Your credit card may already include coverage you’d otherwise pay extra for. Check your card’s guide to benefits before you buy the rental counter’s damage waiver, a store’s extended warranty, or your carrier’s phone insurance. Then pay with the card that covers you, since the coverage applies only to what you charge to it.
The guide spells out what each benefit pays, what it excludes, and how soon you must file a claim. Coverage differs from card to card and can shrink over time.
In 2018 and 2019, Chase, Citi, and Discover dropped price protection, which refunded the difference when an item’s price fell after you bought it. The Chase Freedom Flex still covers damage to rental cars but lost its cell phone protection on September 20, 2026. So read the current guide for every card you carry. Protections that come from federal law are the exception, since no issuer can cut them.
Benefits that vary by card
1. Rent cars on a card that covers damage
The counter charges for its waiver by the day, so the longer the rental, the more a card that already covers the car saves you.
Check whether your credit card covers collision damage and theft on rental cars before your next trip. Many cards do, but only if you pay for the whole rental with that card and decline the counter’s damage waiver. Read your card’s benefits guide first to confirm the coverage, then skip the waiver’s daily charge.
Read more: Decline the Rental Counter's Damage Waiver If Your Credit Card Covers the Car
2. Book trips on a card that covers cancellations
Cruise lines and tour operators often sell travel insurance when you book, and the coverage your card already carries can mean buying less of it, or none at all.
Many credit cards repay prepaid, nonrefundable costs when illness, severe weather, or another covered reason cancels or cuts short a trip you paid for with the card, and some cover meals and lodging during a long delay. Check your card’s guide to benefits before you buy travel insurance, and book with a card that carries the coverage.
Read more: Your Credit Card Can Cover a Canceled Trip - Check It Before Buying Travel Insurance
3. Claim for new purchases damaged or stolen
You don’t sign up for this one, since it applies on its own to new purchases charged to a card that has it.
Many credit cards include purchase protection, which typically covers new items against theft and accidental damage for 90 to 120 days after you buy them. When something new breaks or gets stolen, check your card’s guide to benefits before paying to replace it, and file quickly, since claim deadlines are short.
Read more: Your Credit Card's Purchase Protection Covers What Your Wallet Doesn't
4. Skip a store warranty your card duplicates
Don’t confuse this with purchase protection, which covers theft and accidental damage. This one covers an item that stops working on its own.
Check your credit card’s guide to benefits before you pay for a store’s extended warranty. Many cards add a year to the manufacturer’s warranty at no extra cost on items bought with the card, so the store’s plan can duplicate coverage you already have. Keep the receipt and warranty in case the item breaks.
Read more: Your Credit Card May Already Extend the Warranty - Check It Before the Store's Plan
5. Move the phone bill to a card with coverage
Unlike the other benefits here, this one depends on a monthly bill rather than a single purchase, so the coverage lasts only while that bill stays on the card.
Cell phone protection on many credit cards covers theft and damage to every phone on your wireless bill if that card pays the bill. Check your card’s guide to benefits, move the bill to a card that has it, and drop the carrier’s plan unless you need lost-phone coverage or your phones cost more than the card’s per-claim cap.
Read more: Your Credit Card Can Insure Your Phone - If It Pays the Bill
Protections that come from federal law
6. Pay with credit instead of debit
Every credit card carries this one, so it covers you even on a basic card with none of the benefits that vary.
Debit card fraud pulls money straight from your checking account, and your bank can take 10 business days to return it. A fraudulent credit card charge is the issuer’s money while you dispute it, and federal law caps your loss at $50. Pay with a credit card you clear each month, and keep debit for the ATM.
Read more: Credit Cards Offer Stronger Fraud Protection Than Debit Cards
7. Challenge a bad charge in writing
Where the fraud cap protects you from charges you never made, this right covers charges you did make that went wrong.
If your credit card statement shows a charge for something that never arrived, a purchase billed twice, or the wrong amount, federal law makes your card issuer investigate. Send a written dispute early enough to arrive within 60 days of the first statement showing the charge.
Read more: Never Got What You Paid For? Dispute the Credit Card Charge Within 60 Days
The card you pay with decides which of these protections you get, since some come only with certain cards and the ones federal law sets come with every credit card. Look up the current benefits guide for each card you carry, then put each purchase on the card whose guide covers it.
Editorial & Advertiser Disclosure: The editorial content on this page is not provided, commissioned, reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any advertiser. Opinions expressed here are ours alone, not those of any advertiser. The offers that appear on this site are from companies that compensate us. That compensation may influence which products we cover and where and how they appear on a page – including the order in which they appear – but it does not influence our evaluations, ratings, or opinions. We do not include every company or offer available in the marketplace.
Related:
