Updated 10am PT on 7/9/20: Arcadia Power changed their name to Arcadia, so I updated the logo and changed references of “Arcadia Power” to “Arcadia” in this post.  Arcadia has also improved their website, so some of the screenshots in this post are out of date.

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Good morning everyone, I hope your weekend is going well.  Last month, Doctor of Credit wrote a post about Arcadia stating that you could use this service to pay your electricity bill with a credit card and not be charged a fee.  I have been paying a $1.35 fee per payment to PG&E (Pacific Gas & Electric) for the last few years, so I was immediately interested.  For the last few years, I have been using my US Bank Cash+ Credit Card to earn 5% cash back on utility bills (as far as I know, Chase Ink Business credit cards do not earn 5x on electrical utilities bills, just phone / internet / TV utility bills).  With the $1.35 fee per payment, as long as my payment to PG&E was greater than $27 ($27 x 5% = $1.35), I would come out ahead.  If I could continue earning 5% with my US Bank Cash+ Credit Card to pay my PG&E bill and avoid the $1.35 fee, I would definitely use Arcadia.  I am happy to state that that is exactly what happened with my recent PG&E payment via Arcadia.  If you are not an Arcadia member, please use my referral link to create a free account.  Thank you!

I received this email from Arcadia on January 5.  In the email, it says I saved $15 (my Arcadia first payment bonus) and owe $105.88.  My card on file (US Bank Cash+ Credit Card) would be charged on January 8.  I didn’t need to do anything else.

I logged into my Arcadia account and went to the Bill Pay section.  I clicked the PDF button to download my recent Arcadia statement.

My Arcadia statement shows the $15 first payment bonus and the remaining balance of $105.88.

On January 8, the $105.88 charge from Arcadia went through on my US Bank Cash+ Credit Card.  A few days later, the charge posted to my credit card account.

I then logged into my PG&E account to confirm that the payment was successfully received by PG&E – it was!  In the payment section, it shows the $120.88 payment from Arcadia as a “BanktoBank Payment”.

I then logged into my US Bank online account to view the 2 most recent charges (PG&E on December 6 and Arcadia on January 9).

I wanted to compare the payment directly to PG&E (left) and the payment processed by Arcadia (right).  Both transactions have the same merchant category (MCC), so I am very confident that the payment processed by Arcadia will earn 5% cash back.

I am very impressed by Arcadia and how they work.  Their main mission is to inform consumers that they should switch to renewable (more expensive) forms of electricity, but I have not made any changes to the forms of electricity I use.  If you have any questions about Arcadia, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone!

P.S. If you are not an Arcadia member, please use my referral link to create a free account.  Thank you!