Your Best Travel Companion: Choose Your Next Travel Credit Card Based on These 5 Criteria
Traveling costs money
Travelling is one of the great joys in life. Traveling helps us expand our horizons, increase our creativity and our patience for difficult situations, and allows us to see a bit of this big and beautiful world we call home.
However, traveling takes money. That’s not to say you can’t travel unless you’re very wealthy, but a certain amount of funds is definitely required. From hotels to hostels, from street food to rooftop bars, there’s one thing that every location in the world has in common, and that’s costing money.
To fund their travel dreams, people will pinch every penny until they have enough in the bank, but did you know that a travel credit card/digital credit card can help you reach your travel goals even faster?
What are travel credit cards/digital cards?
Travel credit cards are a type of reward credit card. These types of credit cards allow customers to benefit from the money they spend, either through program-specific points systems, a cash back percentage on cash spent annually, or (in this case) on travel-related expenses, such as hotels, flights, and car rentals. Similarly, digital credit cards are the same thing, but are instead hosted online and not a physical, plastic card.
Most travel cards work off a points system. Points are accumulated based on how much is charged to the credit card, with individual purchases or locations garnering the user more points than others. For example, your travel credit card may give you double the points on any purchases made at certain restaurant chains, grocery stores, or gas stations since they have an agreement with the provider.
How to choose a travel credit cards/digital cards?
If you’re shopping for a travel credit card or digital credit card that will get you closer to completing your bucket list, here are 5 important criteria you should consider when choosing your next travel credit card:
- High rewards
Your travel card’s entire purpose is to earn you rewards, so look for a card that does just that at a high rate. Cards that offer 1.5% or 2% of your spending will help you reach your travel goals much faster. Also look for cards that offer signup bonuses. Many cards offer lump sums of points for a certain amount spent within a certain time period. - How you redeem the rewards
Don’t get suckered in by a rewards card that sounds too good to be true, only to realize you can’t easily redeem those hard-earned points! Some cards also have points that expire, which means that all your points will merely disappear. To avoid this, make sure you read all the fine print, so you know exactly how your points are redeemed. - Think about what protection you may need
Many travel cards also offer great incentives like travel assistance, travel cancellation protection, or other perks that could help you if you ever got in trouble financially or got stuck while traveling. Look at it as an extra bit of travel insurance! - Consider where the card is accepted
Some rewards cards are not as widely accepted overseas. So if international travel is in the cards for you (no pun intended) make sure you’re investing in a card that you can use the world over. If you’re not sure if your credit card will be accepted, you can also opt for something like ePayLater, which is a digital credit card that allows you to book now & pay later with ePayLater. - Beware of cancelling
Some people open travel rewards cards, get the signup bonuses, and them promptly cancel them when the points are redeemed. However, this can be bad for your credit score and may make other credit card issuers wary of you in the future.
There are more and more travelers opt for cashless travel for security reasons and grabbing one of these travel credit card literally killing 2 birds with one stone! – Travel Feeder
About The Author
Cecil Lee
The author is an avid traveler and photography hobbyist who loves to share with others his travel and photo-taking experience in many popular tourist destinations around Europe, Asia and Australasia. Read the exciting stories with many photos captured on his journeys.
