The Post Office is now accepting American Express

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In one swoop, the Post Office has become the largest retail network in the UK to accept American Express cards. As of last week, all 11,500 Post Office branches in the UK are accepting Amex for transactions for which they would previously have accepted a Mastercard or Visa.

At present, this only applies to transactions which you complete at a counter. Self-service stamp printing machines will accept Amex from the end of the year but will take some time to convert them all. It is also not yet possible to use American Express for online Post Office purchases.

To quote from the press release:

“We want to make it as easy as possible to access our services through longer opening hours and by offering the widest range of payment options. We have the largest presence of any retailer in the UK, and this move will help the 17 million customers who visit us each week. Accepting American Express Cards at all of our branches allows us to open the door to more customers giving them flexibility and choice when it comes to paying for goods or services.”

What is not clear is exactly what transactions can be done with a credit card at a Post Office. It is obviously OK when buying stamps or stationery. I assume that the One4All gift cards which you can buy at a Post Office are also included although these can be tricky to use. It is no longer possible to buy a TV Licence at a Post Office so that knocks out one potential option.

My initial view is that this is less exciting than it first appears, but you never know.

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Category

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This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Fenny says:

13 Apr13 April 16:10

As soon as my new Virgin card arrives, I’ll try paying my CT at my local Coop. It will help hit the spend target.
- amex? says:
  
  13 Apr13 April 16:38
  
  the co-op just scans the barcode on the council tax statement, then you pay with your amex card – easy as
  - Raymond Hennessy says:
    
    13 Apr13 April 18:33
    
    Silly question, are we talking about co-op supermarket or co-op bank? If supermarket,are you paying at a manned till or a self pay till ?
    - amex? says:
      
      13 Apr13 April 18:41
      
      Co-Op local (supermarket) store in my case, really rather small though I gather there are several more Paypoints around here eg in CostCutter (don’t ask, we got them all but room for all IMHO!)
      
      The till is staffed by the local rather pretty minimum wagers and my comely young wench was all too happy to take my money and stick it in. The transaction went OK as well ;-@
      - amex? says:
        
        13 Apr13 April 18:50
        
        Actually that is a bit of a lightning moment. I think PayPoint is probably for people who don’t have too much money/ can’t plan money stuff that brilliantly. A bit like pre-pay electric or gas meters. So maybe it explains why the councils are happy enough to get a credit card payment through PayPoint without demanding a fee/ commission? Just happy to get some money. Not sure if that makes sense? Otherwise it would be the Co-Op bearing the fee, I guess.
      - amex? says:
        
        13 Apr13 April 19:30
        
        One thing we can be certain of. If you got a 2 point per £1 Amex card, you can get nearly 4000 Avios (or slightly more/less?) out of your council tax bill this year.
        
        Which is better than nothing.
Mat says:

13 Apr13 April 19:48

Edinburgh Council Tax also payable via PayPoint and PostOffice – looks like both now accept Amex!
- James67 says:
  
  13 Apr13 April 20:18
  
  Matt, any idea if online takes amex or only MC or visa? Thanks.
Mat says:

13 Apr13 April 20:34

Edinburgh? Online is only MC/Visa unfortunately..
- Alan says:
  
  15 Apr15 April 06:44
  
  At least no fee for MC/Visa online (I got my new Lloyds Avios off to a good start with it!) – sadly Dundee charges a surcharge 🙁
amex? says:

13 Apr13 April 21:22

Well – as others have reported corrupt Labour councils apparently preventing this method of payment, I might just pay a couple of years’ worth in advance to my fairish council this week or so, I’d rather have the Avios.
- Polly says:
  
  14 Apr14 April 06:39
  
  And now proceed to pay your other bills by PP. Also either by a payment card or the bill to scan. I mean those that don’t take amex directly. As you say a few 1000 extra MRs or avios much better than none. We pay every utility and phones mostly with amex, if not, then by tesco mc. DDs never taken by bank. It does take a bit of work, but worth it.
  - amex? says:
    
    14 Apr14 April 10:39
    
    Actually my water co was a bit tricky as with their instalment plan & PayPoint option you have to choose weekly/ fortnightly/ monthly instalments – which sounds a bore. But I phoned them and you can over-ride the pre-printed amount, eg you can pay quarterly or yearly etc.
    
