New Method: Evolve Money Now Accepts Credit Cards to DIRECTLY Pay Utilities, Loans & Mortgages!

Signing up for credit cards through partner links earns us a commission. Terms apply to the offers listed on this page. Here’s our full advertising policy: How we make money.

Update: One or more card offers in this post are no longer available. Check our Hot Deals for the latest offers. Readers also report that Evolve Money no longer accepts a credit card directly.

With Evolve Money, there’s a little-known way to pay your mortgage, student loans, utilities, and other bills with a credit card.  And you do NOT need to 1st purchase gift cards!

You can pay directly with your credit card!  So no need to futz around with trips to the stores to buy gift cards!

Thanks to Million Mile Secrets’ reader Penn who commented that you can now use a credit card to pay bills with Evolve Money!

I’ve written how you can buy PIN-enabled gift cards with a miles-and-points earning credit card, then use Evolve Money to pay bills that can’t normally be paid by credit card.  This way, you can earn miles and points for paying your mortgage, car loans, student loans, utilities, and store credit cards.

But now, you can use a credit card directly to pay bills!  So you no longer need to take the extra step of going to the store and buying gift cards (which always have fees of ~$4 to ~$7).  This is GREAT news!

Does It Really Work?

Link:   Evolve Money

Link:   My Review of Evolve Money

Million Mile Secrets’ reader Penn reported being able to use a Citi AAdvantage Executive World Elite Mastercard to pay a mortgage through Evolve Money.  And the payment went through!  I checked with Penn to see if Citi charged cash advance fees, and they DID NOT!  The transaction was coded as a purchase!

CIti is notorious for coding transactions with financial institutions as cash advances (which means much higher rates of interest with no grace period).

I did a “test run” to pay my mortgage directly from my Citi Executive card for $1.  For the method of payment, I clicked on “debit” and entered all required info and then hit submit!  It went through and I checked my Citi card transactions and it was listed as a purchase.  It was not a cash advance.

Evolve Money limits you to $1,000 in payments per day, so keep that in mind.  But it’s still better than having to buy two $500 gift cards which you would have to previously do to make a $1,000 payment!

See my introductory post on Evolve Money for details about paying large bills like a mortgage.

Remember, Citi could change their policy on this at any time, so it’s best to start with a small test purchase.  Or you could call your credit card company and ask them to set the cash advance limit to zero on your credit card (that way the transaction would be declined if it got coded as a cash advance).

I’d suggest doing a small test transaction with whichever card you use to make sure that you’re NOT charged cash advance fees.

Update:  Some readers report being charged cash advance fees after a few days.  So be careful and do a small test transaction first!  Or set your cash advance limit to $0 or $1.

I Had to See for Myself!

I had to try this method out to see if it worked.

I logged into my Evolve Money account to pay my student loan, which I normally pay using a debit or gift card.  Except this time, I used my Barclaycard Arrival Plus® World Elite Mastercard®!  I left the method of payment as debit (the only other option is cash, anyway).

After hitting “Submit Payment” I got the confirmation screen.  The payment went through on the Barclays Arrival Plus card!

To confirm it went through, I checked my Barclays account.  The transaction was listed as pending from “Vesta Evolve Money.“

Now that Evolve Money is accepting credit cards as payment, it removes the extra step of going to the store to buy gift cards.  So this will save folks time, money (in gas and gift card fees), and aggravation!

Again, it might be worth making a small test transaction 1st to be sure the bank doesn’t process it as a cash advance.  But it sounds like Citi and Barclays are coding this as a regular purchase.

This is great news!

Note:   I couldn’t find any official information on the Evolve Money website about accepting credit cards.  It’s possible this could be a glitch of some sort and might not last.  But I’m hoping it’s here to stay!

Evolve Money has indicated that they would eventually accept credit cards to pay bills, so perhaps this is it!  However, you can’t pay a major bank credit card bill through Evolve Money.

Bottom Line

You can now pay bills directly through Evolve Money using a miles-and-points earning credit card.  Just enter your credit card information in the “debit card” box.  

So you can pay mortgages, student loans, car loans, utilities, and other bills with your credit card!  This is a great way to earn miles and points for bills you already pay and to help meet minimum spending requirements on cards!

There’s no more need to go to the store and buy PIN-enabled gift cards with your credit card to use with Evolve Money.  So we’ll all save time and money with this new method!

This change has made Evolve Money an even better way of earning lots miles and points to get more Big Travel with Small Money!  I don’t know if this is intentional or not, but Evolve Money has indicated that they would eventually let folks pay bills with a credit card!

Thanks again, Penn! 🙂  Our readers are the best!