UPDATE: The glitch in 1st month is dead everything else should be fine.

I love plastiq. They deliver my check on time. They even mail rent check directly to me. They often run Mastercard and Amex promo rate. On top of that they offer a referral system which further lowers my fee. Above all it earns me 3x TYP via AT&T Access More card and thus allows me to justify holding onto $100 Prestige. But lately I’ve been noticing plastiq is charging me far lower fee than they should.

Before I get into examples illustrating this glitch, let me show you the non-glitched payments:

I generally do one-time payment with AT&T card (which again is a MC) so I should have been charged 2% and voila (2*9=18) I was!

Occasionally someone uses my referral to join plastiq, makes a payment using plastiq, and I end up with 400 FFD.

Earn 200 FFD after making $20 payment

https://try.plastiq.com/371863

Remember because I have 400 FFD, I should only be charged 2% on a total of $500 and voila (2*5=10) I was!

Now that I have convinced you that I can actually do maths, let’s look at the glitch examples:

Example 1

In this case, I had 400 FFD so I should have been charged $10 like above but I was almost charged half the value. The obvious question now is – what % fee did they cut? 5.56 of 500 happens to be mere 5.56/5=1.112%

Now I know you think I used 222 more FFD than I claim but this FFD history says otherwise.

Example 2

Plastiq renewed their 1.75% MC promo when you schedule 6+ month of payment. This time around I decided to signup for it and I ran into this glitch again.

Once again I had 400 FFD (see FFD history screenshot), so I should have been charged 1.75*4=7 bucks. But the website has me scheduled for a mere $3.50. Essentially, I was charged 3.50/4=0.875%

But wait there is more! Fee rate on all scheduled payments actually match up with the rate on my first scheduled payment 7/8= 0.875% I doubt this will be the fee that will carry over but nevertheless it is quite a bit of a mess.

FFD expire or do they?

Technically FFD expire after 90 days of earning them. But if you schedule and cancel the payment, it seems you can reset the 90 day clock on FFD.

Can I get a TL;DR?

There are two things happening here. First, when you use FFD, a glitch is kicking in and somehow your fee rate seem to be much lower than they are supposed to be. Evidence suggest that this has been happening for 2-3 months tops. Second, by design, whatever fee rate you happen to lock in your first payment will continue in all your recurring payments. This was obviously only meant for Plastiq promos (like 1.75% on MC) but it somehow works for lower fee rate you acquire via FFDs.