{"id":5871,"date":"2022-11-30T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-30T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=5871"},"modified":"2023-04-18T11:13:36","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T17:13:36","slug":"plastiq-a-slow-requiem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2022\/11\/30\/plastiq-a-slow-requiem\/","title":{"rendered":"Plastiq: A Slow Requiem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cFee-free dollars\u201d, earned by referring payers, are long gone<\/li>\n<li>Prepaid Visa and Mastercard <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/support.plastiq.com\/s\/article\/Prepaid-Card-Policy\">payments are now limited<\/a> to $5,000 or $10,000 per month (sorta)<\/li>\n<li>Prepaids <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2022\/03\/18\/weekend-wisdom-zagging-from-the-zigening\/\">no longer run at 1% fees<\/a> (at least most cards, most of the time)<\/li>\n<li>The coding team stopped making <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2022\/08\/12\/when-it-and-promotions-fail-together\/\">accidental windfall promotions<\/a><\/li>\n<li>New accounts no longer have a <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/24\/1862\/\">promotional fee-free credit<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Their merchant coding is no longer favorable on certain credit cards<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Earlier this year they announced that they\u2019re going <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2022-08-04\/plastiq-to-merge-with-colonnade-spac-in-480-million-deal#xj4y7vzkg\">public via the $480 million dollar Colonnade Acquisition Corp SPAC<\/a>. I can only assume that they\u2019re trying to emulate other SPACs like <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/quote\/BODY?p=BODY&amp;.tsrc=fin-srch\">BODY<\/a>, 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. <em>EDITORS NOTE: I know sometimes we say silly things at MEAB and \u201cColonnade\u201d sure looks like a silly thing, but it\u2019s the SPAC\u2019s real name. Really.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>So, what are they up to now? Well, another kind of \u201cnothing good\u201d, I assure you. In order to drive away price sensitive customers that use the service because it\u2019s a bit cheaper than others, <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/plastiq-louse.png\">they\u2019re raising processing fees to 2.9%<\/a>, the par for the industry. Obviously they\u2019re doing this so that they can compete on features alone and lose customers that way, except faster than before.<\/p>\n<p>Is there still room for Plastiq in a manufactured spender\u2019s toolbox? I guess so, but barely. I\u2019d take this as a good opportunity to find alternatives that are less cruddy and more functional.<\/p>\n<p>Happy Wednesday!<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-editorskit-rounded\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5874\" decoding=\"async\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/plastq-louse-drawing.png\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/plastq-louse-drawing.png 1024w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/plastq-louse-drawing-300x294.png 300w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/plastq-louse-drawing-768x753.png 768w\" width=\"420\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">I\u2019ll be honest: It was hard not to make today\u2019s picture about Colonnade, but since it\u2019s Plastiq it had to be a louse. I don\u2019t make the rules friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":1,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-louse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5871"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6891,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5871\/revisions\/6891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}