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- I've had the Prime Visa credit card for five years and have earned hundreds of dollars in rewards.
- I love redeeming my rewards at checkout as soon as the next day.
- This no-annual-fee card comes with a surprising number of travel and purchase protections.
As an avid traveler, I carry more than a dozen credit cards, and each one serves a different purpose in my wallet. Whether it's the best credit card for airport lounges, or the best credit card for travel rewards for airfare or hotel nights, each of them gets me more value than the annual fees I pay every year.
But one card is a notable exception from the others: a store credit card. The Prime Visa card from Amazon plays a critical role in my rewards strategy, especially during the holidays and this season of gift giving. Here are three reasons why:
If you already have Amazon Prime, it's a no-brainer
The card is only available for Amazon Prime members, but it has no annual fee, so the Amazon Prime membership you're already paying for is the only true annual cost to pay when holding the card.
The Prime Visa card is a great option for frequent Amazon shoppers who want to earn rewards on purchases they're already making on a daily basis. When I'm not on the road and need groceries, prescriptions, or other household items, I'm using the Prime Visa card to make the most of these routine purchases.
You can use rewards almost immediately for holiday purchases
The Prime Visa card is a rewards-earning powerhouse, earning 5% back at Amazon.com, Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods Market, and Chase Travel with an elegible Prime membership. When shopping at Amazon.com, the rewards can double to up to 10% back on a rotating selection of items. Furthermore, you'll earn 2% back at gas stations, restaurants, and local transit and commuting, and 1% back on all other eligible purchases.
It's hard to find another card with such an exceptional rewards rate across four major buckets, from everyday shopping to travel bookings. But where the really card shines is the ability to redeem rewards on Amazon.com almost immediately. With the Prime Visa card, you'll be able to apply your points at checkout "as soon as the next day," according to Amazon.
You can access your points on your Amazon Prime Visa card rewards dashboard, and they're worth 1 cent apiece. So if you've got 10,000 points built up in your account, you've got $100 in rewards to use.
At a minimum, it usually take several business days or weeks to access your rewards on many other credit cards. The Costco Anywhere® Visa Card, another popular store card, only doles out rewards to users as a cash-back certificate once per year in February.
I've spent about $3,000 on Amazon this year, and the rewards I've earned are valued at $150 — more than the cost of an annual Prime membership.
It has perks you don't always find on a store card
Most retailer credit cards don't come with perks outside of earning rewards within their own stores. However, the Prime Visa card offers a surprising number of "hidden" benefits outside its scope of all things Amazon-related.
For starters, the card waives foreign transaction fees when you're traveling internationally. And as a Visa card, it's good to use at millions of retailers worldwide. Other travel protections that shouldn't be overlooked include secondary rental car insurance, baggage delay insurance, lost luggage reimbursement, travel accident insurance, travel and emergency assistance, and access to roadside dispatch. You never know when you'll need to tap into these benefits, even if you only travel once or twice per year.
Other complimentary benefits that you should know about include extended warranty and purchase protection. Extended warranty adds an additional year of coverage to products with an eligible U.S. manufacturer's warranty of three years or less, while purchase protection can reimburse you up to $500 per claim and $50,000 per account for eligible new purchases that are stolen or damaged for a 120-day period.
I've had the card for five years and have not relied on any of these protections. However, it does give me peace of mind when I buy that new vacuum or the latest Airpods and something happens to them, not to mention I'm earning a solid 5% back on purchases I make through Amazon.