Lower Plastiq Fees With Drop + 5,000 Drop Points for Out and Out Readers! 💸

Spencer from Straight to the Points is back to talk about a new Plastiq promotion… and an exclusive offer for Out and Out readers to earn 5,000 points with Drop! 

Update 9/25/17: The Plastiq offer from Drop may possibly be targeted. We are checking to see what we can do. If anything, you still get $5 just for downloading the Drop app with promotion code “outandout“!

Save on Plastiq Fees (Plus a Special Offer from Drop for Out and Out Readers)

A few months ago, Drop launched in the US to much fanfare in the miles and points world as the hot new shopping portal. You just needed to attach your credit or debit card (or cards) and shop as usual.

drop plastiq promotion

You can easily earn and redeem Drop points at lots of merchants

Redeem the points you earn for merchant gift cards like Hotels.com, Amazon, American Airlines, and Starbucks to help offset future expenses.

The launch was rough.  But Drop is starting to get a handle on the US market. Shortly after launching, they limited the number of points you could earn with their ongoing offers to 5,000 points per week. That definitely put the brakes on some people, but there are still one-time offers to help boost your rebates!

That brings us to today.

A New Drop Plastiq Promotion!

Drop just added an awesome ongoing offer with Plastiq that runs through December 31st, 2017. You can already earn points paying your rent, mortgage, utilities, etc. with Plastiq – and now you can get a small rebate thanks to Drop.

Harlan has written extensively about how to use Plastiq to earn maximum points on your bills, so I won’t rehash it all here.  But let’s take a quick look at some of the key points to remember:

  • Plastiq cuts a check on your behalf (although electronic payments are available for several payees)
  • 2.5% processing fee (unless there is a promo)
  • Schedule payments early so your check arrives on time
  • Make sure the points you earn will outweigh the processing fee
  • Often best for hitting minimum spends

Remember: If you sign up for Plastiq with a referral, you’ll receive 500 fee-free dollars after you spend $500 via Plastiq.

Now, what does this Drop promo have to offer?!

a screenshot of a cellphone

Harlan almost has enough for a $10 reward with literally zero effort beyond downloading the app and adding his banks

For every $100 you spend through Plastiq, you will earn 200 Drop points. This means that, if you spend $1,000 on your rent or mortgage (or other bills) each month, you will earn 2,000 Drop points.  2,000 Drop points are worth $2.  So this isn’t an earth-shattering deal. But it’s an insanely easy way to get a few bucks back through the end of the year – and helps offset some of Plastiq’s processing fees.

The Plastiq offer is listed as an ongoing offer so I expect that they will cap the points you can earn at 5,000 per week. For people like Harlan, who have Airbnb properties, that might restrict the potential, but it’s still an easy way to earn a small rebate!

Special Drop Offer for Out and Out Readers: 5,000-Point Sign-Up Bonus!

Through the end of September (that’s 8 days!), Drop has increased the sign up bonus for Out and Out readers from 1,000 to 5,000 Drop points. That’s enough to redeem for a $5 Starbucks gift card!

a screenshot of a phone

Get $5 for downloading an app – and no waitlist for you!

To sign up, just download the app on your Android or Apple device. You will earn the 5,000 bonus points by using the referral code “outandout” once you link one of your accounts to Drop.

Once you’ve set up your account, choose your 5 ongoing offers from retailers including Starbucks, Uber, Walmart, Chipotle, Whole Foods, Shell, and more. At this time, you can NOT change your ongoing offer choices once a selection has been made, so choose wisely!

a screen shot of a cell phone

Sign up ASAP to get the best earning rates!

Another reason for signing up now is that the rebate rates for some of the ongoing offers will be decreased for those who join after October 9th, 2017. If you sign up before October, you’ll be grandfathered in at the old (better) rates AND receive the increased sign-up bonus of 5,000 Drop points.

Combine Promos to Pay a Mortgage?

Drop says this offer won’t combine with other promos, but that won’t restrict you from using the current reduced fee promo that Plastiq is running for mortgage payments made with a MasterCard.  They’ll drop the processing fee to as little as 1.5% after a rebate if you schedule 3 mortgage payments and pay with a MasterCard. This promotion also runs through the end of the year.

a patio with a fire pit and a wicker chair

Plastiq has lower fees when you schedule mortgage payments with a MasterCard right now

When this promo and the Drop promo combine, you can take your ability to earn points to the next level.

With the Citi Access More card continuing to earn 3X points per dollar on rent and mortgage payments, this is a great opportunity to earn Citi ThankYou Points. When paired with the Citi Prestige or Citi ThankYou Premier card, these points can be transferred to any of Citi’s 15 airline transfer partners to book some fun flights.

Or, you can earn 2X Membership Rewards with the Blue Business Plus from American Express.

Finally, if you’re working on a minimum spend to earn a sign-up bonus, this could be huge for you. Harlan has big plans for his new Chase British Airways Visa and Plastiq is going to help him earn that 100,000 Avios points sign-up bonus. That comes out to 6X Avios per dollar!

Maximizing Your Drop Points

This is all great but what can Drop points actually do for you? Well, this is my favorite part.

