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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