Amazon prime credit card foreign transaction fee

Full Review of Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature Credit Card

Pros

• No annual fee

• 5% cash back on Amazon.com purchases

• Easy redemption while shopping

• No foreign transaction fee

Cons

• Requires a paid Amazon Prime membership to use its full benefits

• No 0% APR introductory offer

• Low one-time offer

Pros Explained

• No Annual Fee: The fact that this card has no annual fee is a point in its favor. Competitor cards on the other hand may require a membership to remove the annual fee.
• 5% Cash Back on Amazon.com Purchases: One of the biggest perks of this card is the consistently high rewards rate on purchases made at Amazon.com and Whole Foods Market. When you use your Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature credit card with these retailers, you get 5% back every time. There are no rotating bonus categories to complicate your life. Plus, you’ll get 2% back on purchases at gas stations, drugstores, and restaurants.
• Easy Redemption While Shopping: When you use this card, you can easily redeem your rewards while shopping on Amazon.com. In fact, your rewards balance will be visible to you, and you can choose to use your cash back to pay for all or part of your purchase when you check out.
• No Foreign Transaction Fee: With this card, you don't have to worry about foreign transaction fees when you travel abroad. And, because it’s a Visa card, it’s widely accepted around the world.

Cons Explained

• Requires a Paid Amazon Prime Membership for full benefits: While you don't have to pay an annual fee for the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature credit card, you do have to maintain a Prime membership for the full 5% and 10% benefits. Currently, a Prime membership is $139 per year. At that rate, if you spend at least $2,380 at Amazon.com and Whole Foods Market each year, you'll have earned back the cost of your Prime membership. 
• No 0% APR Introductory Offer: This card does not have a 0% APR introductory offer. So if you're shopping around for a balance transfer card, you might want to look elsewhere. For example, the American Express Blue Cash Everyday card has no annual fee and offers a 0% APR on purchases for 15 months.
• Low One-Time Offer: While you do receive a $100 Amazon gift card when you’re approved for this card, that's a fairly low one-time offer, even for a cash back card with no annual fee. For example, the SavorOne Rewards card from Capital One has a $200 bonus after spending $500 in the first 3 months of account opening, with no annual fee.

The Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature credit card, with its 5% cash back on purchases at Amazon.com and Whole Foods Market, is best for people who do a lot of their shopping at those retailers.

The extra cash back on restaurant, gas station, and drugstore purchases also makes this card attractive if those account for a large part of your spending.

Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature Credit Card Bonus

The bonus for this card is below average, at $100. (When you’re approved, you’ll receive a $100 Amazon.com gift card, which is instantly loaded to your account.) Many other cash back cards, including those with no annual fee, offer higher cash bonuses. 

Rewards Earning Details

This card offers 5% cash back on purchases made at Amazon.com and Whole Foods Market. Additionally, you can earn 2% cash back at restaurants, gas stations, and drugstores. All other purchases receive 1% cash back. 

Rewards Redemption Details

You can redeem your rewards by using Shop with Points at Amazon.com. When choosing your payment method at checkout, you select your Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature credit card, and you’ll automatically see how many points you have available—and how that translates into cash. You can then choose to use all of your available rewards, or a portion of them, to pay for your purchase.

Every 100 points is worth $1 on Amazon.com, making each point worth one cent. 

It's also possible to redeem your points through Chase, for gift cards, cash back, and travel, again at a value of one cent per point.

Transferring Points

You can’t directly transfer your Amazon rewards points to airlines or other partners. However, you can use points to purchase travel through the Chase website.

How to Maximize Your Rewards

The easiest way to maximize your rewards with this card is to do as much of your spending as possible at Amazon.com and Whole Foods Market to get the 5% cash back. There are no earnings limits.

Average Case

Amazon Prime members spend, on average, $1,371 a year at Whole Foods, according to a 2017 analysis by 1010Data. Additionally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2020 the average household spent $1,568 on gas, other fuels and motor oil. It also reports that the average household spent $2,375 on food away from home. 

At these average rates, the 5% cash back on spending at Whole Foods Market would come to $68.55, and the 2% cash back from gas and dining out would add another $78.86. That’s a total of $147.41 in cash back from just those three categories.

Even after offsetting the cost of the $139 Prime membership, this average household would come out about $28.41 ahead. And that still doesn’t account for whatever purchases they make at Amazon.com. 

Aspirational Case

The more of your spending you do at Amazon.com and Whole Foods Market, the greater your cash back rewards will be. For example:

• The average household spends $4,942 a year on groceries. Shifting all of that to Whole Foods Market would mean $247.10 in cash back.
• The average household also spends $1,434 on apparel and services. Moving that spending to Amazon.com would result in as much as $71.70 in cash back.
• Finally, the average household spends $646 a year on personal care products, which, if bought entirely on Amazon.com, would bring in another $32.30 in cash back.

The 5% cash back on all of those everyday purchases combined would total $351.10. A family could also make some of their major purchases, such computers, TVs, and furniture on Amazon.com and earn 5% cash back. Those kinds of purchases could easily boost their annual spending by another $2,000, resulting in an additional $100 cash back. After accounting for the cost of a Prime membership, the household would be $332.10 ahead—and that's not including their other purchases that earned 2% or 1% rewards. 

Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature Credit Card's Outstanding Benefits

• Consistent 5% cash back at Amazon.com and Whole Foods Market
• Extra cash back up to 25% on certain Amazon.com items through exclusive Prime cardmember offers—on top of the usual 5% back
• Ability to easily shop with your points
• Purchase protection*
• Special rates on more than 900 luxury hotels through the Visa Signature Luxury Hotel Collection

*Eligibility and Benefit level varies by Card. Terms, Conditions and Limitations Apply. Please visit americanexpress.com/benefitsguide for more details. Underwritten by AMEX Assurance Company.