For the coffee addicts out there, you can redeem 5,000 Drop points for a $5 Starbucks gift card. If you earn a ton of Drop points – 100,000 points to be exact – you can redeem them for a $100 American Airlines gift card.

If you’d like to book a paid hotel stay, you can redeem 50,000 Drop points on a $50 Hotels.com gift card.

However, my favorite way to use Drop points for travel has to be redeeming them for Amazon gift cards. You might be wondering how exactly Amazon gift cards can help you offset some travel costs. Well, stick with me, this gets better…

Here’s how it works:

  1. Redeem 10,000 Drop points for $10 Amazon gift cards
  2. Do this 5 times and you’ll have $50 Amazon credit to load to your account
  3. Visit JetBlue’s Amazon Shop and Earn page so you can earn 3X True Blue points per dollar on your Amazon purchases
  4. Sign into your TrueBlue account
  5. Click “Shop and Earn” to be redirected to Amazon
  6. Purchase a Southwest Airlines $50 gift card (or any other gift card!)
a screenshot of a gift card

You can buy tons of gift cards on Amazon… and earn JetBlue points for it, too!

By stacking Drop rewards and the JetBlue Amazon shopping portal option, you can take your 50,000 Drop points and turn them into $50 of credit to Southwest Airlines for your next domestic trip (or positioning flight before a fun international journey) and get 150 True Blue points toward your next JetBlue redemption.

If you aren’t already earning 3X True Blue points when shopping at Amazon, start doing so now! This can get you tons of points and is especially useful if you have one of the three co-branded JetBlue credit cards issued by Barclaycard. If you live near an airport served by JetBlue, these True Blue points could be especially useful. 

Bottom line

  • Link: Sign up for Plastiq (you’ll receive 500 fee-free dollars after you spend $500 via Plastiq)

Earning points so you can take fantastic trips across the country and around the world is fun. What makes it even more fun is when we can lower the cost of earning those points.

Is the Drop promo going to be the craziest deal of the year? No, of course not – and that’s OK. It’s still a fun way to offset your Plastiq fees and help you earn a few JetBlue True Blue points and chip away at the cost of a Southwest flight or two… or three.

Get 5,000 Drop points (worth $5) when you download the app for Android or Apple and use promotion code “outandout” through September 30th, 2017!

Let us know in the comments if you take advantage of this deal. We’d love to hear everyone’s experience combining the current MasterCard promotion with the Drop offer!

About Spencer

Spencer Howard is the founder of Straight to the Points where he cuts through the noise to help busy professionals travel the world on miles and points.

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About Harlan

Just a dude living in Memphis, traveling, and working toward financial independence.

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  1. Hi I don’t see Plastiq is offered when I signed up to Drop using your referral code. I only see Birchbox, Nike, and Amazon. Perhaps you can be more clear on how to link Drop with Plastiq? You spent a great deal explaining Drop and Plastiq but pretty thin on how to link both of them together. Thanks!

    • Agreed that this isn’t clear at all here. From what I gather from elsewhere, this is a targeted promo that may appear in your Drop app under Offers. No sign of it for me.

      • Hey Carl and Moose! In the Drop app, it should be listed under the “Offers” tab under “Ongoing Offers.” Let me know if you’re able to find it as I don’t think this is targeted.

        • My ongoing offers are: McDonald’s, Target, Trader Joe’s, Uber, Walmart. New Offer: Amazon, Nike, Birchbox, Giftagram. I did not see Plastiq anywhere. Perhaps it is a targeted offer? Can you contact Drop to add Plastiq to people who signed up using your promotional code?

          • I’ll let Spencer know – he’s the one who set it all up. I didn’t think the Plastiq offer was targeted. Could you activate a few of the “New Offers” and see if the Plastiq one appears down the line? It might be the app can’t display them all at once.

            Sorry you’re having trouble! Did the $5 bonus post fine otherwise?

          • I got the 5000 bonus points using your promotional code. I activated 2 new offers but no new ones came up. I hope Spencer can add it as the whole reason I’m doing this is to use Plastiq.

            Thanks anyway as your posts has always been good and informative!

          • Hey Moose – I hadn’t seen anyone not get the Plastiq offer when I wrote this. Drop did not mention it being targeted nor have ongoing offers been targeted previously – I realize this is a special offer with an end date, but once added it is included with ongoing offers.

          • Hi Spencer I just don’t see the Plastiq offer. Can other readers chime in? Perhaps you can post some screen shots as it is not showing up under new offer, one-time offers, and ongoing offers.

            In my account I see:
            Ongoing Offers: McDonald’s, Target, Trader Joe’s, Uber, Walmart
            One time offers: Nike, Giftagram, Birchbox
            New Offer: Amazon

          • Drop said to email them – they can add the offer directly to your account if you can’t see it. Shoot them a quick email and see if they can set it up for you! You can do it directly in the app. Hope that helps!

        • Sorry, just seeing this now as BA has stopped notifying me of any activity on threads (new or old) to which I’ve subscribed (not just your blog, but all of them). Grrrr. Anyway, no, my list of offers hasn’t changed at all. Per your suggestion, I just emailed them to see if Plastiq can be added. Thanks.

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