At the checkout these two pieces of plastic feel identical, but the safety net behind them is not even close.
With credit cards, federal law caps your liability for unauthorized credit card charges at $50, and many issuers waive even that. Debit cards play by different rules. If you report a stolen card more than two days after it was stolen, your liability jumps to $500, or your entire balance after 60 days.
A credit card can also pay you rewards. Americans earned $47.5 billion in credit card rewards in 2024, nearly double what they earned in 2020. That’s about $228 per cardholder — enough for a month of groceries or a nice date night. Debit cards earn you nothing.
With that stronger fraud protection and real rewards, here are five places I always use a credit card instead of a debit card.