The other day, I wrote about Apple’s new person-to-person payments that will be built into iOS 11 to use with Messaging. This is a great new feature that will help taking care of splitting things like bills, etc. But, it could also be a way to help with credit card points!
How Apple’s Person-to-Person Payments Could Be Great – Even With a Fee
While we would all love to see Apple swallow the transaction fee of credit cards to entice more people to use Apple devices, it will likely carry a fee (previous speculation in articles before the announcement referenced the standard 3% for credit cards).
Buying Points for Cheap
However, even with a fee, this could still be a great feature to help us in our quest for more miles and points. But, it will only be great if you are using a single card – the US Bank Altitude Reserve.
See, the US Bank Altitude Reserve card pays a 3X credit with points for all mobile payments. This means Apple Pay as well (and this new person-to-person payment system will be built into Apple Pay). So, if the fee is 3%, you are already breaking even with the 3X points for that. Why bother, right?
Wrong! Because when you redeem those points for travel, you get a redemption rate of 1.5 cents per point. That means you will be coming out ahead when you redeem your points like that! Here is a quick look at this:
- You pay $1,000 with the person-to-person function
- You are charged a $30 fee
- You receive 3,000 points
- You get $45 worth of travel when you redeem the points for travel
- You paid $30 for $45 worth of travel
Hitting Thresholds For Redemption
Not bad, right? But, it gets even better. There is an annoying thing about US Bank and their redemption levels – you have to have all the points to pay with points. I wrote about this earlier this week and it bugs me but it is what it is. However, with this new method, it means you will be able to get your point threshold up to the level you need for the travel you want to pay for! Yes, you will be paying for the travel, but you are still getting more than what you are paying for!
So, I will be looking forward to this roll-out and seeing exactly what they allow as I could definitely see myself using it just to get my points up for larger redemptions with my US Bank Altitude Reserve card.
Would you use the new person-to-person system like this with a fee? Any other card you would use?
