Plastiq, a company that lets businesses use their existing credit cards to pay bills to vendors that don’t accept them, has rolled out a service that will enable Plastiq clients to accept credit card payments without having to give the credit card issuers a cut.
Plastiq Accept, the new service, had previously been in a beta trial among a limited group of users.
“Plastiq Accept enables businesses to accept credit card payments for free, without having to pay the typical 2.5-4 percent fee that traditional payment services providers charge,” the company said in its news release announcing the expansion of the offering. “By offering a credit card payment option to their customers through Plastiq, businesses get paid on time and more reliably, unblocking cash flow in the supply chain and getting businesses moving forward again.”
Plastiq also noted that the new offering will allow businesses to receive prompt and quick payments from suppliers who might be short on cash.
“COVID-19 and the associated restrictions have caused a domino effect of late payments across the economy,” Eliot Buchanan, CEO and co-founder of Plastiq, said in a prepared statement. “As cash reserves run dry, many businesses have been unable to pay suppliers, as they simply don’t have the cash on hand. This has left suppliers unable to pay their own bills due to these late or missed payments. Responding to our customers’ feedback, we accelerated the development of Plastiq Accept in order to reduce cash flow burdens and unblock the flow of vital services and supplies.”
Tom Berdan, chief marketing officer of DadeSystems, a Miami-based provider of accounts payable systems that uses Plastiq, said in a prepared statement provided by Plastiq: “Plastiq Accept has quickly become a critical tool for our company’s success. Many of our customers are unable to accept credit cards on their own, so being able to integrate Plastiq Accept into our payment management options has made a huge difference by opening up an entirely new payment channel that can be set up in no time at all.”
San Francisco-based Plastiq’s primary offering to clients is a system that lets them draw on existing credit cards to send funds to Plastiq, which then pays the clients’ vendors or suppliers via check or wire transfer.
Buchanan told PYMNTS in 2018 that one of the surprises he encountered after the company’s launch was the breadth of expense categories for which clients use the service – including, for example, payments of health insurance premiums.
Earlier this month, Plastiq joined Visa’s small business payment hub.
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