Can You Pay for Life Insurance with a Credit Card?

Paying premiums with your credit card can be a convenient way to earn rewards points or cash back on an essential expense. You could even earn more on it as a recurring bill. But it’s not always the best move, depending on how you manage your credit and your insurance provider’s policies. Let’s break down when it works, when it doesn’t, and which Canadian insurers will actually accept credit card payments for life insurance.

Can you pay for life insurance with a credit card?

Whether you can pay your life insurance premiums with a credit card depends on the insurance provider. Some insurers—like PolicyMe, CPP, and Canada Life (in certain cases)—allow it as one of their payment options. However, this can come with limitations, such as only paying by credit for annual payments, not monthly.

At the time of publishing, you can pay for life insurance on an annual basis with the following Canadian companies:

Why don’t all life insurance companies accept credit cards?

Many insurers don’t allow ongoing credit card payments to prevent policies from lapsing if a card expires or goes over the limit. PolicyMe has a measure in place to notify customers if this happens and prevent a potential lapse.

Some Canadians see credit card payments for life insurance as a great way to earn rewards points, miles, or cash back on a necessary expense. But keep in mind: with many providers, you may only be able to use your credit card for the first year (or not at all).

With PolicyMe, you have the option to pay for your monthly premiums with a credit card for the entire length of your term life insurance.

Should you pay for life insurance with your credit card?

Using a credit card to pay for life insurance premiums can be convenient, but it’s not always the right choice. 

When it makes sense:

When it doesn’t make sense:

Using cash back credit cards for insurance

When you have term life insurance, you hope to outlive your policy—which, unfortunately, means no payout for your beneficiaries. By using a cash back credit card, you can get a bit of a return to help offset those premiums.

Many cash back and rewards credit cards give you an increased earn rate for using them to pay your recurring bills—includinginsurance. These rates can be anywhere from 1–3% or more, depending on your card. If you have a Visa, Mastercard, or American Express that earns you rewards, consider this:

• Say your insurance policy costs $30 a month
• Assuming a 3% earn rate on recurring bills, you’ll earn $0.90 monthly on your premium payments
• Over the course of a year, this is $10.80 that you can apply as a statement credit

While $10.80 isn’t a lot of cash back, if you went the direct debit route, you’d get nothing. 

The bottom line: Paying for insurance with a credit card can be a smart way to help rack up rewards, but only if you’re disciplined about paying your balance.

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