A Ray of Hope for Plastiq 3X With Citi AT&T Access More Card?

by Harlan 19 Comments

I just made my last round of rent, mortgage, and HOA payments through Plastiq with my Citi AT&T Access More card because Citi is removing those transactions from earning 3X starting next week.

But as I reviewed the transactions, I noticed they weren’t coding as rent like they had before. Instead, they’re coding as “Misc Government Services.” That gave me pause because of the language in Citi’s T&Cs:

Plastiq 3X With Citi AT&T Access More Card

Quoth Citi

But upon further review, I earned 3X in this very same category as early as this month. Which makes me wonder… will 3X live on for rent and mortgage payments with the Citi AT&T Access More card?

A history of Plastiq 3X With Citi AT&T Access More Card

The last time I used this card for rent/mortgage/HOA was in March 2017 (after that, I use my SPG biz Amex and then went some min spends).

Through Plastiq, those charges coded as “Real Estate Agents and Managers Rentals:”

Plastiq 3X With Citi AT&T Access More Card

Citi coding as of March 2017

Which was awesome, because at the time, 3X was going well for this category.

Flash forward to this week in July 2017. I made the exact same payments. But noticed they now code as “Misc Government Services:”

a screenshot of a computer

Exact same payees as before

I haven’t edited the payees in any way. They’re simply coding differently. Something’s changed in the past couple of months.

The Citi T&Cs specifically say “government services” only earn 1X (see screenshot above). But, I made a mortgage payment earlier this month that coded the same way AND still earned 3X on my last statement:

a close up of a receipt

3X on everything except the $10 charge from Google

I only had 5 transactions on my last billing statement, and 4 of the 5 charges – including the Plastiq mortgage payment – earned 3X Citi ThankYou points.

Here’s how that $1,600 charge coded:

a screenshot of a computer

Could it live on?

Misc Government Services! (I never thought I’d type something like that with an exclamation point at the end.)

If that’s any indication, the charges from this week should earn 3X as well. It remains to be seen if they’ll earn 3X after July 22nd, 2017, but my hunch is they will… unless Citi really starts cracking down next month. Which I don’t think will really happen.

Either way, I’m going to do one more round of payments because this is enough to convince me that:

  • Citi is coding Plastiq rent, mortgage, and HOA payments differently
  • For whatever reason, they’re earning 3X even though they’re “government services”
  • 3X for these payments might live on beyond July 2017

Bottom line

There’s no doubt Citi wants to stop giving 3X points for Plastiq payments. But I don’t think they’re flagging them well enough to actually prevent the charges from earning 3X. Unless something drastically changes by next week, which is doubtful.

I’m going to stick with this one more time for a couple of payments in August and see how they code. But seeing this, and how they’re coding, gives me a little hope that Plastiq 3X with Citi AT&T Access More will live on.

However, it will very much be a month-to-month scenario. I won’t be surprised if this gravy train comes to a sudden end. But until that happens, I’m gonna keep riding for as long as I can.

The 3X from this card, combined with the 10,000 annual bonus points, would make the case to continue using Plastiq payments. When this stops working, see why the Blue Business Plus Amex card is the next best card to use for rent and mortgage payments.

If you have recent data points, please share! 

* If you liked this post, consider signing up to receive free blog posts in an RSS reader and you’ll never miss an update!

Announcing Points Hub—points, miles, and travel rewards community. Join for just $9/month or $99/year.

BEST Current Credit Card Deals

  • Capital One Venture X Rewards—Earn 75,000 Venture miles once you spend $4,000 on purchases within the first 3 months from account opening, plus a $300 annual statement credit for travel booked through Capital One
  • Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card—Earn 100,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points after you spend $15,000 on purchases in the first 3 months and 3X bonus points per $1 on the first $150,000 spent on travel and select business categories each account anniversary year
  • Amex Blue Business Plus—Earn 15,00 Membership Rewards points once you spend after you spend $3,000 in purchases in the first 3 months of Card Membership and 2X bonus points on up to $50,000 in spending per year with NO annual fee

The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

About Harlan

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

More articles by Harlan »

Pingbacks

Comments

  1. I dunno. I tend to doubt it will work next week but obviously it woiuld be awesome I if it did. I just made my august and Sept mortgage payments this week. Keep me posted if it still works

    Reply

    • I will def keep trying until it’s clear it doesn’t work any more. I don’t have much faith in Citi to actually fix their IT/coding rules lol. Will keep you posted for sure! 🙂

      Reply

  2. Question is whether specifically selecting the “rent, mortgage” category causing this to code this way? If so, are their any other categories within Plastiq that would code as 3X if Citi is just stopping the rent and mortgage coded directly by Plastiq as the default category.

    I hope that makes sense.

    Thanks

    Reply

    • I like where your head’s at! That’ll take some more playing around with. Maybe “Business Services?” I’ll see how it goes next month and tinker from there. 🙂

      Reply

      • Thanks! Hopefully there is some new category within Plastiq that qualifies for 3X!!

        I will also keep you posted on my experiments

        Reply

  3. Thanks for sharing this Harlan. I will give it another try. I agree that sometimes I think Citi’s best means of changing an IT rule is to simply announce it to customers and hope customers change their actions in anticipation…. knowing their IT team has a less than 50/50 chance of actually accomplishing the rules change!
    I’m going to give it another go with rent this month, since I don’t have a minimum spend to hit at the moment.

    Reply

  4. Any new Datapoints after July 22nd? Was hoping someone’s statement closed and had transactions on or after July 22nd.

    My statement doesn’t close till August 10th.

    Thanks

    Reply

  5. Have you used the Amex Blue Business Plus recently to make a mortgage payment thru Plastiq? I thought I read somewhere that Amex restricts those.

    Reply

    • Ah, you’re right! You can still use Amex cards for rent and HOA dues, but NOT for mortgages – only MasterCard and Discover are accepted.

      I don’t think I have any MasterCards that would be worth using unless there’s a spending promotion or something. What a bummer. My AT&T statement closes tomorrow – I just wanna see if it earned 1X or 3X. Will have to think about what to do going forward. Do you have a card in mind to use for your payments?

      Reply

Leave a Reply