Melio Payments is very similar to Plastiq, which you’ve probably all heard of. It’s a way for you, as a business, to pay a vendor or another business using a debit or credit card (they can also do bank transfers) and by sending either a check or ACH to the vendor.
Debit cards and bank transfers are currently free, while credit card has a 2.5% fee, similar to Plastiq. The ACH transfers to the vendor appear to be faster (within 24 hours), whereas Plastiq may take a few business days. Check speeds are about the same for both, about 7-10 days.
Frustrating Experience
I’d been using Melio Payments for some business expenses on and off over the past year or so, and have found a few major annoyances. For example, currently I’m trying to pay a construction vendor for finished materials. However, the Compliance Dept at Melio keeps cancelling my payment – at first they said I can’t make pre-payments if I didn’t receive the products yet (but I did), and then they said I can’t make personal payments (I’m not).
Even more frustrating, they just keep sending me the same templated email over and over again in response to any of the emails I reply to. It’s almost like dealing with Uber Support, where the support rep just copies and pastes boilerplate emails that don’t answer your question or might not have anything to do with your question at all. After cancelling my payment, they sent this email:
Melio is only able to facilitate business payments; per our agreements with our processing partners, we are not able to process personal payments in any form. As such, we have canceled this payment. No funds were charged or held on your account.
If you have documentation demonstrating that this expense is related to your business entity we are happy to re-review.
Compliance Team | Melio Payments
I wrote back that it was a business payment, not a personal payment, and asked what documentation they needed. They sent the SAME EXACT EMAIL above back. I responded again and sent them an updated invoice showing it was a business expense for my office. They sent the SAME EXACT EMAIL above back. I’ve gone ahead and resubmitted the invoice as a new payment (for the 3rd time) and I hope it’ll go through, but I don’t have high hopes. In the end, even though they advertise 24 hour ACH payments, it could still end up being several days like Plastiq, if it ever goes through at all. The payments aren’t processed immediately either, they seem to be processed at night around midnight Pacific Time, so it will take a day to find out if each attempt to make a payment meets their requirements. If it gets rejected again tonight, I’ll need to stop wasting time and just use Plastiq.
Bottom Line
My vendor is anxiously awaiting the payment and every day that slips is hurting our relationship. It’s not a great look for Melio and my vendor has zero interest in signing up with Melio themselves if this is the customer experience.
If you’ve got an important business payment to make and you want to use your debit or credit card for rewards, Plastiq is probably the more reliable way to go (1% for debit and 2.5% for credit card).