Personally, I think if this is how you’re going to use Flex (and then pay it all off at the end of the month) then you’re (not you, in general) missing the point of Flex and probably missing the benefits of another card that will gain you points/longer interest free etc.
This forum has definitely taught me that everyone uses money/products differently, but to me it still seems strange to buy you lunchtime meal-deal and split it over 3 months.
To me, it’s buying the things you can’t quite afford in one months pay, and splitting it over 3. With no interest and 3 evenly split, easy to see payments. I see absolutely no advantage to buying 50 things with it and then paying it all off.
Yeah, without points or cashback I wouldn’t routinely use a credit card for day-to-day spending (although I would if I wanted to isolate some spending from my own money - such as during a work trip).
But I still feel a single bill/payment date per month feels simpler even if I only made 2 or 3 purchases.
It sort of is a single payment date, no different to a credit card that has a cut off.
So in your Sept example, if you set 1st Oct as your payment date, anything upto 16th Sept is in your Oct statement/pay date, anything after that is November.
Like @Kumnaa , I use Flex as a credit card with benefits. I use it for day to day spending in places that don’t take Amex and for larger purchases that I’d benefit from splitting over 3 months. I also use it for a few subscriptions that I have that are in foreign currencies.
For me, Flex is for business trips. It keeps it separate from my personal spending, has zero foreign currency fees, and the fact that I can set it all to pay in three, while the refunded money from my employer sits in a savings pot earning interest for 2.5 months is just a bonus.
And used like that, there’s no meaningful difference between it and a credit card. I use it, it pays for the services with money that is loaned to me, I get a bill to pay once a month. Before now, I’ve had a hotel put a 1,000 Euro hold on at checkin, and then place an entirely separate 1,000 Euro transaction at checkout for the actual payment, then taking 7 days to release the first one, and I can say very happily that it behaved like a credit card in that case, so I had no issues caused by the hotel’s… shenanigans, apart from a slightly reduced available credit limit for a few days.
They get itemized receipts for every single transaction. They have no right to a statement that could also show my personal spending. It’s my card, not a company one. If they want oversight of the card, they can supply it.
A screenshot of the transaction has the merchant, even a little map in the background, the GBP sum, and the Euro (or other) amount all on one page, which is more than you can usually get from other credit cards.
Unless i paid cash ;), and yeah, it happens most trips - our staff canteen in some offices doesn’t take cards, so you need to pay cash and claim back off the receipts.
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I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be fantastic if the statement formatting was improved, but I can say that about a lot of other credit card statement formats, too, when it comes to foreign transactions. For example I’ve had them in the past that charged the foreign exchange fee separately, sometimes days later, and with no reference to which main transaction it was linked. That would be far harder to claim back from than a Flex transaction screenshot.