Pay 1.79% fee on rent using your credit card with ipaymy

Card payment company ipaymy has a new offer for those paying rent with a Singapore-issued Visa or Mastercard. Set up a recurring rental payment arrangement for at least 6 months to unlock a 1.79% fee for each one, allowing you to buy miles from just 1.1 cents each.

The offer

ipaymy’s usual fee for rental payments using your Singapore issued Visa or Mastercard is 2.25%.

Under this offer users who schedule at least 6 recurring rental payments with a Singapore-issued Visa or Mastercard will pay a discounted fee of 1.79% for each monthly installment.

There’s no special promo code to enter – simply schedule a rental payment for at least 6 months with a Singapore-issued Visa or Mastercard, and the rate will be automatically adjusted if the qualifying criteria is met.

If your tenancy agreement is for less than six months, ipaymy will honour the 1.79% promotional rate provided you contact their support team via support@ipaymy.com with proof of your tenancy agreement, so you can still benefit.

This is a ‘while it lasts’ offer, so schedule your payments now if you want to participate.

Cost per mile

Here are some cost per mile examples for Singapore-issued credit cards under this promotional deal at the 1.79% rate (applicable to any Visa or Mastercard payment):

Card	Miles per S$1	Cost per mile (1.79% fee)
UOB Reserve	1.6	1.10¢
Citi ULTIMA	1.6	1.10¢
BOC Elite Miles MC	1.5	1.17¢
UOB PRVI Miles MC	1.4	1.26¢
Standard Chartered Visa Infinite	1.4	1.26¢
UOB PRVI Miles Visa	1.4	1.26¢
HSBC Visa Infinite	1.25	1.41¢
Citi PremierMiles Visa	1.2	1.47¢
DBS Altitude Visa	1.2	1.47¢

All of these are competitive rates to buy miles, we value KrisFlyer miles at 1.9 cents each (our upper limit to buy), and actually achieve around 2.4 cents per mile when we redeem.

Comparison

Our readers will probably recall our ongoing offer with RentHero for a 1.85% fee on your rental payments using selected credit cards, which until now has been the most generous offer around for some time.

That still applies until the end of June 2020 and works for one off or recurring payments. Our article posted in December summarises how it works.

CardUp is your other choice for paying rent, with a rental payments offer at 1.9% until the end of June 2020, also applicable to both one off or recurring payments.

For example if you have a rental payment of S$5,150 per month to make over the next six months, here is how the ipaymy offer compares to RentHero (using our offer code MAINLYMILES185) and CardUp (at their 1.9% promo rate).

We have assumed payment using the BOC Elite Miles card, which earns 1.5 miles for every S$1 spent locally.

Fee for S$5,150 monthly rental payment
Month
Mar ’20	S$92.19 (1.79%)	S$95.28 (1.85%)	S$97.85 (1.9%)
Apr ’20	S$92.19 (1.79%)	S$95.28 (1.85%)	S$97.85 (1.9%)
May ’20	S$92.19 (1.79%)	S$95.28 (1.85%)	S$97.85 (1.9%)
Jun ’20	S$92.19 (1.79%)	S$95.28 (1.85%)	S$97.85 (1.9%)
Jul ’20	S$92.19 (1.79%)	S$95.28 (1.85%)	S$97.85 (1.9%)
Aug ’20	S$92.19 (1.79%)	S$95.28 (1.85%)	S$97.85 (1.9%)
Total Fee	S$553.14	S$571.68	S$587.10
Miles accrued	47,180	47,208	47,230
Cost per mile	1.17¢	1.21¢	1.24¢

You’ve earned enough miles there in six months for a Singapore Airlines Business Class flight to Tokyo (47,000 miles) for as little as S$553.

Remember this assumes you are paying rent using your Singapore issued Visa or Mastercard (and for RentHero your card must also be on the list).

For American Express payments you are restricted to using CardUp at a fee of 2.6% or ipaymy at a fee of 3.3%.

Citi PayAll

The alternative for Citi credit card customers is Citi PayAll, however at a fixed 2% fee for most users it now comes in more expensive than all three of these options.

A Citi PremierMiles customer, for example, is buying miles at 1.67 cents each paying their rent through PayAll, 14% higher than with this new ipaymy offer.

That’s not only because the ipaymy fee is marginally lower, but you are also earning miles for the fee itself as well as the payment amount when you use a card payments company like this, whereas with Citi you do not accrue miles for the fee element.

Summary

If you use a credit pay rent to your private landlord in Singapore you’ve never had so many ‘cheap’ options to generate thousands of miles in the process by doing so.

This latest offer from ipaymy is ‘while it lasts’, but is currently the most competitive on the market, provided you’re willing to set up a recurring payment for at least 6 months.

Remember if your tenancy agreement is shorter than that, send it through to the ipaymy team and they’ll honour the rate for a shorter period.

(Cover Photo: Christopher Jolly)