Paying Your Mortgage With an Amex Card

Put your mortgage payments on your Amex card!

David Gaffen and Teri Cullen think it's a really bad idea; I'm not so sure. Certainly it would seem to make a lot of sense for a lot of people who pay off their card every month -- assuming that American Home Mortgage's interest rates are competitive, those individuals will get an enormous number of reward points in return for their $395 one-time fee.

What's more, it's unclear from the press release whether this scheme applies only to Amex charge cards, or whether you can use Amex credit cards as well. With the charge cards, remember, you have to pay the balance off in full every month. I've got a call in to Amex trying to clear this up; I'll update this post if and when they get back to me.
Update: Amex called back, and this promotion applies to all American Express branded products, not only the charge cards. So if you have an Amex card from Citibank, or an Amex Blue card, or a Starwood Preferred Guest Amex card, or any other credit-card with the Amex logo on it, you can use it to make your mortgage payments. And if you don't pay off the balance every month, you could get into a lot of trouble very quickly. On the other hand, if you have the One card, then Amex will essentially rebate 1% of your mortgage payments every month, which could add up to a few thousand dollars, over time.

Of course, the risk (or perhaps the hope, from Amex's point of view) is that people will accept a higher interest rate on their mortgage if they can get Amex points for paying it off. And that's a decision which makes very little financial sense.