Plastiq: A Slow Requiem

Plastiq, a once favorite bill-payment service for manufactured spenders, has slowly gotten worse over the years with a gradual but pronounced death. Some of the ways:

• “Fee-free dollars”, earned by referring payers, are long gone
• Prepaid Visa and Mastercard payments are now limited to $5,000 or $10,000 per month (sorta)
• Prepaids no longer run at 1% fees (at least most cards, most of the time)
• The coding team stopped making accidental windfall promotions
• New accounts no longer have a promotional fee-free credit
• Their merchant coding is no longer favorable on certain credit cards

Earlier this year they announced that they’re going public via the $480 million dollar Colonnade Acquisition Corp SPAC. I can only assume that they’re trying to emulate other SPACs like BODY, which went public and managed turn $10 in net asset value per share into a current price $0.70 in just a little over a year. EDITORS NOTE: I know sometimes we say silly things at MEAB and “Colonnade” sure looks like a silly thing, but it’s the SPAC’s real name. Really.

So, what are they up to now? Well, another kind of “nothing good”, I assure you. In order to drive away price sensitive customers that use the service because it’s a bit cheaper than others, they’re raising processing fees to 2.9%, the par for the industry. Obviously they’re doing this so that they can compete on features alone and lose customers that way, except faster than before.

Is there still room for Plastiq in a manufactured spender’s toolbox? I guess so, but barely. I’d take this as a good opportunity to find alternatives that are less cruddy and more functional.

Happy Wednesday!

I’ll be honest: It was hard not to make today’s picture about Colonnade, but since it’s Plastiq it had to be a louse. I don’t make the rules friends.