Prime Visa card Review | Bankrate (2024)

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The Prime Visa Card is one of the best online shopping credit cards due to its high reward rates on Amazon purchases with no spending caps and Visa Signature benefits. If you use it to its full potential, you can easily offset the cost of your Amazon Prime membership while enjoying other key perks, such as a few surprisingly rich travel and purchase protections.

However, the cost of an Amazon Prime membership and being limited to mostly Amazon-related purchases for your best reward rates are the biggest drawbacks — but these are minor nitpicks compared to what many other store cards don't offer.

• Rewards

  • 5 percent back at Amazon.com, Whole Foods Market
  • 5 percent back on Chase Travel purchases
  • 2 percent back at restaurants and gas stations
  • 2 percent back on local transit and commuting (example: rideshares)
  • 1 percent back on all other purchases

  Expert Appraisal: Good
  See our expert analysis

• Welcome offer

  • Get a $100 Amazon Gift Card instantly upon approval exclusively for Prime members

  Expert Appraisal: Fair
  See our expert analysis

• Rates and fees

  • No annual fee ($139 Amazon Prime subscription required)
  • No foreign transaction fee
  • 19.49 percent to 27.49 percent variable ongoing APR

  Expert Appraisal: Typical
  See our expert analysis

• Other cardholder perks

  • Visa Signature Luxury Hotel Collection and Concierge Service
  • Travel and purchase protections

  Expert Appraisal: Good
  See our expert analysis

If you're a frequent Amazon shopper, the Prime Visa card may be a good fit because it has a high rewards rate for Amazon purchases. You can also earn rewards for shopping at Whole Foods, restaurants, gas stations and more. This flexibility is astounding for any cash back card, let alone a retail card. The card also carries a decent welcome offer, multiple ways to redeem rewards and no annual fee.

Welcome offer: Solid value for a retail card

Amazon is currently offering a gift card worth $100 just for getting approval for the Prime Visa card. While that's half as much as the card's previous of a $200 gift card and falls short of the bonus value you'll find on some of the best no-annual-fee cash back and rewards cards out there, it's quite impressive for a retail card bonus. Indeed, many store cards offer no sign-up bonus at all.

The new bonus also stands out among the best credit card sign-up bonuses since there is no spending requirement (you receive the bonus instantly upon approval). Most bonuses of this value require at least $500 in spending in your first three months. The bonus is especially nice since it can offset a large chunk of the cost of an Amazon Prime membership for the first year.

Rewards: Great rewards rate on Amazon.com, Whole Foods

Amazon.com, Whole Foods Market and Chase travel purchases earn an unlimited 5 percent back in rewards. Plus, you’ll earn 2 percent at restaurants, gas stations and transit, along with 1 percent back on all other purchases.

Regular Amazon shoppers will have no problem earning plenty of rewards with the Prime Visa card. With one of the highest-earning rates available for Amazon purchases, you’ll only need to spend $2,780 each year on Amazon or Whole Foods purchases to offset the cost of your Prime membership — or about $232 per month. Since the 5 percent category also applies to Whole Foods Market, the Prime Visa is also one of the best cards for grocery rewards rates if you do your grocery shopping there.

Cardholder perks: Decent travel benefits

The Prime Visa card carries a surprising number of benefits for a retail card, such as Luxury Hotel Collection benefits, concierge service and premium travel perks. The Visa Signature level of the Luxury Hotel Collection grants cardholders seven VIP Guest status amenities, including automatic room upgrades when available and other complimentary privileges. When you need to save time planning your travel or even at home, the free Visa Signature Concierge Service is like a 24-hour personal assistant that can book reservations, tickets and more.

Your card’s travel accident insurance (coverage up to $500,000), lost luggage reimbursem*nt (up to $3,000 per passenger) and baggage delay insurance (reimburses up to $100 per day for three days) do a little to smooth the rough edges of airport travel. And if you’re on the road, the auto rental collision damage waiver and roadside dispatch service can help in a pinch. Your Prime Visa also offers purchase protection that covers damage or theft up to $500 per claim ($50,000 per account). Considering how light co-branded store cards are on perks, the Prime Visa card’s depth of travel protection coverage is remarkable.

Since it’s a Visa Signature credit card, it comes with a handful of travel and shopping protections that are standard to many rewards cards. But even these “standard” Visa benefits outweigh those of rival networks, like Discover.

