AN: this all is US-centric, other countries typically have lower cash-back rates and may have differing laws and regulations. 1. Cashback. You can expect a min

AN: this all is US-centric, other countries typically have lower cash-back rates and may have differing laws and regulations. 1. Cashback. You can expect a minimum of 2% with relatively easy to get cards. 2. Consumer protection. A bunch of this has been extended to debit cards, but it's more of a courtesy from Visa et al rather than a legal obligation. In short, you are legally protected from being made to pay debts that you do not rightfully owe. Anything you pay for with a credit card is incurring a debt rather than giving someone money. This is important because if the merchant uses fraud or misrepresentation and is not willing to fix things, you can assert your legal protection against the invalid debt through a charge-back. If you use cash, your legal recourse is suing them, which at the minimum will cost you a full day in small claims court. 3. Credit card float - buy now, pay a month from now. This isn't as big of a deal as the cash back, since you should have cash at least a month in advance, but at least it gets you the interest payments. The real benefit is that you can largely eliminate non-planned transactions from hitting your bank account balance, which gives you certainty of avoiding overdraft fees. If your everyday spend is on credit, you can look up last month's credit card statement balances and known fixed expenses (like rent) and verify that your bank account will remain positive through the end of the month. 4. Better fraud-handling flow. Your bank has 10 days to refund or give provisional credit for debit fraud. So it means you can be out thousands of dollars for over a week while they investigate. Credit card fraud has a much better flow - the issuer cancels your card and mails you a new one, and never collects any money from you.