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Exclusive Billhop discount for HfP readers – pay (almost) any bill with your Amex card

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Back in September we first wrote about Billhop, a Swedish company that lets you pay almost ANY bill with a credit or charge card – including American Express cards.

You can probably imagine how this situation could be useful in your points collecting ….

If you were interested in the Billhop concept but didn’t give it a go yet, Billhop has offered Head for Points readers an exclusive discount on their transaction charge.

About Billhop

Billhop was founded in Stockholm in 2012 – where it has proven very popular with the frequent flyer community – and launched in the UK earlier this year with plans to extend further in Europe.

The company is fully regulated in Sweden (which, under EU passporting rules, means they are regulated here as well).  In any event, your money is fully protected because all payments are handled by an established bank.  Billhop never has access to your funds, apart from the fee.

The most interesting part about Billhop is that you can pay almost any bill or invoice with any Amex, Visa or Mastercard card, have it treated as a purchase and earn reward points.

More importantly to HfP readers, payments made via Billhop will also count towards spend targets on American Express cards, either for a sign-up bonus or a spending bonus such as the British Airways American Express 2-4-1 voucher.

Registration with Billhop is freesee here – so you have nothing to lose by signing up and seeing how it works.

The only major exception is that you cannot use Billhop to pay instalments on loans, mortgages or credit card bills, ie anything paid to a financial services business.  Tax paments to HMRC are OK.

Payments to private individuals are not permitted unless you are invoicing for a service – see below for more on this.

Too good to be true?

If this sounds too good to be true, there is a catch – the service is not free.  There is a 2.95% charge on every payment you make, i.e. if you pay a bill of £100, you will pay £102.95 in total.

As you will see below, there is currently a special discounted fee available to Head for Points readers.

This means that, unless you also want the cashflow benefits of putting your bills onto a credit or charge card, this is an expensive way of earning miles or points.  It is something that you may find useful if you are struggling to hit the ‘£2000 spend in 90 days for 20000 bonus points’ target on a new American Express Gold card for example.

Remember that if you run your own business and are paying company expenses, the Billhop fee is fully tax deductible.

How it works

If you’ve never used Billhop before, you need to create an online account on the Billhop website here.

Once you are signed up, you can pay almost any bill using any credit or charge card.

I explained the whole process of signing up and transferring money in this article.

In the example I transferred money into Rob’s account as neither one of us had any bills to pay at that time.  Billhop has, however, changed its rules when it comes to paying a private person.  You can now only send money to an individual if there is an invoice provided for a service rendered – so it would be OK if I was teaching his kids German and sent him a bill afterwards.

Exclusive HfP offer

For a short period Billhop is offering Head for Points readers a discount on their transaction fee. Instead of 2.95% you will only pay 2.25%.

This offer is for both existing and new customers.  We didn’t want anyone who signed up after our earlier article to lose out.

Existing customers can enter the promo code H4P2017 under ‘Settings’ whilst new customers can enter the same promo code in the registration process under the ‘How did you find out about Billhop’ section.

This offer is valid until 14th January 2018.

You can sign up for Billhop, and find out more about how they operate, on their website here.


earns points from credit cards

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – July 2025 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current sign-up bonuses.

In 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

Get 5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold Credit Card

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

British Airways American Express Premium Plus Card

30,000 Avios and the famous annual Companion Voucher voucher Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

50,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

18,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

The American Express Business Platinum Card

50,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

The American Express Business Gold Card

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 0.8 Avios per £1 Read our full review

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business Card

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

Comments (63)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Denis says:

    O/T: Just got an email from BA personally apologising for the disruption caused and offering £100: “As we weren’t able to deliver the service we wanted to, we would like to offer you a gesture of goodwill and offer you a voucher for £100 off a future flight.
    You will be receiving this voucher by email within the next 7-10 working days.”

    Not bad, though I spent 4 hrs 12 mins on the tarmac on my BA108 flight and went home without my luggage on Dec 10. Got the bad delivered today though.

  • Chris says:

    Totally OT:

    Amex Shop Small – are Amex restricting goodwill credits for closed merchants? I was given £20 last week for 4 merchants who refused Amex, then today via online chat I told them about 3 merchants which I visited but had stopped trading. Amex refused any further credit as I had already received one last week, despite my protest that it’s their data error that caused my wasted journeys.
    Is this other people’s experience?

    • Gavin says:

      Were your credits last week issued by online chat? I’m having an online chat right now after having to use a different card at a merchant that no longer takes Amex, and they are saying they are not authorised to issue credits this year.

      • mark2 says:

        This is when we really miss the secure message system.

      • the real harry1 says:

        I got 2x £5 credits applied thru 2x Chat for purchases on day 1 – phone operator told me to bog off, though (in so many words) – same situation as yours, pub not taking Amex

        issue today (meat run then fish & chips) is that some purchases at the same butchers have triggered an email, others have not – butcher kindly split it into £10s for me – no email from fish & chips either

        these ones are much easier, I feel – if no £5 turns up, easy to show I made the purchase

        • mark2 says:

          I have split a purchase and received email for some cards but not others and still received credit for all.

    • Luke says:

      I have visited 10 small shop places, but was succesfull only on 3 occasions….amex refused any responsibility, just slaped me in the face…best of the best, one of shops dissappered from the list sometime after I made purchase there and amex refused to even consider, that the shop could have had ever been on the list..i guess another official complain will be heading to Brighton soon.

  • Waribai says:

    What a great party and good of to meet the Mrs too! Thanks again Anika and Rob!

  • The Original Nick says:

    Denis, who did you email about the comp?

    • Denis says:

      Nick, I did not have a chance to email them. I think they are emailing everyone who did flew BA on Dec 10-11. It’s £300 voucher if in CW (as per FT)

  • Mr ah says:

    I had a poor experience with billhop. I run a business with a loyalty programme which pays my customers (b2c) in cash when they redeem their points.

    Initially billhop queried this and after my explanation, they said it was ok. But then the following week, they changed their mind citing the fact that they were payments to “individuals” despite myself telling them that they were business transactions and I had the redemption emails to confirm this. I put through between £5-10k per month like this. I now use another company so ultimately its Billhops loss.

  • pr99 says:

    I am not sure about this

    “In the example I transferred money into Rob’s account as neither one of us had any bills to pay at that time. Billhop has, however, changed its rules when it comes to paying a private person. You can now only send money to an individual if there is an invoice provided for a service rendered – so it would be OK if I was teaching his kids German and sent him a bill afterwards.”

    You say it would be OK to use the system to transfer money to Rob if you were billing him. Surely it would be the other way around and it would be OK for Rob to transfer money to you if you had billed him???

  • Solar says:

    Good timing, I have to send some money to a company that does not accept card payments.
    This seems like a reasonable way to do it.
    Thanks Rob 🙂

  • Rebecca says:

    When filling in recipient name on the online form of Billhop HMRC doesn’t come up. What is HMRC sort code and account number? I’m trying to pay my tax bill and NI contributions.

    Thanks!

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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