    Another 900 Avios for free!
    - amex? says:
      
      14 Apr14 April 11:05
      
      I see you got here earlier, Polly https://headforpoints.com/2015/03/30/earning-avios-for-paying-your-council-tax-and-other-utilities/
      
      Shame all that cr@p made me miss the good bits in the thread ;-/
      
      With Sky TV, I can’t see a better way (personally speaking) than 1 Avios per £1 on my BMI VISA, I’m not prepared to do the £3.95 Visa cards @ Tesco (inconvenient though I suppose I’d be maybe 7500 Avs better off overall) but if they finally bring in Pay.com I’d do that.
      - James67 says:
        
        14 Apr14 April 15:39
        
        Hopefully, the new travelex card may be your answer.
      - Polly says:
        
        14 Apr14 April 16:37
        
        Yes. Had a dd with sky for my tesco m c . Worked fine, then 3v, now await pay.com. On principal now I won’t let a utility bill go to waste as I refer to a dd. I usually pay them all on the one day a month, you have the option to change the payment date on sky etc to fit in with your other bills. Agree I only use the £50 paid for Visa card when I get till spits, quite useful at times, those!
      - amex? says:
        
        14 Apr14 April 18:47
        
        Polly I did actually stick 4 x £50 of the £3.95 Visas in my basket today, having decided it WAS worth the hassle (for SKY only) to get the Tesco points on top.
        
        As you might have guessed, the first one failed to activate (on sub total), the supervisor came over and said it simply wasn’t worth trying as all the cards were failing at the moment, not just in my store, there’d been a memo apparently.
        
        Rubbish system, still.
      - Smileymiley says:
        
        14 Apr14 April 19:30
        
        James67. Doesn’t the Travelex card have a 2% reload fee on GBP loads?
barnaby100 says:

14 Apr14 April 12:19

We have a very good relationship with our local sub post office as our business mail goes through there. I will try and pay my £2200 council tax bill by amex later today
barnaby100 says:

14 Apr14 April 17:15

I went to my post office. Apparently there is no common system and each council sets up bill paying in a different way. Mine requires you to complete a transcash form. We did this and tried both a BA amex and a business platinum but it wouldn’t take either as the money receiver (the council) had blocked this as a payment method. He did say that you could pay some bills with a credit card though. Had it worked there would have been a flat fee of £3.20. My council is not labour!
- amex? says:
  
  14 Apr14 April 18:41
  
  Post Office still seems very iffy for the CT + Amex route.
  
  But try googling ‘can I pay my council tax through paypoint?’ and literally hundreds of different councils pop up advising that Paypoint is acceptable.
  
  Way to go IMV
  - barnaby100 says:
    
    14 Apr14 April 18:57
    
    Mine doesnt have pay point- but I will try that once I get the right kind of bill.
    - amex? says:
      
      14 Apr14 April 19:04
      
      I meant try Paypoint somewhere like in a Co-Op store.
      
      I do take the point about this not being a 100% across the board success route to pay CT though, it is true that councils such as Sutton and New Forest seemed to have barred Paypoint as a payment method.
      
      I reckon they are in a fairly small minority though.
      - amex? says:
        
        14 Apr14 April 20:02
        
        Latest – I went to pay off the rest of the year CT bill at my Co-Op Paypoint but the upper limit (there at least) is £200.
        
        Chap was volunteering to stick through multiple £200 transactions but I thought that might get the card blocked etc so just did the 1.
      - amex? says:
        
        14 Apr14 April 20:06
        
        Latest there seems to be a limit of £200 per Paypoint transaction (at least in my Co-Op).
      - Paul says:
        
        15 Apr15 April 03:57
        
        Same at mine. They were happy to put through multiples of £200 though until the bill was paid in full with my AMEX Gold card with double points for supermarket spend 🙂
Shaun says:

14 Apr14 April 23:23

Appears there is a paypoint in my local asda petrol station in Leeds. Does anyone have any experience of trying to pay a council tax bill at an asda paypoint? Thanks
- amex? says:
  
  15 Apr15 April 07:45
  
  No but it’s obvious that PayPoint works the same pretty much everywhere. The councils say you can use any PayPoint, anywhere.
  
  Whether they all accept Amex is a different matter but since Asda takes Amex, I would not anticipate any issues.
  - amex? says:
    
    15 Apr15 April 08:49
    
    https://www.paypoint.com/en-gb
    Locator
amex? says:

15 Apr15 April 17:47

I can now tell you that the MR points from a couple of days ago (£200 on CT in Co-Op through PayPoint) have posted as supermarket spend ie 400 MR points.