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How to pay your business bills with a credit card using Bluechain

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This article has been sponsored by Bluechain

The goal of any self respecting HfP reader is to maximise their points, including those earned on reward credit cards.

Many HfP readers who own small businesses had been doing just that by using Billhop to pay their invoices. Billhop exited the SME market in April 2023 however, and there was no-one else offering the same service. (To clarify, Billhop IS still available to apply for if your business has a minimum revenue turnover of €2 million and over 10 employees).

This has now changed with the launch of Bluechain in the UK. From its publicised launch last year, with American Express, Bluechain has now filled the gap left by Billhop’s exit.

What is Bluechain?

Bluechain is a B2B payments platform that allows you to manage invoices and pay any of your suppliers with a credit card, helping to manage cashflow, save time on financial admin and maximise the reward points you can get from your credit cards.

How to pay your business bills with a credit card using Bluechain

How does Bluechain work?

You can use Bluechain to pay any registered UK business including sole traders. The system is very straightforward. To pay invoices you need to:

  • Add invoices – Simply add invoices manually or connect to your accounting software to automatically pull in all unpaid invoices.
  • Choose how you want to pay – With a debit or credit card, and whether you want to pay in full or split the payment into parts.
  • Choose when you want to pay – Pay now, on the due date or schedule for another date.

Bluechain takes payment from your card on the date selected, pays your invoice via a standard money transfer and automatically reconciles it in your accounting software.

Bluechain is rapidly expanding their platform and will soon include new features such as bank account payments, cross border payments, the ability to bill your own customers through the platform and even easy access to business finance.

What are the costs of Bluechain?

There are no set up costs or subscription fees with Bluechain. It makes its money on transaction fees for payments made through the platform.

Current payment fees are:

  • American Express 2.3%
  • Mastercard and Visa 2.5%

Bank payments and cross border payment are coming soon.

How to pay your business bills with a credit card using Bluechain

What sort of invoices can be paid via Bluechain?

Bluechain can be used to pay any registered UK business or sole trader, with the bonus of being able to pay companies, such as Google Ads, with a credit card when they no longer accept direct credit card payments.

The only notable exception is that Amex no longer accept payments to HMRC (even through Bluechain) although you can still pay HMRC with Visa or Mastercard on the platform.

How to pay your business bills with a credit card using Bluechain

How can Bluechain help my business?

Whilst the ability to earn points by (effectively) settling your invoices on a credit card will be the key selling point for HfP readers, Bluechain offers much more.

  • Boost cashflow – Taking advantage of the interest free period on your credit card will allow you to manage your cashflow, and if you are getting a good interest rate on your cash balances then it will also partially offset the Bluechain fees.
  • Early payment discounts – Take advantage of discounts from suppliers by using your credit card to pay invoices as soon as they come in. This provides an opportunity for real bottom line savings.
  • Streamline your payment processes with automation – Bluechain can save you time and money.  You can manage all your payments from a single dashboard, so no more juggling multiple payment methods or losing track of due dates. Bluechain integrates with popular accounting software Xero and Sage, automatically pulling in your bills and reconciling payments. This can not only saves you valuable hours each week, but also reduces the risk of errors with minimal effort.
  • HMRC payments – Although Amex have now stopped any payments to HMRC, including those made through Bluechain, you can still use other credit cards to pay HMRC through Bluechain.
  • Keep paying Google Ads with a credit card – Businesses who use a credit cards to pay for Google Ads could increasingly benefit from using Bluechain as Google continues to phase out credit card payments.

You can find out more about Bluechain on its website here.

Category

General

Comments (56)

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

  • Mark says:
    23 Aug23 August 07:36

    I’m really surprised the fee for using an Amex is less than Mastercard or Visa, is that correct?

    • Jonathans says:
      23 Aug23 August 07:42

      Yes, the service was/is supported by Amex (maybe even at an investor level) so that’s a little incentive for Amex use. Surprised why they blocked HMRC specifically though?

      You used to be able to use debit cards (a la Curve) at 0.6%.

    • BBbetter says:
      23 Aug23 August 09:13

      MC/visa rate went up recently. I suspect people were using non-uk/eu cards to maximise returns.

  • Jonathans says:
    23 Aug23 August 07:47

    Some feedback from a long time user of Bluechain (for what it’s worth).

    I used this a lot, near exclusively for every business payment in the past when debit cards were only 0.6% but less so now as CoT offer a similar service which is slightly cheaper. CoT compliance is a lot stricter though.

    BC portal is a little scruffy and not overly intuitive but Bluechain support is fast, friendly and efficient. Cannot fault it.

    Best feature for me, over a bank transfer is I can only forward date (schedule) payments with my bank 30 days. Bluechain, I can setup the payment the day I get the invoice and schedule to automatically pay it in 45/60/90 (whatever) days time saving in the admin.

  • William Avery says:
    23 Aug23 August 08:05

    I didn’t know about the google AdWords card payment phase out?CoT working fine for me.

  • Paul says:
    23 Aug23 August 08:12

    How do the HMRC payments work?

    • Jonathans says:
      23 Aug23 August 08:57

      Bluechain essentially does a FP/CHAPs/BACs transfer to your supplier and debits your card. So you pay HMRC Shipley or Cumbernauld and need to provide the relevant reference numbers which you can also input into the BC payment screen.

