Using Your American Express Platinum To Pay Non Accepting Suppliers
In my experience a very larger portion of our suppliers DO NOT accept credit card payments, let alone for amounts well over a 100k......meet the middlemen.
As mentioned in the last post we intended to get more value from what we are already doing by using an AMEX charge card for almost all purchases, both personal and business, with one glaring question being raised.
Not all our suppliers will accept cards!
The solution is, what I like to call the middlemen. These are companies whose sole purpose is to allow you to use your charge or credit card for every purchase (and earn all the points you normally would) including the ATO (Australian Taxation Office). If you do a quick Google search you will come across a lot of these businesses that offer a plethora of tiered fees', additional perks and even discounts on some transactions. Finding the right provider is more down to personal choice as a lot of them have their fees with a fraction of each other, simply to be competitive in the market they serve, but I did come across a few that were way off.
Here in Australia, the major players are:
After a bit of back and forth and weighing up the pros & cons of each, I settled on RewardPay, with Sniip a very close second. My criteria for choosing was the following list (in order of importance)
Cost per transaction (RewardPay is 2.10% ex GST and before tax deduction, when the transaction is A$20k to < A$100k)
Has a desktop and/or web portal. (A must for the accounts department)
Australian based
Offers additional support and discounts for large transactions.
Other than the above not too much more is needed, and the whole process is relatively straightforward.
The process:
As we are only starting our journey of MR (Membership Rewards) points accrual, I will report back in 3-4 months and advise on how it all seems to be going. Keep in mind we are starting a nil MR Points, as Qantas has been the main rewards program I have personally been building (which has been great) and as a kicker, the AMEX MR points are convertible to Qantas points at a 2:1 ratio…….win-win-win.
If you feel you might want an AMEX to use in the ways discussed, use this referral link for a 200k AMEX point kicker and head start😉 :
LINK: Referral Link