How To Pay Bills Using Billhop (And Gain Points In The Process)

If you are looking for a way to increase your spending on a credit card to meet a spending target then look no further! Billhop is a payment intermediary that allows you to put almost any bill onto a credit card, including American Express card allowing you to earn points & miles.

What is Billhop?

Billhop is a Swedish payment service, enabling individuals and businesses to pay bills using credit or debit card. It was founded in Sweden in 2012 and then launched in the UK in 2017.

What sort of bills can I pay with Billshop?

You can pay bills with Billhop such as…

• HMRC (tax bill)
• Council tax
• Utility bills (water, electric etc.)
• Rent
• Car and car repairs /service
• Home repairs and renovations
• And most other bills as long as you have a bill/invoice!

And you can use your credit card for doing so, whereas normally for a lot of these options you wouldn’t have the choice. With American Express you can’t pay private individuals even if you have an invoice for services/products from them. You are also unable to pay financial institutions using an American Express card.

What’s the catch?

As you might expect this isn’t a ‘free’ service. There is a 2.95% service charge on every bill that you pay through the service. This means a £100 bill would cost you £102.95, an extra £2.95.

When is Billhop useful?

There a few instances in the point collecting world where you may find Billhop useful…

1. If you would struggle to meet the spending target for a sign-up bonus on a credit card. For example the 30,000 points sign-up bonus for the Platinum Card requires a £4000 spend in 3 months. If billhop allows you to reach this target where you otherise wouldn’t you may find the 2.95% fee worthwhile for the 30,000 points. For example if you could put £2,000 through normal spend on the card and needed to put £2000 through billhop to get your bonus, in effect to get the sign-up bonus it would cost you £59. Worth it? That’s up to you to decide!
   
2. If you are struggling to meet the £10,000 annual spend to get the 2-4-1 voucher on the BA Premium Card, it maybe worth using Billhop to help you reach the target. For example, if we was going to be £1000 short we’d rather put £1000 through Billhop on a bill (e.g. rent, council tax, utlities etc.) and pay the £29.50 to ‘unlock’ our voucher rather than missing out.
   
3. If you want to quickly reach the spending target for a sign-up bonus of a credit card so you can then cancel and reset the 24 month clock. By putting money through billhop you could save valuable time before your eligble for a sign-up bonus again. For example if you can reach your sign-up bonus target within a week using Billhop compared to 3 months normally that’s a huge chunk of time saved. In some instances you may find the fee here worthwhile.

How do I use billhop?

You need to create an account on the billhop website. Once you click to register you need to choose whether you’d like to register as a company (with company number) or as an individual (with your date of birth). When creating a personal account you are asked for normal details such as your address and email. Once you are registered you can make payments of up to £250 straight away. Larger payments require a picture of your passport to verify your ID for money laundering reasons.

To make a payment, once logged in, you simply need to click the green Pay button in the top left corner. Here you can fill in the details regarding your transfers/recipient including bank details, date to make payment & a reference. After this, you need to put the details of what card you want to pay the bill with and then confirm. When paying with a Mastercard or Visa, the recipient will receive their money within two days. For American Express, it takes four days. You receive an email when the money has been sent.

Conclusion

Billhop can be a useful service, particularly if you need the extra flexibility it provides to pay almost any bill on your points earning credit card. Whilst in most examples the fee outweighs the points earnt it is particularly useful if you know you’d struggle to meet a sign-up bonus or voucher at a certain spend. Do you use Billhop?