If you have an Amex business card, you’ve probably received an email from Amex with the headline: “Introducing a new Card benefit to make paying bills easier.”
And, if you’re into points and miles, you may have taken particular note that they’re advertising the ability to use your Amex card to pay suppliers with no fee. And, they explicitly state that you earn rewards when you do so.
Have we just found the ultimate no-fee perpetual point machine? Can we pay a vendor (read: friend or relative) with our Amex business card and earn rewards for free?
Unfortunately, no.
I did some digging, and found:
- Yes, the service is fee free when you pay vendors with your Amex card.
- Yes, you do earn rewards on this spend.
So, what’s not to like? It’s the way it works.
The Catch
The process Amex Vendor Pay uses to let you pay people by credit card is that it creates a single use credit card number for each payment, and emails that number to the person or company you want to pay. The vendor, therefore needs to be able to accept credit card payments for this to work. To do so, they have to pay the credit card transaction fee.
Ultimately, the process isn’t really fee-free. It’s just that the person or company receiving the payment must pay the credit card processing fee.
Conclusion
Amex Vendor Pay might be a useful service for real business needs. I don’t know — I didn’t evaluate it for that purpose. But I do know that this is not the great manufactured spending technique that I had hoped.
This has been a public service announcement designed to prevent manufactured spenders from wasting time with this new service. You’re welcome.
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Thanks, Greg. I thought I should google before spending time to test it. You answered my questions.
This post was 8 months ago so don’t know if there will be any response. Got a targeted email yesterday 12/24/19 “Business Platinum Card® Members get up to a $200 statement credit to try Vendor Pay Advanced”. Did some digging and Advanced costs $59 per month. So this might be a moneymaker $200-$59 ?
I’d guess that they’ll only reimburse the amount you actually pay for Vendor Pay Advanced. If so, you’ll get reimbursed $59 per month until your $200 runs out.
In regards to the transaction fee Gregg, wouldn’t this be the same for all credit cards used…VISA, AMEX, Citi etc? If the statement,
Another important question. If I can’t use AMEX to pay my supplier because they don’t accept AMEX, will Vendor Pay be the work around?
Transaction fees vary by credit card type. No, this is not a work around. If they can’t accept Amex, they won’t be able to accept it via Vendor Pay
If I sign up for Vendor Pay using bill.com their basic plan allows for checks to be sent to the vendor for two dollars processing fee. It does not suggest that this check requires the vendor to except a 2 1/2% expenses such as a credit card? For high ticket items such as rent and large vendor payments, it seems like this would make sense. Do you have any thoughts on this? Am I missing something?
You can do that, but the funds won’t come from your credit card and you won’t earn any points.
Anyone know what the fees are to accept this type of payment? When you log into vendor pay names of indivuals come up when searching vendors. If I had an advertising business someone could pay with an Amex Business Gold at 4x… may be great for things like min spend in a pinch? Even if fees are around 2.5%
Fees vary depending upon which payment processor you sign up with. In most cases they don’t allow paying yourself so you’re likely to get your payment processing account shut down if you pay yourself often.
I’m totally confused by the comments thus far. What the heck is anyone talking about!?
Thebebfit in question is not worth the mention
Go find out and tell us it’s Monsoon time on Waikiki beach and the satellite disk is out .
CHEERs
Nothing to do with this post, but the new BoardingArea flag at the bottom of the screen on a mobile device is annoying. Can you ask them to change that?
So what about paying rent or something similar? How would that work
Your landlord etc wouldn’t want to pay the fee so will probably ask you to pay the difference. And if they’re already accepting credit cards, this makes no difference as you can just straight up pay. Its a non-perk “fake news”
Lots of rental places take CC’s , me and my girl friend did this to get many 1/2 price cruises and 30% cash off my GM truck .I saw the sign on the wall 5 years later did it . No FEEs to bad we didn’t do it FIVE years before Huge Lost for us not them..
CHEERs
Another way for the Banks to make money while trying to Help the People..
CHEERs
apart from the transaction fee , what abt the tax the friend needs to pay. This is a joke topic
There is no tax liability if the friend processes a $10k transaction and then writes you a refund check for the full amount.
but doesnt he needs to report it?
Ever since the death of Bluebird the Fascists have been in control of auxiliary cards at AMEX……………let the buyer beware!
So.. you can access your credit card credit limit.. with a credit card? How revolutionary.
Seriously, this just sounds like the temporary card number service from BofA or Citi.