Car Payment Hack

We recently got a brand new 2020 Mercedes SUV! But, we assure you, this isn't a humble brag post.

Afterwards, we went online to set up autopay and were pleasantly surprised to see that Mercedes now allows payments to be made via credit card.

Traditionally, it is very hard to earn credit card points from some of the biggest monthly expenses (mortgage, rent and car payments) because it requires you to pay using Plastiq a company that charges a 2.5% fee (rarely worth it, unless you are in a bind to meet a minimum spend).

However, Mercedes uses Repay which only charges a flat fee of $4.95 per payment.

Is the $5 monthly fee worth it?

Let's pretend your monthly car payment is $500. Set up  autopay for it using your Chase Freedom Unlimited credit card which earns you 1.5 points per dollar spent. So each month you will earn 750 points for your car payment. These points are worth $7.50, so you are already ahead with an extra $2.50 more than the fee you paid to use credit card.

Next, transfer these 750 points accumulated each month to the Chase Sapphire Reserve and redeem them for another 1.5 times on travel. This means that now they are worth over 1000 points in travel which is a little more than $10.

So if you subtract the $5 fee from the $10 you gain each month, you end up actually making $5 net profit on each monthly car payment.

How can I set it up?

If you have a Mercedes, and want to collect on this hack, follow these steps:

1. Go to Mercedes Financial Services
2. Login
3. Select your vehicle
​

---

4. Click Make a payment
5. Click Visit Repay
6. Click Guest Account Lookup to bring up your account
7. Enter your credit card info

We only know Mercedes to be using Repay services right now, but if you don't have a Mercedes, try it out on your car payment and let us know in the comments if you find any other companies who also have this option!