Can I pay my builders with AMEX?

VT41

I need to pay a building company X amount and want to know if it's possible to use an AMEX card to transfer this amount over? I don't have the card yet but thinking of applying to get one to obtain points etc. 

[Deleted User]

Only if they accept Amex.

You'll need to ask them.

Sandtree

VT41 said:

I need to pay a building company X amount and want to know if it's possible to use an AMEX card to transfer this amount over? I don't have the card yet but thinking of applying to get one to obtain points etc. 

You can pay them with AmEx if they accept AmEx... given more people use the likes of iZettle, Square etc many small companies actually do take AmEx.

Your wording however suggests you are considering withdrawing cash from your AmEx to pay them... this will be very expensive and won't get you any points.

VT41

Sandtree said:

VT41 said:

I need to pay a building company X amount and want to know if it's possible to use an AMEX card to transfer this amount over? I don't have the card yet but thinking of applying to get one to obtain points etc. 

You can pay them with AmEx if they accept AmEx... given more people use the likes of iZettle, Square etc many small companies actually do take AmEx.

Your wording however suggests you are considering withdrawing cash from your AmEx to pay them... this will be very expensive and won't get you any points.

My plan was to transfer money in the same manner you would from a debit account to their account on their invoice, however I wasn't sure this was possible. It seems you can only pay at retailers that accept AMEX..

mab3000

Some credit card providers let you do money transfers, where you can transfer money into your own current account, then you could pay the builder via bank transfer from that. Generally money transfers wouldn’t qualify for points offers.

 However I am not that familiar with Amex and not sure if any of their cards offer money transfers. 

WillPS

You can take cash out of an Amex but it'd be ruinously expensive to do so.

Billhop is a less expensive way of paying a bill with Amex but you'll still be worse off when taking account of the fee compared to just writing a cheque.

Ebe_Scrooge

VT41 said:

My plan was to transfer money in the same manner you would from a debit account to their account on their invoice, however I wasn't sure this was possible. It seems you can only pay at retailers that accept AMEX..

As per the previous 2 replies, you could withdraw cash on the credit card (expensive in terms of fees and interest), or do a money transfer (if that offer is available) to deposit cash into your own account - for which there is usually a fee.

But there's nothing to be gained from either of those 2 approaches - you won't earn any points/cashback, and you won't benefit from S75 protection.  You'll just be paying fees and/or interest needlessly. If the builder doesn't accept Amex then there's no point whatsoever in applying for one purely for this one transaction.

Alex9384

Also, Amex only allow you to transfer a small proportion of your credit limit.
I believe it's only possible to transfer/withdraw 20% of your credit limit.

Curls2208

Most builders only accept cash in hand xD

unforeseen

Curls2208 said:

Most builders only accept cash in hand xD

Maybe the the ones that you deal with. The ones that I use tend to accept debit cards, cheque or bank transfers as well as cash.