The Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature card was my first credit card, and it’s still my favorite card.

This card was an easy choice for me as I shop a lot online and was already an Amazon Prime member. I’ve set up Amazon Subscribe & Save orders for all kinds of recurring purchases, from rawhide bones for my dog ​​to shampoo for me. Whenever I run out of something like comfy socks or office supplies, both of which are very important to writers, I check Amazon to see if I can get the product shipped within a day or two. I also like to browse Kindle books for sale and grab any titles I want that are under $ 3.

Plus, every holiday season, my family and I send each other Amazon Wish Lists. Almost all of my holiday shopping is on Amazon.

Rewards for Amazon and Whole Foods purchases

Because I buy products from Amazon so often, I really liked the unlimited rewards on shopping at Amazon.com. The card returns 5% as points, with each point translating to 1 cent.

You can redeem points for money deposited to your bank account, credit on a statement, gift cards, or travel, but I almost always apply them to Amazon purchases. When you go to your Amazon cart and select this card as your payment option, you can see how many points you have and apply them to your purchase if you want.

You also get 5% cash back on your spending at Whole Foods. I don’t buy from Whole Foods as often as I do from Amazon.com, but when I do, it’s nice to know I’m getting a great reward rate. If you’re an organic food lover but wary of Whole Foods’ reputation for expensive specialty items, using this card would be a good way to offset some of the costs.

And I might use the benefits of Whole Foods more since Amazon integrated its Prime Now grocery delivery service into its main site. With this change, I can go from buying a pair of socks to buying a smoothie without having to log into a separate app.

Other benefits

The Amazon Prime Rewards card offers decent rewards on non-Amazon spending. The 2% return in restaurants, gas stations and drugstores is not very important to me because I buy a lot of pharmacy products from the Amazon site itself, I don’t own a car and I don’t eat not much in the restaurant. However, I do enjoy earning 1% rewards on all other purchases. I don’t feel limited to shopping on Amazon because I always earn rewards, even if I buy from a competitor.

I like that the card lets you choose to forgo rewards on large purchases and instead get a six, 12, or 18-month interest-free payment plan, depending on the size of your purchase. I have my eye on a robot vacuum that’s currently listed for $ 799, which is way more than my typical discretionary spending for a month. If I go ahead and choose equal monthly payments, I will owe $ 44.39 per month for 18 months. It would be much easier to budget. I know I could get a balance transfer card or purchase a card with a 0% introductory APR offer, but rarely apply for new cards and am happy to have this benefit available without needing to fill out a new one. ask or jump through all the hoops.

And I’m glad there is no annual fee for the Amazon Prime Rewards card. It’s true that the $ 119 (plus tax) cost of a Prime membership does indeed act as an annual fee, but I was already paying it anyway for free two-day shipping, video streaming, and other perks. Premium. I’ve earned around $ 175 in rewards on the card over the past year, which more than makes up for the cost of membership.

Alternatives I have considered

I reviewed the Discover it® Cash Back Card, but ultimately decided not to use it. This card offers 5% cashback (upon activation, up to $ 1,500 in purchases per quarter, then 1%) on categories that change quarterly and 1% on other expenses. I was hoping this would be a good card to match the Amazon Prime Rewards rate for purchases on Amazon.com. But when I saw the Discover it Cash Back Calendar, I knew there would be a few quarters each year that I wouldn’t get much out of the rewards program.

For example, one category this year, April through June, is “gas stations, wholesale clubs, and some streaming services.” I don’t shop at gas stations or wholesale clubs, and rarely spend more than $ 10 to $ 20 a month on streaming services outside of Amazon Prime Video. While some may like to change their rewards, having to stay on top of rotating categories activation and trying to rearrange my spending every three months doesn’t really appeal to me.

Instead, I’m thinking of getting the Citi® Double Cash Card because it offers 1% cashback when you spend and then an extra 1% when you pay for the purchase. I usually pay my balance in full each month, which works out to a 2% reward rate. This beats the 1% Amazon Prime Rewards card on most other retailers. If I use this card when I’m not shopping at Amazon.com or Whole Foods, I could earn more money. I don’t think I will ever want to give up my Amazon Prime Rewards card, but I might want to pair it with this card or another cash back card to maximize the rewards I earn.