• If you have a $1,000 payment and 1,000 FFDs, your total fee for the transaction will be $0.
• If you have a $1,000 payment and 500 FFDs, your fee will be based on the half of the payment you aren't able to cover with FFDs. In this case, your fee would $500 x 2.5% = $12.50 for an effective fee on your full payment of 1.25%.

In both cases, the rewards you earn will probably be greater than Plastiq's fee, especially if you use a credit card like the Chase Freedom Unlimited or The Platinum Card® from American Express, both of which have high points values, according to TPG's latest valuations.

One important thing to keep in mind: You need to use FFDs quickly or they will expire. If you don't earn or use them for 90 consecutive days, Plastiq says your balance will be set to 0. Earning or using any points will reset the clock to 90 days.

Feature photo by Bench Accounting via Unsplash.