I have been trying to find information regarding paying rent with my Qantas premier credit card in order to earn Qantas Points. Our Estate Agent uses PayWay to process credit card transactions and they say that they charge 2%. To work out sums, let’s say our rental is $1000 a week, so $4000 a month, that works out to $80 a month for 4000 Qantas points - is that correct? Are there any other fees? Will Qantas accept this transaction type in order to earn points?
Hi Belinda1,
Your calculations seem to be correct. $80 for 4000 points equals 2 cents per Qantas point. This is a little expensive in my opinion.
2 cents per point is too high if you’re not sure what you’re going to do with the points or if you’re intending to redeem them for economy class flights. I might possibly be willing to pay 2c/point if I know that the points are going to be redeemed for business or first class flights, where the value of each Qantas point is typically around the 4c mark or thereabouts.
But my advice would be to not use the credit card and save the money.
Without reading the actual T&Cs of the card and of PayWay there’s no way of knowing whether there are any other fees or caveats. I would guess that there won’t be.
I hope this helps!
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Thanks so much for the reply. We would be intending to redeem the points for economy class flights, in your opinion at what price would the scale be tipped in the favor of points? i.e what would you be prepared to pay for a point that makes it worth while? It would be nice to have a benchmark. Thanks
Hi again,
The simplest thing to do is to work out the basic value of the points for the flights you want to redeem. For example: say you want to redeem an economy class flight from Sydney to London. On the Qantas website, this flight costs, say $1100. However, you can get a reward flight using Qantas points for 55200 points plus $300 in additional taxes and charges. That means that you are using 55200 points instead of paying $800. ($800 equals 80,000 cents)
To work out what the points are worth, divide 80000 by 55200, which equals 1.45. In other words, each Qantas point for that flight is giving you 1.45 cents in value. Obviously, then, it’s not worth paying 2c per point in this scenario!
On the other hand, you might decide to use your points to catch a business class flight. Say that flight costs $5000, but you could get it for 139000 points plus $500 in taxes and charges. In that case your 139000 points are being used instead of paying $4500 (ie 450000 cents), which means each point is worth 3.24 cents.
You might be interested in this Point Hacks article which talks about the pros and cons of using points for economy flights versus premium economy and business flights.
If that all sounds too hard, as a very basic, very simple rule, I personally wouldn’t pay any more than 1c per Qantas point if I were using them for economy flights.
Thanks so much for the response - really appreciate it!