How can you pay your mortgage by a credit card.  My current lender
claims they are not set up to take payment by credit cards.  I've
heard you could pay by western union, but is that too expensive?

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Request for Question Clarification by ragingacademic-ga on 02 Mar 2004 08:17 PST

dodthmakai - thanks for your question.  What is your motivation for
paying by credit card?  Are you hoping to accumulate points? Something
else?

ragingacademic

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Clarification of Question by dodthmakai-ga on 04 Mar 2004 19:38 PST

Indeed the reason is to accumulate points.  I have read the comments
below about cash advancing myself; is there any other way to pay
without incurring fees/interest?

If you are determined to make a mortgage payment by credit card, you
could always get a 'cash advance' using a credit card, place the money
in your checking account, and write the lender a check.

Mortgage lenders do not like Credit Cards because of the high costs of
processing, for them.

Following Pinkfreud's suggestion could be more costly for you. Do
check out the charges before determining the best way for you to
proceed.

I'd like to make it clear that I am NOT recommending the use of a
credit card for making mortgage payments. My comment above was merely
an example of a way in which this could be done. It would almost
certainly incur a cost, since cash advances are seldom free of charge.

As a merchant I can confirm the comment about high costs to accept
credit cards; the merchant can be out as much as 2.5% or more of the
purchase, and surcharges for credit card payment are usually forbidden
by the merchant agreement with the credit card processor; basically
the merchant is expected to eat the credit card fee. On a mortgage
payment, that's a lot of money -- and the mortgage bank already knows
that you're going to pay up; they are not really in the position of
trying to entice you to buy something. They have no motivation to
accept credit cards.

Another, more major concern: it is almost always possible to reverse a
credit card charge and get your money back. When there are signed
documents involved, as in the case of a mortgage, the merchant can
usually prevent this, but only after a great deal of time and energy
has been wasted all around. Another reason why no mortgage lender
would want to accept plastic.

I know that majortom is a highly respected whizz and that wise men
never challenge him ... BUT ... Fools Rush In ...

In the UK, if you set up a stream of payments by Credit Card then
these are, in fact, more difficult to cancel than Debit Cards or
Direct Debits and, supposedly, they can only be cancelled with the
Supplier's approval. (In practice, you can always cancel the Credit
Card.)

Of course, this may not apply everywhere ...

Most (if not all) credit card  rates are higher than what you'd pay
for your mortgage interest rate, so why are you doing this?