Three Innovative Tips for Using Your Credit Card

"Guest contributor Michael shares 3 tips to optimise the value of our credit card in this post."

Credit cards are handy things to have and there are a lot of benefits to owning one – it helps you build credit, fund your start up, or for just simply buy airline tickets for a quick jaunt to a beach in Malaysia. Other more popular benefits to owning a credit card is that it lets you accumulate points that could go towards air travel miles while other credit cards offer very enticing rewards such as free coffee at your favourite coffee shop or a trip to the spa. We’ll delve into some of the lesser known benefits of having a credit card.

Boost Your Reward Points by Picking the Right Store

We’ve already mentioned that credit card lets you earn points. However, credit card issuers have different rules about how much points you earn based on where you shop. For example, some cards will let you earn double points for grocery purchases while you’ll earn just one point for regular purchases. Besides, it would be a good idea to find out a particular store’s Merchant Category Code (MCC) in order to know whether your purchases will let you earn more points or not. This is because even stores that are from a same retailer will have different categories. So you should compare and check your store’s MCC to learn which one qualifies for more points.

Extend the Warranty of Your Gadget

Credit card issuers also offer their own benefits regardless of what bank issued it. If you use your credit card to pay for gadgets, the more obvious benefit to doing that is that you usually get 0% interest on that purchase. However, did you know that card issuers can extend the warranty on that gadget? For eligible items, MasterCard and Discover will double the warranty of the original manufacturer for items bought with their cards. American Express, on the other hand, doubles the U.S. manufacturer’s warranty for up to an additional year for items with warranties of five years or less.

Dodge the Need for Car Rental Insurance

If you travel for business a lot and you have to rent out a car, you should be able to save on the cost of insuring your rental car by using your credit card. Visa has an auto rental collision damage waiver that they provide to all of their Visa Standard Credit, Visa Rewards Credit, and Visa Premium Rewards Cards customers. In other words, travellers who complete the rental transaction by using their Visa card save the extra cost for the collision damage waiver (offered by the car rental company) as it is already covered by Visa’s waiver.

Nonetheless, we need to bear in mind that the valid cardholder should be the primary renter of the vehicle so that the renter is eligible for this benefit. The theft or damage should be reported to Visa within 45 days. Collision damage waivers are not insurance per se but it means that the car rental company waives their right to collect a higher deductible from the renter if their car figures in a collision or is stolen. These typically cost $15 to $35 per day so the savings can be significant for frequent travellers.

 

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Author Bio

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This article was written by Michael for Compare Hero, Malaysia’s leading financial comparison website. Compare a broad range of financial products, from credit card plans, Internet plans, to insurance plans.

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