Standard Benefits

• Zero fraud liability
• Auto rental collision damage waiver
• No foreign transaction fee
• Travel assistance

Cardholder Experience

Ratings on Amazon.com show this card receiving 4.3 out of 5 stars. 70% of the reviews gave it 5 stars, while 9% gave it 1 star. 

Chase, which issues the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature credit card, received a score of 807 out of 1,000 in J.D. Power’s 2021 U.S. Credit Card Satisfaction Study, two points below the national issuer average of 809.

In general, this card offers a fairly standard cardholder experience. Many of its perks also come with other Visa Signature cards. The experience is likely to be best for cardholders who redeem their rewards through Amazon's Shop with Points. 

Cardholders can manage their account online through Chase and can contact Chase by calling the number on the back of their card.

Security Features

As with many other credit cards, you can expect zero fraud liability with this card and you won’t be held responsible for unauthorized purchases. If you report a lost or stolen card you can receive an emergency replacement.

Fees to Watch Out For

While there's no annual fee, the fact that you need to be a Prime member—and pay $139 per year—is something to be aware of. Of course, a Prime membership also has other benefits that may be of value to you.

This card's other fees are in line with many competing credit cards. 

Our Verdict

If you shop frequently at Amazon.com and do a fair amount of grocery shopping at Whole Foods Market, this card, with its 5% cash back and no maximums, can be a valuable addition to your wallet. Additionally, the 2% cash back on purchases at gas stations, drugstores, and restaurants also offers the potential for significant rewards.

However, if you don't expect to do much shopping at Amazon.com or Whole Foods Market, the American Express Blue Cash Preferred card, with its 6% cash back at U.S supermarkets (up to $6,000 per year) and streaming services, 3% at U.S. gas stations and transit services, and 1% on all other purchases could be a good choice. There is a $95 annual fee, but it's still less than a Prime membership.

If you're more interested in consistent travel rewards, Capital One offers the Venture card, which provides 2X points for every dollar spent everywhere. As with the American Express Blue Cash Preferred card, there is a $95 annual fee.

In the end, the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature credit card is a good choice for people who do a lot of their shopping at Amazon.com and Whole Foods Market, especially if they’re already paying for a Prime membership anyway.

Investopedia Credit Card Rating Methodology

Investopedia is committed to delivering the best credit card recommendations in the industry. We’ll tell you when a card is good, we’ll tell you when a card is bad, and we’ll only call a card the best if we would recommend it to our friends or family members.

Overall Star Rating Explained

To rate credit cards we objectively assess, score and weight nearly 100 individual card features which roll up into five major feature sets: fees, interest, rewards, benefits and security/customer service. Here’s how we weighted those feature sets for the overall star rating of a card:

We have applied our proprietary rating methodology to every generally-accepted credit card in the U.S. domestic market to allow consumers to make fully informed choices. It’s important to note that for our overall score that we make a number of assumptions about how you would be using your credit card:

1. While we make no assumption as to whether balances are carried on a given card we do assign varying weights to all credit cards’ introductory APR (if present) in addition to the regular, long term purchase and balance transfer interest rates.
2. We utilize BLS (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics) income and average category spending data to calculate annual earnings rates for rewards cards that offer cash back, points or miles rewards at a set rate on all spending or in consideration of bonus rewards for certain spending categories, like gasoline, groceries, restaurants or travel.
3. We determine the maximum points value of rewards cards by dividing the points, cash back or miles required to exchange for the retail price of the most valuable redemption option (for example, in the case of a card that offers a domestic roundtrip airline ticket as a redemption option vs. another redemption option of lesser value that requires the same amount of points or miles to acquire, we would base the rewards value on the airline ticket).

• Cards that are selected best overall in their respective categories generally feature most if not all of the following attributes:
• Low or Reasonable Fees Credit card fees come in many forms but the primary ones involve those for annual card membership and balance transfer. There are a myriad of reward and non-reward card options that charge no annual fee but for the many that do assess an annual fee the cost is often justified by their lucrative ongoing rewards and initial signup bonuses. Balance transfer fees are occasionally waived during introductory periods with certain cards, a factor which is heavily and positively weighted in our scoring model for cards offering this benefit. When charged, balance transfer fees range between 3% - 5%, which we grade accordingly. Other standard fees can generally be avoided, such as those for paying late or taking cash advances but we rate those relative to other cards in the market for reference, though with less weight assigned
• Competitive Interest Many cards offer 0% introductory APR on purchases and balance transfers for varying lengths and then revert to a permanent or regular APR (based on a variable rate tied to the prime rate) that applies to any balances not paid in full. We rate both introductory APR percentage and length (in months) along with the midpoint of the variable regular APR interest rate range.
• Valuable Rewards Credit card reward programs can be based on cash back, points or travel rewards (which can be generic or travel partner-specific, as with airline and hotel co-brand card programs). For cards that offer rewards we determine the value per dollar spent along with average redemption values and assign more favorable ratings to cards that offer superior consumer value. We also assign value to sign-up bonus offers and their initial spending requirements, when present.
• Excellent Benefits Credit card benefits cover a range of offerings like concierge service, TSA Pre-check, auto rental coverage, travel accident insurance, lost luggage assistance and free credit scores. We rate cards on the number and level of over a dozen standard and upscale benefits and provide extra weighting emphasis for those travel-related perks that apply to premium travel cards when present.
• Solid Security/Customer Service Security and customer service features like lost or stolen card replacement, being able to lock one’s card from an issuer app and 24 hour customer support are becoming more standard across the card market and we provide a significant amount of weighting to features in this area.
• You can also read the full version of our methodology for a more in-depth look at how we assess cards and award them the best in various categories.

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