Introduction
If you’re an MS’er (casual and semi hard core,) then you should have been hitting that Plastiq promo. If you’re a hard core MS’er with a friendly Walmart, then you probably didn’t care. If you live in an MS wasteland like NY or SF, then you should have cared even if you didn’t. Here are some lessons learned from that promo:
- You never got started with Plastiq? I opened an account back in August of 2015 due to a fee-free promo back then. Now if you were around at the time, then you should have had an account that was seasoned and wouldn’t have had any issues this time around. If you are newer to the game, you should have asked yourself how you could have made this a play and gotten in. The lesson learned here is that when you hear of new cards or services that even remotely look intriguing, just open an account and figure it out later.
- Hit it harder – it was clear that when they dropped the $500 payments down to $250, I’m sure Masterpass was seeing the burn and told them to throttle folks. Surprisingly, they didn’t shut it down even before the 9/31 deadline. This was one of those deals that it behooved you to hit it hard and hit it early. You would have been slaughtered with the hogs anyway. Plus it wasn’t THAT sensitive of a deal that being a hog would have killed the deal early.
- I was initially being lazy and was only running my cc through it and caused my Citi accounts to be shut down. Looking back, that was foolish because I did way more volume using Mastercard gift cards than I did with my Citi cc. The lesson learned here was that I should have strategized the best way to hit the deal from the beginning. Earning 2% net with risk wasn’t as good as say using a less-risky high grocery spend card.
- Buy a card reader. You noticed that you couldn’t copy and paste card numbers into Masterpass, but you could have swiped in the card numbers. A card reader also helps with reading gift card numbers into a spreadsheet too.
- Learn scripting to hep you automate things. Give Kantu a trial run. It’s like recording an Excel macro.
This was definitely the MS deal of the year, so be prepared next time.
I missed it, I’m trying to figure out a theoretically maximum from this deal, assuming it went on from 6/1-9/30 (ignore the 500 downgrade to 250), ~120 days, 1 plastiq account, 1 tran of 250 per day, math is 250*120 = 30,000 free spend? variable is can you do multi-tran per day, and how many plastiq account do you have. Am i in the ballpark?
Who said it was 1 per day?
Then it begs the ? What was the limit?
limit was $250 per bill
what bills are you guys paying? I put in weekly 250 pmts to mortgage and car but are you pying neighbors or friends? Or just really pying mortgage down like 250 daily??
Thx
Yeah, as a casual MS’er with a friendly WM, I’ve never taken much note of Plastiq and I ignored the MP promo. What I’ve learned, right or wrong, from my own experience is that I don’t even bother to mess with Mastercard GCs. If it’s not VGC, I just move on. This may be a mistake, but then, I did say “casual” MSer.
MS deal of the year? You must be having a shitty year lol
okay stud, what was the MS deal of the year then?
From a scalable stand point I can’t say it was great/awesome deal of the year especially if you had other resources. MS deal of the year maybe for those who had no other avenues to liquidate. Cheers!
How is virtually limitless MS at absolutely zero liquidation cost NOT considered to be an amazing deal, in your opinion?
First of all you could only use this promotion for mortgages and what not which NOT everyone has. Secondly, you had to “chip” away $250 at a time. That is all I will say without going into further detail of being “scalable.” Cheers!
Didn’t I preface all this in the first sentence? If you’re running big numbers locally, then you wouldn’t care about this deal.
Hey I was agreeing with you. My replies were only towards Tom and shar.
Your first statement is simply factually incorrect, and regarding your second statement about “chipping away”, who cares? It’s $0 fee MS, you should be going ham!
Explain my incorrectness then please sir I’m not trying to fight you here….geez
I’m puzzled, this is a no cost MS avenue how, you still have to pay a legit “payee” such as your mortgage company no? It’s not like u can request a refund check from your mortgage pymt…
Yep… Newer to MS, but put months and months of mortgage payments and other spending… Helped me to achieve some of my AA Exec Platinum status goals. Citi and Barclaycard didn’t flinch with all my $250 charges.
there’s only thirty days in September, 9/31 does not exist.
Be nice. 😉
fake news!