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- Safety
Paying with a credit card makes it easier to avoid losses from fraud. When your debit card is used by a thief, the money is missing from your account instantly. Legitimate expenses for which you’ve scheduled online payments or mailed checks may bounce, triggering insufficient funds fees and affecting your credit. Even if not your fault, these late or missed payments can lower your credit score.
- Keeping Vendors Honest
Say you hire a tile setter to set some flooring in your entryway. Workers spend the weekend cutting, measuring, grouting, placing the spacers and tiles and letting the whole thing set. They then charge you $4,000 for their troubles.
You draw upon your savings account and write a check. But what do you do when, 72 hours later, the tile starts to shift and the grout still hasn’t set? Your entryway is now a complete mess, and that vein in your forehead won’t stop throbbing.
You can take up the issue with your state licensing board, but that process could take months and the contractor still has your money. That’s why, if you can, you should pay for a big-ticket item like this with a credit card. The issuer has an incentive to discourage fraud among its vendors, and if there is a problem, they have a mechanism to try to resolve it. More important, if you dispute the charge, the card issuer withholds the funds from the tile setter, and not only will you get your money back, you might even get help finding a new contractor.
- Grace Period
When you make a debit card purchase, your money is gone right away. When you make a credit card purchase, your money remains in your checking account until you pay your credit card bill.
Hanging on to your funds for this extra time can be helpful in two ways. First, the time value of money, however infinitesimal, will save you money. Delaying eventual payment makes your purchase a tiny bit cheaper than it would be otherwise. Beyond that, by paying with a credit card versus your debit card, cash, or check, your cash will spend more time in your bank account. And if you pay your credit card from an interest-bearing checking account, you will earn money during the grace period. The extra cash will eventually add up to a meaningful amount.
Second, when you consistently pay with a credit card you don’t have to watch your bank account balance as closely.
- Insurance
Most credit cards automatically come with a number of consumer protections that people don’t even realize they have, such as rental car insurance (though often secondary to your personal auto insurance), travel insurance, and product warranties that may exceed the manufacturer’s warranty.
- Universal Acceptance
Certain purchases are difficult to make with a debit card. When you want to rent a car or stay in a hotel room, you’ll almost certainly have an easier time if you have a credit card. Rental car companies and hotels want customers to pay with credit cards because it makes it easier to charge customers for any damage they cause to a room or a car. Another reason is that, unless you have prepaid for your rental or hotel stay, the merchant doesn’t know the final amount of your transaction. The merchant, therefore, needs to block out a certain amount of your available credit line to protect themselves from potential charges they didn’t anticipate.
So if you want to pay for one of these items with a debit card, the company may insist on putting a hold of several hundred dollars on your account.
Also, when you’re traveling in a foreign country, merchants won’t always accept your debit card—even when it has a major bank logo on it.
- Building Credit
If you have no credit or are trying to improve your credit score, using a credit card responsibly will help because credit card companies will report your payment activity to the credit bureaus. However, debit card use doesn’t appear anywhere on your credit report, so it can’t help you build or improve your credit. Even if you need to deposit some funds to get a secured credit card, this can help you build your credit history and eventually qualify for unsecured cards or larger loans.
