Making a CC payment to someone who doesnt take CC's

mad_dog_and_glory

Hi, I'm having some building works done.
I will have to make a payment to my builder of about £10k.
I would like to do this via credit card as I have a card with a limit that will allow me to do this.
My problem is that my builder doesn't accept credit cards. How do I pay him without incurring ridiculous "cash withdrawal" fees and interest rates.

Paying by CC seems to be the cheapest way to "borrow" the money to make the payment.

I will be in a position to pay off the money within 12 months.

My alternative would be a loan but I can't find any decent ones that don't require a stupid early repayment fee.

Any thoughts/advice?

Thanks in advance.

chanz4

You would be best with a loan from zopa or alike, they have no early repayment fee but a setup fee. Cards you will have to get a sbt, but will need a very high limit for 10k

thenudeone

You can make a payment to anyone using paypal https://www.paypal-marketing.co.uk/sendmoney/index.htm

But:
-unless the builder sets up a paypal merchant account (it's not difficult - I think you need one to sell things on ebay) then (you) the sender will pay paypal's fees (3.4% + 20p)
-it will be classed as a purchase on your credit card, so it won't be eligible for the most common 0% deal - i.e. balance transfers. If you don't pay it off within 2-3 weeks after the statement, you will be charged interest at the purchase rate for the card, which could be quite steep. If you have a 0% BT deal on another card you could transfer the balance to the second card, although there would then be a BT fee.
-even though it's on your credit card you won't get the protection that you would normally get if the builder doesn't fulfil the contract (because paypal is classed as a financial intermediary)

alexanderalexander

mad_dog_and_glory wrote: »

Hi, I'm having some building works done.
I will have to make a payment to my builder of about £10k.
I would like to do this via credit card as I have a card with a limit that will allow me to do this.
My problem is that my builder doesn't accept credit cards. How do I pay him without incurring ridiculous "cash withdrawal" fees and interest rates.

Paying by CC seems to be the cheapest way to "borrow" the money to make the payment.

I will be in a position to pay off the money within 12 months.

My alternative would be a loan but I can't find any decent ones that don't require a stupid early repayment fee.

Any thoughts/advice?

Thanks in advance.

I think you will have to get yourself a new 0% credit card. Try getting a super balance transfer card (there is a fee for a super balance transfer, but it will work out a lot less than getting a loan), or (even better) use the M&S/Tesco travellers' cheques trick. These techniques are normally used for stoozing (so check out the stoozing pages and the stoozing subforum for details), but are just as relevant for when you need to extract cash from credit cards in order to pay someone who doesn't accept CCs.

thenudeone wrote: »

You can make a payment to anyone using paypal https://www.paypal-marketing.co.uk/sendmoney/index.htm

But:
-unless the builder sets up a paypal merchant account (it's not difficult - I think you need one to sell things on ebay) then (you) the sender will pay paypal's fees (3.4% + 20p)
-it will be classed as a purchase on your credit card, so it won't be eligible for the most common 0% deal - i.e. balance transfers. If you don't pay it off within 2-3 weeks after the statement, you will be charged interest at the purchase rate for the card, which could be quite steep. If you have a 0% BT deal on another card you could transfer the balance to the second card, although there would then be a BT fee.
-even though it's on your credit card you won't get the protection that you would normally get if the builder doesn't fulfil the contract (because paypal is classed as a financial intermediary)

Even if the builder is willing to set up a PayPal merchant account, all that means is that the builder pays the fees – so there's no guarantee that the builder would be willing to do this, as it means he'll get less money.

garth549

Credit cards charge up to 3% commission (and Amex is ridiculously high, something like 14%) plus there is the risk of fraud/chargebacks, plus extra lead time until they get the cash. So there's not really a lot of incentive for them to accept payment this way.

alanq

Are credit card cheques still available? (I know that there was going to be a clampdown on CC companies sending them unsolicited to customers and that they didn't offer the protection one got using a credit card itself.)

chanz4

cheques a lot of the time are treated as cash advances