Buying Life Insurance on a Credit Card

Last Updated: November 2019

Many people ask if it’s possible to pay for their life insurance on a credit card.

It makes sense. Who doesn’t want to rack up those credit card points for travel or cashback offers? It’s a savvy financial move.

Today we’re going to cover what you can and cannot pay for with a credit card in terms of life insurance.

• Can You Buy Life Insurance on a Credit Card?
• Life Insurance Tip Using a Credit Card
• Why Pay for Your 1st Year of Life Insurance with a Credit Card

With over a decade of experience writing life insurance across the nation, this article is going to answer some of the questions about buying life insurance with a credit card.

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Can You Buy Life Insurance on a Credit Card?

Currently, there’s only 1 company that will allow you to pay monthly on a credit card.  It’s a term life insurance company whose prices are higher than most companies.

Beyond this life insurance company, there are no other life insurance companies that will allow you to make ongoing payments on your Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover card.

So why don’t life insurance companies allow you to pay on a credit card?

Lapses.

With credit cards expiring, replacement cards being mailed out, going over your credit card limits resulting in declines and credit card fraud alerts making your credit card unusable sometimes, many life insurance policies lapse causing a lot of headaches for the carrier and for the insured (you).

There are costs involved from the life insurance companies’ point of view to always be mailing lapse letters, notifying your agent to get in contact with you and then processing the forms needed to change payment methods or the time it takes the company to re-draft the premium.

This is why companies don’t take monthly payments for life insurance premiums.  It’s simply a customer service nightmare for something you’re supposed to keep for decades.

HOWEVER, many life insurance companies will allow you to pay your initial premium payment on a credit card, but future payments must be done via electronic funds transfer from your bank account. This means you can pay your entire first year of life insurance premiums on a credit card.

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Can You Buy Life Insurance on a Debit Card?

For term, whole and universal life insurance, it’s considered the same as buying life insurance on a credit card. You can pay your initial premium that way, all the way up to your first year.

For final expense life insurance, some companies will take debit cards. Final expense life insurance is small whole life insurance policies meant to cover burial expenses and any final debts. Typically these are small $10,000 burial insurance policies for seniors ages 60-85.

The reason final expense companies take debit cards is that many fixed-income seniors take social security or even disability payment from the government.

Many of these payments are often deposited into debit accounts that the government has partnered with like Direct Express or NetSpend. So it makes sense for final expense companies to take debit cards and draft on the social security payment dates.

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Life Insurance Tip Using a Credit Card

We always encourage our clients to take advantage of life insurance companies letting you make your initial premium payment annually by putting it on your credit card because life insurance companies give you a discount for paying annually, usually in the 4-5% range.

Add to the fact that you get credit card rewards points for protecting your family with life insurance, we believe everyone should do this if it’s available with the company you’re applying with.

Don’t take our word for it, see for yourself. Run instant life insurance quotes on our website and we’ll give you the monthly premiums along with the annual premiums side by side. When you do this, take the monthly premium and multiply it by 12 and you’ll see it’s always more expensive than if you paid annually.

Here’s a quick example:

Some companies give bigger discounts for annual pay, so if you’re going to pay annually, don’t look at the monthly premiums on the quotes, look at the annual payments.

Many of our clients love the fact that you can pay annually on your credit card just for the fact they can collect reward points on their credit cards. Of course, this only makes sense if you pay your card off in a reasonable amount of time so you don’t pay interest charges.

Most life insurance agents won’t ever bring this option up because it’s not common knowledge within our industry that you can do this. However, we do this all the time and have researched the companies that accept initial credit card payments.

Here is a list of some companies that accept credit cards for the initial payments:

• American General
• Banner Life
• North American
• SBLI

Please note that credit card payments for these companies aren’t available in every state. Also, not all credit cards are taken with companies that do accept credit cards.  Please check with us or your agent.

There are more companies than these four listed above as well, so be sure to ask your agent.

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Why Pay for Your 1st Year of Life Insurance with a Credit Card

If you end up applying for life insurance with one of the carriers listed above, don’t forget about this credit card option. We recommend paying for your entire 1st year with your credit card because:

• You can get rewards points on your credit card.
• You’ll typically save 4% or more by paying annually.

A lot of agents and agencies out there aren’t aware that you can pay your first life insurance premium annually, so if you’re already in the process of buying life insurance make sure you ask your agent.

If you want to make ongoing monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or annual payments by credit card, there is one company that will do it. However they are expensive and have a limit on how much life insurance you can buy, so we don’t typically recommend them.

We don’t recommend paying monthly, quarterly, or semi-annually on a credit card because of credit cards expiring, as mentioned above.