Sending money to o/seas suppliers - possible to gather points?

[slodki]

Our business involves working with suppliers overseas. We transfer a fair bit of money overseas through the likes of ozforex etc. We're at the stage where we could have a constant supply of J/F flights if we could tap into earning points on these money transfers.

We try to maximise CC earn wherever possible (customs, GST etc), but the bulk of the spend is actually in transferring money to suppliers.

Ozforex won't allow payment into their account by CC (due to money laundering policies) and I suspect others will have the same policies. I don't mind paying a surcharge if the calculations stack up.

I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible - without going down the route of setting up 'purchasing agent' etc companies which bill my company

I'm wondering if the resident business owners have any tips

Cheers

 

[opusman]

Ask your suppliers if you can pay by credit card?

 

[Cruiser Elite]

I have been searching for 10yrs slodki but yet to find a way. AMEX were trialling a system where indeed you could settle FOREX transactions via one of their cards but even when I held Centurion for some reason they just would not let me join the trial. I am not aware if they proceeded past trial stage or not.

As previously mentioned if your suppliers could or would settle via CC then something like Prestige might make it worthwhile - please do report back if you can make it work.

 

[Buzzard]

I think a purchasing agent might have to be the way to go.
You might have to be carefull being your own agent so to speak as Amex in particular would just cancel your facility.
If you found a "you pay me, I pay them" friend it might work but may not be cost effective.

 

[Limewood]

Importing from China for past 8 years we always asked suppliers when will you have a CC facility, answer no idea, two years ago we changed that at a major HK trade show visit to ask: do you have Paypal they all said yes had it for years , Ok we pay an exchange fee but hey with a massive amount of FF points arriving each year we're happy.

 

[slodki]

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

I've done paypal previously on a small scale - just don't like the fee's. Might have to revisit that. Also will need to revisit suppliers accepting credit cards, last I asked the answer was no.

Looks like besides paypal (possible) or suppliers accepting credit cards (rare) there isn't any easy solution. Time for some more research

 

[Peter78]

We used OzForex as well when we started our business, however we have since moved our payments to Amex, which gives us better rates and Amex membership rewards points attached to my Platinum Edge - admittedly not too many (I think it is one point per A$27) but it all adds up and seeing that we are getting more favourable rates than before, this is one way to earn points without incurring any fees. I think our spread is 0.75% but I need to double-check this, my wife is looking after this section of the business. Payments in US$, Euro and ZAR but I would assume many more currencies are covered...

 

[Cruiser Elite]

Pete AMEX earn rate is 1pt / $25 or 40pts / $1K FOREX. Not a huge earn but better than nothing. Indeed I have found AMEX consistently = to or > Ozforex - if I find Ozforex better just call your AMEX trader and tell them - they usually match.

 

[slodki]

Thanks Pete and Cruiser - now that we are ramping up our spend to suppliers I'll start looking into other options for forex. Didn't know about AMEX, so will look into that one. Thanks for the tips.