Update: Evolve Money has closed down, so this offer is not available.
I’ve written about Evolve Money and how it’s a good way to pay bills that can’t normally be paid with a credit card, like student loans, car loans, and utilities.
Late last year, Evolve Money began accepting Discover credit cards as payment. But now you can pay bills using your Visa or MasterCard!
But it’s not all good news. You’ll pay a 3% fee when you use a credit card.
Even with the fee, paying bills directly with a credit card through Evolve Money could be useful for some folks. I’ll explain!
What’s the Deal?
Link: Evolve Money
Link: My Review of Evolve Money
When Evolve Money 1st started, you could pay bills like utilities, loans, mortgages, and store credit cards online using a debit or gift card.
For a brief period, they had a glitch through which folks were able to pay bills with a credit card, but that was short-lived.
They introduced payment with Discover cards late last year, but soon began restricting the kinds of bills you could pay with a credit card.
Now, Evolve Money accepts Discover, Visa, and MasterCard as payment, but you’ll pay a 3% fee to use a credit card.
That’s NOT a good deal, because the fee will generally negate the value of any miles and points you earn.
For example, you’ll pay $15 ($500 x 3%) for a $500 bill payment. You’d do better using a $500 gift card (bought with a miles and points earning credit card) which usually has only a ~$4 to ~$6 purchase fee.
However, if you don’t have access to gift cards, or need to quickly meet minimum spending requirements on your credit card, this could be worth it for you.
Remember, you won’t earn category bonus points when you pay bills online with a credit card.
But you WILL if you buy a gift card at a store that earns bonus points with your credit card (for example, 5X points with the Chase Ink Plus or Chase Ink Cash at office supply stores). And then use it to pay bills online with Evolve Money.
Bottom Line
You can now pay bills with a credit card (including Visa and MasterCard) using Evolve Money.
This is NOT generally a good deal because you’ll pay a 3% fee for each transaction.
But it could be worth it for folks who want to quickly meet minimum spending requirements on their credit card.
Will you pay bills using a credit card with Evolve Money?
Is it worth it to use Evolve Money to pay rent of $1120 to help meet the minimum requirement of $4000 in 3 months for the Chase Sapphire Preferred?
I think you can use only one gift (debit) card per bill.
Evolve didn’t exactly give a lot of notice about this change. Effective 2/1/15, emailed 9 PM on 2/1/15. I don’t see anyone using this except in really rare circumstances. There are cheaper alternatives. And it’s hard to see them subsidizing gift card buying for much longer.
Funny, I was just thinking about this yesterday, when would Evolve start to accept Visa. I can see it being worth it in some instances. If you had only $100 or so to go on a minimum spend, you could quickly quash it by paying, say, a utility bill this way. I only buy the gift cards if I need the whole $500 amount for something, but if you don’t need that much, or didn’t feel like spending the time and money driving to get a gift card, this could be good alternative.
So if I have a bunch of $200 staples visa gift cards, what would be a good way to use these through Evolve? Could I use multiple $200 VGCs to pay down a credit card bill for example?
Anyone have experience with this?