Plutus payments earning cashback

[Alex]

A niche question to those who use Plutus – do any payments to other institutions rather than HMRC earn you cashback? I’ve paid all tax this year and if there is nothing else I can find giving me 3% back on £1000/month (a miniscule amount, I know, but anyway) – looks like I will downgrade my subscription. Not keen to use Plutus for my regular spend as I have other cards that earn points and vouchers.

[Mr. AC]

In my experience almost everything earns cashback via Plutus as long as the transaction goes through in the first place (they have some weird exceptions, e.g. massage parlours apparently). Payments towards financial institutions don’t seem to work in the first place (e.g. mortgage or car loan payments). They’ve recently updated the help article again to explicitly mention that rent, tax, and HMRC earn cashback: https://www.plutus.it/help/how-to-earn-plu-rewards

I plan to pre-pay taxes using my allowance. If that doesn’t work, you can always split in chunks and park on Curve and GBiT as allowance refreshes.

[Alex]

I wonder there any gift card websites you can earn Plu rewards with? I am not keen to send £1000s to HMRC many months ahead, and have no other large payment commmitments. I probably will keep searching myself but if anyone has a suggestion please post and then delete your comment after a couple of days)))

[ukdoctor]

Cardyard is okay for buying and selling gift cards..But if you are planning to use it with crypto cashback cards then be careful.. Plutus reviews transactions when you try to withdraw and gift card purchases are against the T&c for cashback.. Topping up amazon balance is fine though.

[ukdoctor]

Since plutus is fine with utility bills one potential option is to pay excess to your utility provider so that you are in positive balance.. As long as you have a direct debit in place most providers don’t have a problem.

So test this out by paying off a utility bill even when you have a DD set up.. The first month its possible that they may take the DD as well ..But the next bill should be zero or should account for the amount you paid before.

I suggest doing this with small amounts if possible.. like part paying a bill

This works perfectly with sky for example (DD set up as a backup) but I am always in positive balance. So the DD doesn’t trigger.

[EwanG]

@Alex I don’t find it too tricky to spend £1k per month on Plutus, however have just decided to downgrade from Premium to nothing, because they decided to absolutely shaft mot of us with the sham white paper done with virtually no notice – it was a foregone conclusion because they allocated votes according to the number of PLU held….
I don’t think they can be trusted as always shifting the goalposts, and I think they really don’t have a clue about how to run a trustworthy business. The Pluton Rewards Calculator they issued today – whoever designed that was off their head!!

I have done ok from them, but with a token on the slide, will get our sooner rather than later, once my latest PLU become available!

[rr2005]

@EwanG interesting to hear your views, thanks. I recently signed up for Plutus. Whilst existing users appear to have been shafted, to me it seems like a good time to get in. The price of Plutus is quite low and IF and only IF their new long term strategy works, there’s potential for some good returns.

You have to really believe in Plutus though as ultimately the value can depreciate to zero in the worst case scenario.

With minimum 3% cashback offered, if you assume a 50% depreciation then you still have 1.5% cashback which is not bad.

Most of the community seems to have a negative view on the changes though and that keeps putting me off from using my Plutus card. There are new features planned though such as converting to giftcards and airmiles (hopefully Avios) which I’m looking forward to.

[TooPoorToBeHere]

Plutus has been highly lucrative in the past for people who are on top of the product details and spend time on staying up-to-date.

The constant changes and endless reports of hassle and delay put me off though.

[Mr. AC]

rr2005 wrote:

Most of the community seems to have a negative view on the changes though and that keeps putting me off from using my Plutus card.

I don’t think that’s true. Definitionally most of who you hear about on social media is going to be dissatisfied.
The changes were expected and inevitable. Could they have been signalled earlier and managed better? Sure.
My personal opinion is that they should never have cancelled the first version of the changes last year (DA), but I guess they caved to community pressure and/or wanted to take the time to build out a more long-term version of a tokenomics update.

There was a vote to approve the changes, and I was extremely unsurprised it passed with a healthy margin.

rr2005 wrote:

There are new features planned though such as converting to giftcards and airmiles (hopefully Avios) which I’m looking forward to.

They’ve mentioned that Avios and Lufty miles are planned which I’m especially interested in.

Plutus is definitely not a product I can easily recommend to any of my co-workers not already deep into the cashback / loyalty game, but then again, neither is Amex Plat.

Overall I’m really hopeful they manage to become a new convertible loyalty currency. What we have right now (Amex MR and HSBC basically) is quite limiting.