What is Plastiq?

Plastiq is a service for online bill payments using debit cards and credit cards. Bill payment services typically focus on things like loans and rent/utilities payments. However, fortunately for us MS-ers, it is often possible to pay a “bill” directly to a financial institution (credit unions / banks) where we have our own account. This is useful when we have a Visa/Mastercard gift card that we would like to convert into cash (i.e. liquidation).

The two things to consider are 1.) finding a good biller and 2.) service fees. Fortunately, Plastiq is generous on both. Read on to see how I earn $440 per hour with this liquidation method.

Finding a credit union that works for you

Credit unions are usually limited to a certain location - typically a city or state. However, some Credit unions allow anyone to join regardless of location. For those in our Churner’s Lounge, members will be able to access an up-to-date list of location-specific and location-agnostic billers that we have already tested bill payments against.

If you want to find a credit union yourself, I suggest creating a dummy payment in Plastiq, and use terms like “Credit Union”, “Bank”, “CU”, “Federal” to generate a list of candidate billers. Then, go through each to see if they allow you to create an account with them, given your current location.

With some credit unions, they may allow you to join even if you are not in their location if you can pay a flat fee (typically $5) to join some type of membership/association.

Holy Grail Billers

Different billers behave differently on Plastiq. There are some “Holy Grail” billers that are auto-approved as soon as a payment is made. In other cases, it can take a few days for a bill payment to be approved. It may be that in those cases, there is some level of scrutiny that is placed on those payments. Hence, for scalability, I suggest you look for a “Holy Grail” biller. These automatically turn green as soon as the payment has been made, instead of being in the “Processing” state. We have a few such billers listed on our Churner’s Lounge.

Bill Payment fees

For most debit cards and billers, Plastiq will charge a 2.9% fee. However, there are some debit card BINs that will be charged a “Promotional” price of 1%. The promotional BINs change regularly.

As of June 2023, our favorite promo BIN is for U.S. Bank Visa Gift Cards (Card values up to $500), available for purchase at Kroger. These do come with a hefty $6.95 activation fee. However, if you can take advantage of the 9x Amex Gold promotion at Grocery stores, the benefits far outweighs the fees. With this promotion, I’m on track for 550K membership rewards points for this year.

Making your payments

Using Plastiq is straightforward. However, one word of caution - when using a new biller, start small before scaling up. I was too greedy initially, and tried sending a $500 bill using a brand new account on what I knew was a “holy grail” biller, and yet my payment was in a pending state for a few days until I got a follow-up email from a Plastiq associate asking for an itemized bill.

On attempt #2, I sent a $10 bill to the same biller from that same new account. This was in a pending state for a few days as well, but eventually automatically succeeded. My next bill was a $500 payment, which was immediately auto-approved.

I have no shutdown experience with Plastiq, but I avoid paying the same biller more than a few times each month, as this would be suspicious. However, by using several accounts, I’m able to scale up quite a bit.

Scaling up with Plastiq

Currently, I have 4 accounts with Plastiq:

Account #1: In P1’s name, P1’s Email, P1’s Real phone number
Account #2: In P1’s name, P1’2 Email w/ the Gmail Trick, Google Voice Phone number on P1’s account
Account #3, #4: In P2’s name, using the same tricks as above

I have 4 billers that I use across my 4 accounts. Each account sends a payment to each biller twice per month. This means I currently make 32 payments a month. I plan to maintain this cadence for a few more months, and scale up further if I don’t get shutdown.

Running the numbers

With any acquisition/liquidation play, we need to run the numbers to understand if a.) we are getting meaningful points earnings and b.) we are making good use of our time. Too often in this hobby we focus on the absolute point earnings, without thinking about time spent.

Calculating points earnings

With my current rewards play of Amex 9X points for grocery, each Plastiq payment liquidates a $500 VGC at 1% cost ($5). Hence, this method is running me at a liquidation rate of $16,000 per month with $160 in monthly cost. With my current Amex 9X bonus, I am earning 144K MR with this liquidation volume (~$2,880 monthly at 1cpp) which far outweighs the liquidation fees. We also must factor in the acquisition cost ($6.95 per $500 VGC), which is an additional $222.40. That brings the total points earnings from this play to $2,497.60 ($2,880-$160-$222.40).

Calculating hourly point earnings

I estimate that I spend 5 minutes per payment, so 2h40 per month on Plastiq liquidation. My acquisition play is about 3 hours for $16,000 in VGC. That comes out to $440 per hour ($2,497 earnings / (2h40 + 3h).

Gift Card Liquidation with Plastiq