This play lasted a lot longer than I had expected. I think most people knew about Paypal Bill Pay; it wasn’t a unicorn or anything. We could see the cracks start to form back in November when AMEX was removed. Then shockingly it came back but then died again a few weeks later. Then in early March, Paypal removed just about all credit cards from new accounts, but it still worked if you had them saved on your account. Then a few weeks ago, there was a one day glitch where you could only pay if you had an iOS phone. However, on May 30th, existing payees were removed. There’s very little to no chance this comes back, so yes, it’s a RIP. I’m pretty sure it was Paypal eating most of the interchange fees and their stock hasn’t been doing great.
What was the significance of the ability to pay your credit card bills with Paypal? Well if you had a certain fintech debit card, you’d earn 1.85% on the payment. So if you had a BOA card with Plat Honors earning you 2.625% on the charge, you’d earn another 1.85% on the payment, for a total unbonused spend cashback of close to 4.5%. Back when Discover was still on there, it was 3% (first year) + 1.85%. Amex was a gold mine with bonused blooze spend + PPBP.
Oh well, another deal bites the dust. On to the next one…
Wish I had found out about this one sooner! I know deals like this can’t really be posted about publicly when they’re still active, but where could I learn about things like this before they’re dead?