Has anyone used Plutus?
If so, any experiences to share and advice on how to make a most of their perks/award levels etc.
Even an easy to use help guide (i.e. easier to follow than their official help pages!) would be appreciated
I’ve been using it over the last year or so and gained around £200 or so in cashback.
There are some large impending changes, most notably that there will be no cashback (3%), perks (up to ÂŁ10 at selected retailers) or withdrawals (withdrawing PLU from Plutus to your own ethereum wallet) without being a paid for subscriber. ÂŁ6.99 I believe is the minimum sub to attain cashback on up to some kind of 3 figure sum per month and one perk. I believe these subscription prices are set for 6 months and could increase. More expensive subscriptions allow for more eligible spending and perks.
The value of the native token has slid, primarily due to some migrations etc which haven’t gone completely to plan. They moved card and e-money account provider and there have been delays in rolling out physical cards (they now charge for these and didn’t before, so valid cards were cancelled due to them changing provider) and digital payments are not yet ready. They have launched a metal card scheme which involves a lot of staking (see below) which I would consider rather risky. This isn’t available anymore anyway. In the meantime to pay in person you needed to use Curve as Plutus only have virtual cards available at present. In their defence, the new system is better as you spend from your account balance whereas before you had to pay in and then top up a card. That said, there have been some rumours of users having issues redeeming refunds/retained balances with the old card provider (Contis/Solaris) but this wouldn’t really concern you directly.
They have also recently increased PLU withdrawal fees to £7.50 from £3 but this is not dynamically priced, so although ETH gas fees were high for a while they haven’t remained as high. Also they have paused fiat withdrawals (cash in your account not the earned PLU) due to fraud concerns raised by the account provider Modulr. You can still spend or add more funds, but I found it to be a red flag. “Temporary” seems to mean months and as does “coming soon”.
You can earn higher than the usual cashback or perks by “staking” plu which means holding it on Plutus and not withdrawing or via a connected wallet (e.g Metamask). All cashback takes 45 days to clear before you can withdraw and you must have earned £50 minimum to do so (and then pay the withdrawal fee). Note there will be fees at Metamask and Coinbase etc in getting your PLU back to fiat should you so wish. There have been rumours of cashback earned being scrutinised so that business or collective account users don’t benefit from the cashback scheme which is against TOS, but I haven’t experienced this.
As a prerequisite to using the desktop login you have to use authy and to withdraw pluton you have to use the web version on a desktop pc not the app. If you log out from the desktop it boots you out the app which is annoying.
All things considered, there have been issues with migration and they are tigtening the rewards to subscribers and stakers - note these can be done in conjunction to boost the rewards payable. I am tapping out once my next £50 clears as I’m not a fan of the changes and I’m sick of having to use Curve, Metamask and Coinbase to make it all work - but I put up with it for a time and it was relatively rewarding. Annoyingly as Plu has dropped I’m below the £50 before the new changes come in, I deliberately used a perk later in case this happened - but it seems I will have to pay for a subscription to get it off now is a can be bothered. That or just view the PLU as a novelty crypto investment.
It’s a bit longwinded and it has been rewarding, but there is potential it is becoming less so. I am not going to use it for spending for the foreseeable and may close my account if I can lift a last £50 worth off. Hope this helps!
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Please see above a referral link from the OP - I encourage people to use it should they wish. My post above is hopefully a useful review of the state of play with Plutus.
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I’ve been written to by Plutus saying there will no longer be a free tier and that I need to either close the account or sign up for a paid account. I responded saying I wanted to close the account. They responded saying that if I closed the account I would not be able to reopen it and that any Pluton I had earned would be forfeit, and that I needed to respond to say I agreed to this. I did just that, and then they wrote to me asking for my bank details, name, address etc etc - and would I like to reconsider ? I said that I don’t want to and then, almost by return, I received an offer saying they would give me £69’s worth of Pluton, if I agreed to subscribe for a year. If an offer seems to good to be true, it is. I have no PLU and I suspect £69’s worth of it will not be worth that 12 months hence. Yet more desperation from selected neobanks.
Anyone else have this? I’m not holding my breath to get my £30 back, I must say. Perhaps more people than expected decided to ditch the account.
Edit: I never earned any PLU ever
They’ve offered me freebies to stay twice (they are legitimate FYI) and they did so last week but I decided to stick with my decision to close. Despite hundreds in cashback the trajectory has been downwards imo. Main issues right now being unable to withdraw fiat balances, higher fees and no free plan with cashback, botched Apple Pay launch etc.
You can keep the account on the no cashback “standard” level, but my account is closed as of last week. It also means I can close/abandon Curve, Coinbase, Metamask etc which were all required to get Plutus working.
There’s something fishy going on. I requested my small amount of “Fiat” currency back, and they are refusing saying that it was converted to PLU and the latter is forfeit when you leave the bank. I asked for evidence I did this , but they said they wrote to me a while back saying my deposit would be converted to PLU unless I objected. I have asked for a copy of this email, and they said that they don’t keep records that long.
This sounds like someone making it all up. I mean, it’s only £30, but these are outright lies
So last year Plutus migrated from a provider called Contis to Modulr. Did you hold funds before this migration?
Yes. Is this going to be problematic?
I think it might be the source of the issue as I understand any funds left with the old provider needed to be claimed within a particular timeframe - I had no idea that if they didn’t they would be converted to PLU though? That is totally new to me.
It does seem like sharp practice to confiscate funds held
Desperation? 
I’m not saying it isn’t, but I’ve always found it bemusing that these things are only usually viewed in that negative connotation when the entity is a neobank.
Traditional banks do these things from time to time too, yet it’s barely given much thought. And in tech, particularly with the subscription model lots have taken with services, Amazon, one of the world’s richest companies, are the epitome of desperation when it comes to cancelling Prime.
All I will say is I was notified about Contis/Solaris funds a few times but perhaps these didn’t reach you?
I lifted anything off with Curve GBIT