Credit card companies often have teams of people running ten of thousands of experiments every year trying to find the best way to discourage transactors (people who pay off their credit card every month) and encourage revolvers (people who don’t pay off their credit card every month).

The Amazon Rewards Visa is a welcome exception to this rule. Amazon normally must give some of their sales to credit card companies as a part of the normal agreement. With the Amazon card, Visa shares some of those fees with Amazon and Amazon in turn shares those fees back with the user to incentivize the card.

For this reason, the Amazon Rewards Visa Signature credit card is simply a great card for a family that spends any amount of money at Amazon.

The card offers 5% cash back on any Amazon purchase for Prime members and a 3% cash back for non-Prime members. This includes purchases at Whole Foods Market. The rewards accrue as points which you can use on any purchase at Amazon.

My wife and I have been Amazon Prime members for many years. During this time, we have had an Amazon Rewards Visa Signature credit card and charged most items to this card. The cost of a prime membership is currently $119 per year or $12.99 if you prefer to pay monthly. The benefits of a Prime membership include free two-day shipping on most items. It also includes Amazon Video streaming services.

Their current credit card welcome bonus is $200 if you have a prime membership and $100 if you do not. If each spouse applies for their own card, this enables you each to get their welcome bonus.

Since signing up we have our Amazon Rewards Visa Signature credit card as the default credit card for any Amazon purchases. I also set my Audible membership to bill to this credit card. As a result, each purchase receives 5% cash back. Assuming that you make at least $500 worth of purchases at Amazon each month, the extra 2% in rewards may be worth the cost of an annual membership alone. When you consider two-day free shipping and streaming services, our family thinks it is a good deal. It is a better deal for a family than a single individual. A prime membership can be shared with your “Amazon Household,” enabling two Amazon logins to share the membership.

It also offers 2% back at restaurants, gas stations, and drugstores and 1% everywhere else. I personally only use this card at Amazon and use cards with better rewards for other purchases.

I made sure that all the various marketing was turned off on this card. You have to do this periodically (every three years) in order to make sure that you avoid as much marketing as possible.

I also set an alert to automatically notify me if I make a purchase over $1. This is the best fraud alert that I have found. Any time after using my credit card I will receive an email telling me that I made a purchase. This is quick enough that I have not forgotten about my purchase but delayed enough to remind me what my purchase costs.

I then also set my entire credit card bill to automatically pay from my checking account each month. And I set the bill to come to me via postal mail in order to have a written record of my purchases and also in order to remind me that money will be flowing out of my checking account.

All in all, this card is a fairly easy way to pay 5% less for any Amazon purchase.

Background photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash. Screenshot of Amazon Rewards Visa Signature credit card from Amazon.com.