Though the Prime Visa card features a fantastic tiered rewards system for a great variety of purchases, if you aren't an Amazon Prime member or don't want to be, you’ll forgo maximum rewards, impacting your rewards-earning potential. In addition, you cannot redeem points toward any Chase Rewards programs or portals, nor can you pool points with any Chase Ultimate Rewards cards you have, restricting your point redemption possibilities.

Rates and fees: Must have Amazon Prime membership

The rates and fees for the Prime Visa card are standard, but the “no annual fee” comes with an important footnote. You must have an Amazon Prime membership to get the card, which is currently $14.99 per month or $139 each year if you pay for a whole year upfront.

It’s now tougher to recoup your membership cost with Amazon purchases. However, leaning on your other categories can help fill gaps in your rewards if you aren’t spending enough annually on Amazon or Whole Foods purchases.

Amazon comes with a variety of valuable benefits, but the cost of Amazon Prime just for this card might not be worth it for shoppers who don’t regularly shop at Amazon or won’t take advantage of other Amazon services like Prime Video. It takes spending at least $232 each month across Amazon.com and Whole Foods to break even on a Prime membership.

Otherwise, you have to spend almost $580 per month across your 2 percent categories with the card to break even with the cost of a Prime membership. The no-annual-fee Amazon Rewards Visa Signature Card might be a more reasonable alternative if you don’t spend much money on Amazon.com. The standard Amazon Rewards Visa card doesn’t require a Prime subscription but carries a slightly lower rewards rate.

The upside is that the Prime Visa’s ongoing APR can be well below the current average credit card interest rate and has no foreign transaction fees to worry about if you frequently travel.

Redemption: Points have limited options

Although the reward terms make it sound like you’re earning cash back, you’re actually earning points. You can redeem your points at a 1:1 value toward cash back, travel, gift cards or Amazon purchases upon checkout — meaning each point you earn with the Prime Visa card is worth 1 cent no matter how you redeem it.For example, 50,000 Amazon points equals $50.

Though you don’t need to meet a minimum rewards balance to redeem for cash back or for Amazon purchases, there’s a disappointingly long list of what you can’t buy with points. Many of these items are small purchases that you would probably use points on more often, such as music, Kindle eBooks and video downloads.

You cannot transfer points to other programs or portals. This is a huge bummer considering Chase issues the card and the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal is among the most rewarding travel portals and several Chase cards can access it. Besides earning cash back toward Chase travel purchases, you can’t take advantage of Chase’s rewards perks — like point transfers. Depending on what you may spend points on, redeeming for general cash back might be the most flexible option.

Several members of the Bankrate staff love the Prime Visa card and dedicate a regular slot in their wallets to it. Bankrate editor Nouri Zarrugh enjoys the versatility Amazon.com online shopping rewards adds to his credit card rotation:

The Prime Visa card has given a nice boost to my cash back strategy. Considering the variety of items available on Amazon, this card gets you 5 percent back on almost anything you can think of — from streaming subscriptions via Amazon Channels to grocery deliveries via Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods to tools and home goods — making this easily one of the most versatile cards in my wallet.

— Nouri Zarrugh, Senior Editor at Bankrate

The Prime Visa card is undoubtedly worth it if you frequently order from Amazon — especially if you spend big during the holidays or on Amazon Prime Day.

With the Prime Visa card, you can easily offset your Prime membership cost, better protect your purchases and enjoy a few travel perks. The unlimited 5 percent rewards easily outperform other credit cards’ online shopping categories.

On the flip side, a general-purpose rewards card may earn more rewards for your spending if you prefer higher rewards rates on more variable bonus categories or other online retailers. (Note: business owners may save even more with the Amazon Business Prime American Express Credit Card’s extra reward categories.) Still, the Prime Visa offers better rates and more versatile rewards than many store cards.

Dig deeper: Is the Prime Visa Card worth it?

*All information about theCapital One® Walmart Rewards® Card, and Amazon Business Prime American Express Credit Card has been collected independently by Bankrate.com and has not been reviewed or approved by the issuer.

We rate credit cards using a proprietary card scoring system that ranks each card’s estimated average rewards rate, estimated annual earnings, welcome bonus value, APR, fees, perks and more against those of other cards in its primary category.

Each card feature is assigned a weighting based on how important it is to people looking for a card in a given category. These features are then scored based on how they rank relative to the features on other cards in the category. Based on these calculations, each card receives an overall rating of 1-5 stars (with 5 being the highest possible score and 1 being the lowest).

We analyzed over 150 of the most popular rewards and cash back cards to determine where each stacked up based on their value, cost, benefits and more. Here are some of the key factors that influenced this card’s overall score and how the score influenced our review:

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