Poll: Will You Use Credit Card to Pay Mortgage?

A couple of days ago, American Express announced a program that will allow qualified cardmembers to pay mortgages with their AMEX credit cards. From comments left at my post, I can see opinions on this issue is as polarized as using credit cards itself: there are people like me who use credit cards all the time will like this idea to rack up rewards; there are people in the other camp think this will only make things worse as it looks like one can now *buy* a house on credit cards. For example, Moneymonk says

America has lost its mind. Why would you risk paying something you finance on credit ( a house) to finance it on another credit ( a credit card ) ? plus with the $395.00 fee. It is not worth the rewards. The cc company wins all the time.

and Debt Blitzkrieg agrees

I’m with moneymonk on this — it sounds like a dangerous plan. One tight month and the next thing you know you’re paying interest on your mortgage to your credit card company. Besides, I have to wonder how they must be jacking up regular rates to float all these rebate-type credit cards.

But NotAPoorRevolver thinks the program itself has nothing to be blamed for:

Moneymonk you must be crazy. Some people don’t carry a balance on their cards. In fact, the majority of AmEx customers don’t. Some people can afford to pay off all of the things that the charge every month, and for those who don’t…they should cut back their lifestyle….that simple.

Whether it’s a good idea or not, AMEX won’t make it available to just anyone with any credit score. As a CNNMoney article says

But American Express is limiting its venture to cardholders it pre-authorizes before enrolling them, and then checks on them every month thereafter before a mortgage payment is charged.

So it could prevent people already have trouble with their credit card payments from getting deeper in to debit. In the end, I think it all comes down personal responsibility. If you take care of your credit card bills every month with full payment, there shouldn’t be any problem because charging mortgage payments with plastics doesn’t add any extra burden to you. The only down side I can see is that if you are late, then you will punished twice, from both your mortgage company and AMEX. But even with that, you can still set up your account to pay the bill in full every month automatically.
To get an idea of how people perceive this new offering, I just created a new poll, Paying Mortgage with Credit Cards?, with four options:

1. you think it’s a good idea and will use it to pay for your mortgage;
2. you think it’s a good idea but won’t use it because of concerns regarding consequences of one late payment;
3. you consider it a bad idea in general, but will use it as it doesn’t concern you in particular;
4. you consider it a bad idea in general, therefore will definitely won’t use it at all.

Vote here or from the sidebar to express your opinion on this issue.

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