  • AC says:
    23 Aug23 August 08:20

    Bluechain is quite good, but the only thing that comes up as a bit of an issue evey now and then is that they don’t have the vendor I’m paying in their database, which means I need to contact help/chat.
    Their chat is responsive, but just a bit of a hassle.

  • TooPoorToBeHere says:
    23 Aug23 August 08:37

    I used this when it first appeared and it worked. Support pretty responsive as others noted.

    The setup process for new payments is pretty clunky, with a load of entities pre-added with bank details which might or might not match the ones you actually need to use.

    But, it works, and there are periodic free-transfer/rebated-fee offers.

    Fee is a deductible business expense, if that sways things.

    • Jonathans says:
      23 Aug23 August 08:53

      The fee also includes VAT so it’s less than the headline rate.

      • Kowalski says:
        23 Aug23 August 09:09

        Ah really?? You’d think they’d have realised that was worth mentioning!

        So the fee for those VAT registered is 2.083% for Mastercard/Visa and 1.916% for Amex.

      • Daniel says:
        23 Aug23 August 12:38

        There is no VAT on the fee. This is displayed in error. It’s something to do with the Australian site. This was confirmed to me by their customer service 3 months ago. Surprised it’s not been fixed.

  • Karl says:
    23 Aug23 August 10:28

    Are the rates still the same even if paying by debit card?

  • AhSook says:
    23 Aug23 August 10:45

    Apart from managing your invoices, which your normal accounting software can assist easily, what’s the net benefit after incurring between 2.3 to 2.5% cost ??? Maybe I have overlooked some other key points!!

    • Rob says:
      23 Aug23 August 10:54

      Cashflow aside, it works best if you need to hit a spend target on a credit card for a bonus or annual voucher which you might otherwise miss.

      However, remember that fee includes VAT AND is tax deductible.

      So, if you’re HfP on a 47% tax rate, 2.3% Amex fee becomes 1.92% after I reclaim the VAT. I write off the fee for tax so my next cost is 1.01p. If I’m earning 1.5 Avios per £1 on a BAPP then I’m ‘buying’ Avios for 1.01/1.5 = 0.67p.

      • TooPoorToBeHere says:
        23 Aug23 August 11:00

        …and i’m redeeming them full-tilt at 0.5p

        This works well for a decent number of people though.

      • Daniel says:
        23 Aug23 August 12:43

        There is no VAT on the fee. They confirmed this to me in April when I was doing exactly these calculations. Quote from email below. Surprised they haven’t fixed this as it’s very misleading and potentially costly.

        “Apologies for the confusion, but in the UK there is no VAT on the Bluechain fee, this is something that was carried over from Australia, where the platform was developed, and we are looking to have this removed from all areas of the UK platform ASAP.”

        • TooPoorToBeHere says:
          23 Aug23 August 14:08

          That’s quite unfortunate then.

          I have a VAT receipt from them with a VAT number and a VAT amount shown…!

          • Daniel says:
            23 Aug23 August 17:51

            I’ve got receipts with “VAT amount” on them but no VAT number. As far as I can tell from HMRC website VAT is not chargeable on financial services. I’ve never claimed it back on any other charge.

            Given this is a post sponsored by Bluechain I’m assuming they are reading these comments…

        • Kowalski says:
          23 Aug23 August 14:22

          This really needs clearing up!

          Can we get a definitive answer from the company?

          • Jimmy says:
            29 Aug29 August 12:51

            I spoke to them recently and they confirmed that there is def NO VAT included in the fee. It was in Aus, where the platform originated. They’re planning to have it removed from the platform in the next update but apparently it’s complicated as they are working on new features that may need to include VAT, so not just as simple as removing it.
            I’ve had a good experience with them so far and sounds like they’re working on quite a few improvements, so will stick with them as really helps me when cashflow is tight!

      • Ryan says:
        23 Aug23 August 15:12

        Let’s not open the “is a credit card rebate taxable” debate again! (For reference, they are not)

      • paul says:
        23 Aug23 August 15:27

        and how does that work out if there is no VAT on the fee (as explained by Daniel) ?

        • Rob says:
          23 Aug23 August 16:44

          Would be 0.81p if I did it, assuming a card earning 1.5 miles per £1.

          Snag for HfP is that we don’t pay any substantial bills by bank transfer apart from HMRC (which can’t be done with Amex) and pay the staff. Our office rent is credit card, hosting is credit card, Mailchimp is credit card, flights and hotels are credit card – it’s very rare we settle any bill by transfer except for PAYE.

      • Daniel says:
        23 Aug23 August 17:53

        Out of interest where do you get the 47% tax rate from (assuming 19% corp tax and 20% VAT)?

        • Rob says:
          23 Aug23 August 18:12

          We’re not a company. 45% income tax and 2% NI top slice. No tax benefit to running via a company although we may do it for succession planning reasons soon as our kids approach 18.

      • Kowalski says:
        23 Aug23 August 20:19

        But surely you wouldn’t use the Amex BAPP as it’s a person card and would risk Amex closing the account? Payments to Bluechain are clearly business payments.

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

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