Anyone have opinions about charging your loan (mortgage/auto/student) payment using chargesmart.com? I am looking for an MC or Discover card that will earn rewards at 3x or more per dollar spent for a generic category. Even at 3x, the rewards appear to be expensive due to the website charging 2.29% plus $5 transaction fee.

Their blog mentions they are working to add AMEX. If AMEX was added to their network, what card would earn 3x or more rewards for this type of purchase?

Thoughts? Feelings? Please share your experiences with this website. Thanks in advance.

it seems like this could be combined with churning AA cards and still be beneficial. Or signing up for new citi cards that give $100 in gift cards.

Definite possibilities here. Thanks OP! ^

You can even pay an insane amount (over your regular mortgage) and ask Citi to credit your extra payment to escrow only. Pay this extra amount just before the year ends, and Citi will send you back any excess escrow in the first Q of the year (at least thats how my mortgage works with Citi) in the form of a cheque. You can wash a lot of money this way. Of course, this is all predicated on the assumption that this charge on the credit card is considered a purchase (and not a cash advance) and it is considered an "everyday" purchase to earn 5 points on the Citi Amex or 2 points on PPE and match that with flight points to get 4 points.

As many have recommended here, lower your cash advance limit to zero before trying a charge like this. (I tend to drop mine to zero the moment I activate a new card.)

Is there a way to earn a sufficient amount of MR points via buying prepaid cards or other alternatives to make using sites like chargesmart or williampaid, etc... which would either cause you to break even or make a smart profit to compensate for the loss of around 2% or more which is being charged to process the payment?

Buying prepaid cards can be considered "Quasi" cash advances and could be subject to additional F/C. Also could be a "red flag" leading to a F/R.

The November 23, 2010 frugaltravelguy.com entry at http://frugaltravelguy.blogspot.com/...umbs-site.html implies that there may be an unusually good discount available for business gift cards via bigcrumbs.com, but I haven't figured it out yet.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...purchases.html

I understood the point of the frugaltravelguy.com article. I meant I haven't figured out the details yet, such as how to get the $2-3k business gift cards at enough of a discount to pay for shipping and activation. bigcrumbs lists a 2.4% discount (+0.3% referral) from giftcards.com, which sells personal cards worth up to $500, but their business gift cards were apparently spun off to a separate company, wrl.com.

The thread linked in my previous reply seems to be the primary place where this topic is currently under discussion on Flyertalk. I think you are more likely to find the information you need there.

Thank you, mia, for the pointer. I overlooked the fact that your first message was a link to another thread. I had looked through that thread before, but now I have read it in its entirety and agree that the frugaltravelguy article was probably about the AmEx gift card rebates opportunity discussed in that thread.

1. bigcrumbs appears to offer a profitable giftcards.com rebate: a 2.4% rebate on $500 card fees are $4.95 activation + $0.44 US mail shipping, so you make 1.322%. This is important to the topic of this thread because the gift cards are Visa or MasterCard and chargesmart.com does not yet accept American Express (but their customer support says they are actively working on it).

2. I recently called chargesmart.com and was told that they now no longer authorize car payments above $1,500/month, even if you call on the phone. Also, you are not allowed to do payments on certain account numbers for some car loans from at least one car loan company that they list. I am not sure the reason, but customer service made clear it is not a software problem but a real business issue (maybe loans from certain states, intermediated by certain financial institutions, who knows).

3. williampaid started accepting American Express a couple of weeks ago. Also message #151 at http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...online-11.html indicates that an updated promotion for FlyerTalkers from WilliamPaid may be forthcoming.

[Edit 12/3/2010: I hasten to hasten to add a warning that I have not completed a purchase from any of these vendors yet.]

[Edit 12/3/2010: Changed "almost 1.4%" to "1.322%" for giftcards.com. Sorry for the bad math! Also specified US mail shipping.]

After you enter your credit card information, around step 4, chargesmart will sometimes add a "large payment security fee" in addition to the fee quoted when you enter you account number and the amount you want to pay at step 1. At that point, you can navigate back to previous steps using the "back" button without losing the information you have entered, so you can experiment with what happens to this additional fee if you were to pay different amounts.

I want to report some non-linearity in the large payment fee, so those of you considering using charge smart can know to try a do a binary search to see where your "large payment security fee" drops off. For example, here is some data for Pacific Gas and Electric when used with a Citi AA personal Visa (not a gift card), for which chargesmart charges a flat $7.95 per transaction plus the following "large payment security fee" depending on how much you want to pay (a 2.29% slope between $1000 and $2000).

$347.16 --> $0
$347.17 --> $4.95
$347.18 --> $4.95
$347.20 --> $4.95
$347.21 --> $4.95
$347.23 --> $4.95
$347.25 --> $4.95
$347.50 --> $4.96
$348 --> $4.97
$349 --> $4.99
$350 --> $5.01
$400 --> $6.16
$500 --> $8.45
$1000 --> $19.90
$2000 --> $42.80

Assuming that the "large payment security fee" is not a "bait and switch" sales tactic, then I guess the fee must somehow be dependent on information entered after step 1, such as the type of credit card being used. So, conceivably, you might be charged different numbers if you were to use a another brand of credit card such as MasterCard or Discover, or a debit card or a gift card.

The large payment security fee appears to simply be a ploy to work around the fact that VISA's rules only permit flat fee convenience charges (with an exception for tax payments).

See this document:

http://usa.visa.com/download/merchan...tions-main.pdf

...and search for rule: 5.2.E

As I read the rule they wouldn't be permitted to charge any fee: The requirement for an alternate payment channel means that Mail/Telephone Order and Electronic Commerce Merchants whose payment channels are exclusively non-face-to-face may not impose a Convenience Fee., but that's probably been discussed elsewhere.