Making mortgage payments with a CC for miles
 

Hello,

Has anyone explored ways to pay ones mortgage payment using a miles generating CC? Is there any way to charge it to a card as a purchase rather than a cash advance? I have a mortgage with Chase. Does having a Chase CC help in anyway?

oh probably not. That depends on the lender. For the most part not many accept this as payment simply because they dont want to pay the fees to visa, mastercard, etc. And trying to use a debit card that earns miles would be the same thing because they go through visa or MC as well. Since the fees are usually based on a percentage of the transaction and range from .25% to 5% depending on the vendor and volume, you are looking at any where from $20 to $250+ that the lender would have to pay for every mortgage payment. Ive been at car dealerships before where they told me the max I could down pay on a CC was $500 due to the fees they would incur. Its also illegal for the seller or payee to pass this fee along to you in the way of a "service fee" Recently my electric company tried to charge a credit card/debit card "service fee" for transactions. No sooner did they launch this program did it shut down! I wonder if you could send yourself a bill through paypal somehow then pay with the CC then transfer the money to your bank account then transfer it to the mortgage hmmmmm

And yet, here in SoCal, we can pay property taxes with a credit card and it's OK for them to pass this fee along to the payer. Of course, that's the government we're talking about and not a mortgage company or a car dealer.:rolleyes:

Slightly different
 

Same in Nor Cal. In our case, the fee is not charged by the tax authority. It's charged by a service provider who specifically provides the service of charging it to CC.

It is legal for a surcharge to be added to the cash price if a credit card is used AND if the extra cost is fully disclosed before the customer is committed to the purchase.

Doesn't matter if it is a government unit or not.

Don't know about the States, however, in the UK, Ryanair and others happily charge £4 extra per segment per pax for using any card besides a visa electron.

UK and Australia law forbids Visa/MC from not allowing transaction fees on the buyer side.

In the US it is not allowed by Visa/MC except with very very few merchants. IRS is the only merchant that I know of that has approval from CC companies.

Many, many government agencies that accept credit cards (or the merchants who accept credit cards on their behalf) charge a "convenience fee" for using a credit card. Some "regular" merchants do the same thing... a number of gas stations (ARCO being the most prominent around here) charge a lower price for cash than they do for credit; while this is not technically a surcharge for credit, it amounts to exactly the same thing.

A third party payment proccessor can charge this fee yes on all transactions. The reasons this law exists is because the credit card giants raised holy heck that they were being left out cold

and here is the reason in the US we have the credit card protection laws. It forbids this practice of charging fees because primarily of this exact scenario right here where a vendor could charge a fee for one type of card but not another type

You would have to check your specific rules but for the most part they will not accept a CC. IIRC this was to prevent wht happened in the 80s when people where using on credit card to pay another.

However one way to quickly rack up the miles is to pay your kids tuition bill with a miles earning cc.

Working for a private university I've seen parents pay a $36,000.00 bill in one shot with their Amex card.

With what sort of fee? That's always the sticking point on this type of transaction. You get all these miles, but the fees make them cost more than just buying whatever you were going to use the miles for in many cases.

PS- Welcome to FlyerTalk!!

Not sure if this is exactly what OP is asking but I used to be able to pay my mortgage with my debit/credit card - had both the functionality. Just bought a money order (others had done this as well). That gravy train ended when CO took away the ability to get miles with a debit transaction. Oh well.

sharmaintl,

You might be able to request checks from your credit card company in order to pay the mortgage. Keep in mind that for some credit cards, there's may be a separate credit limit and cash advance limit.

You'll have to ask your credit card company if they can send you a purchase check instead of a cash advance check. If you can get the purchase check then pay for the CC charge by your next due date and you're safe. In the event that the only option is the cash advance check then keep checking your online CC account to find out when the charge posts to your CC account. Be prepared to make an immediate online payment to your CC account in order to minimize the cash advance interest charged. Remember the benefit of this exercise is earning miles with the cash that you were going to pay the mortgage company which earns 0 miles.

I don't have a Chase CC so I don't know if they have the purchase check option. Ask the CSR for your CC for a purchase check. Has my reply helped at all?

You can still do that...they just call it a balance transfer now instead :p

If the only option is a cash advance check there is almost no chance that the cost of going that route is sufficiently low to justify the miles earned.