Does cash back apply to online payments with credit card
"Retail purchases are purchases made at retail, i.e.: as a consumer/individual customer. That would include any ""standard"" individual expenditure, but may exclude wholesale sales or purchases from merchants who identify themselves as service providers to businesses. Specifics of these limitations really depend on your card issuer, and you should inquire with the customer service at what are their specific eligibility requirements. As an example, here in the US many cards give high cash-back for gasoline purchases, but only at ""retail"" locations. That excludes wholesale/club sellers like Costco, for example."
If you paid by debit/credit card, there is an expiration period to the authorization the seller is given by the merchant processor, although that timeframe is dictated by the credit card company/bank, merchant processor, and sometimes by state law.   That being said, the other posters are correct that technically, once you authorize  charge, the seller has the right to expect fulfillment of the agreement, that you would pay them X dollars for Y product. No. PayPal payments are credited to a PayPal account. PayPal doesn't let you pay arbitrary banks or credit cards, that defeats the purpose of PayPal and there are other services which can do that cheaper or with less hassle. You need to find another mutually available and satisfactory option with your client. I paid with my Visa credit card. Generally on credit cards, the holds / authorizations are valid for a month on single transactions. So if you haven't been charged on your card, it seems that there was some technical error with the online market place. They were not able to trace this. Is there an expiration date on these kind of online purchases? Should I expect the money to be withdrawn at any time? There are 2 different aspects, one is do you still owe them money and can they ask you; It would be yes, I don't know the timelines. This would depend on establishing a contract etc. They can contact you for unpaid invoice. Can they again charge the credit card automatically ... generally No. I'm in the US, and I can't speak for all credit cards, but I have done this in the past. I've paid extra on my credit card, and had a positive balance on my credit card account. The purchases made after paying extra were applied to the balance, and if there was money left over on the statement closing date, I didn't owe anything that month.  Of course, I didn't incur any interest charges, but I never pay interest anyway, as I always pay my statement in full each month and never take a cash advance on my credit card.  You could call your credit card company and ask them what will happen, or if you are feeling adventurous, you could just send them some extra money and see what happens. Most likely, they will just apply it to your account and give you a positive balance. Debit cards with the Visa or Mastercard symbol on them work technically everywhere where credit cards work. There are some limitations where the respective business does not accept them, for example car rentals want a credit card for potential extra charges; but most of the time, for day-to-day shopping and dining, debit cards work fine. However, you should read up the potential risks. A credit card gives you some security by buffering incorrect/fraudulent charges from your account, and credit card companies also help you reverse incorrect charges, before you ever have to pay for it. If you use a debit card, it is your money on the line immediately - any incorrect charge, even accidential, takes your money from your account, and it is gone while you work on reversing the charge. Any theft, and your account can be cleaned out, and you will be without money while you go after the thief. Many people consider the debit card risk too high, and don't use them for this reason. However, many people do use them - it is up to you. Cash-back also lets the store turn hard currency into an electronic transfer or check, which reduces the hassle/risk of hauling bagfulls of cash to the bank. (The smaller stores I've spoken to have called this out as a major advantage of plastic over either cash or checks. I'm assuming that the problem scales with number and size of transactions.) "Understand that buying a Starbucks gift card at the grocery store to receive 6% back on your coffee rather than 6% back on your groceries is an exploit of a flaw in the benefits program, not a feature.  It's definitely not a blanket yes or no answer, the only way to find out is to try. Separately, I don't know why you would find this ""concerning.""  This will vary greatly between merchants and cards.  There will always be new points churning exploits, they don't last forever and you can't expect every customer service rep to be well versed in methods employed to juice cardmember programs. Hell, a number of years ago one person figured out that he could buy rolls of $1 coins from the US treasury with free shipping and no additional fees.  This guy was literally buying thousands of dollars of cash each month to deposit and pay his credit card bill; completely against the terms of the treasury program for distributing the $1 coins.  A number of people had their cards and points/cash back revoked for that one." Yes, but note that some credit card companies let you create virtual cards--you can define how much money is on them and how long they last.  If you're worried about a site you can use such a card to make the payment, then get rid of the virtual number so nobody can do dirty deeds with it. In practice, however, companies that do this are going to get stomped on hard by the credit card companies--other than outright scams it basically does not happen.  (Hacking is another matter--just pick up the newspaper.  It's not exactly unusual to read of hackers getting access to credit card information that they weren't supposed to have access to in the first place.) So long as you deal with a company that's been around for a while the risk is trivial. Most merchants (also in Europe) are reasonable, and typically are willing to work with you. credit card companies ask if you tried to work with the merchant first, so although they do not enforce it, it should be the first try. I recommend to give it a try and contact them first. If it doesn't work, you can always go to the credit card company and have the charge reversed. None of this has any effect on your credit score (except if you do nothing and then don't pay your credit card bill). For the future: when a transaction supposedly 'doesn't go through', have them write this on the receipt and give it to you. Only then pay cash. I am travelling 100+ days a year in Europe, using my US credit cards all the time, and there were never any issues - this is not a common problem. "To avoid nitpicks, i state up front that this answer is applicable to the US; Europeans, Asians, Canadians, etc may well have quite different systems and rules. You have nothing to worry about if you pay off your credit-card statement  in full on the day it is due in timely fashion. On the other hand, if you routinely carry a balance from month to month or have taken out cash advances, then making whatever payment you want to make that month ASAP will save you more in finance charges than you could ever earn on the money in your savings account. But, if you pay off each month's balance in full, then read the fine print about when the payment is due very carefully: it might say that payments received before 5 pm will be posted the same day, or it might say before 3 pm, or before 7 pm EST, or noon PST, etc etc etc. As JoeTaxpayer says, if you can pay on-line with a guaranteed day for the transaction (and you do it before any deadline imposed by the credit-card company), you are fine.  My bank allows me to write ""electronic"" checks on its website, but a paper check is mailed to the credit-card company. The bank claims that if I specify the due date, they will mail the check enough in advance that the credit-card company will get it by the due date, but do you really trust the USPS to deliver your check by noon, or whatever? Besides the bank will put a hold on that money the day that check is cut. (I haven't bothered to check if the money being held still earns interest or not).  In any case, the bank disclaims all responsibility for the after-effects (late payment fees, finance charges on all purchases, etc) if that paper check is not received on time and so your credit-card account goes to ""late payment"" status.  Oh, and my bank also wants a monthly fee for its BillPay service (any number  of such ""electronic"" checks allowed each month). The BillPay service does include payment electronically to local merchants and utilities that have accounts at the bank and have signed up to receive payments electronically. All my credit-card companies allow me to use their website to authorize them to collect the payment that I specify from my bank account(s). I can choose the day, the amount, and which of my bank accounts they will collect the money from, but I must do this every month. Very conveniently, they show a calendar for choosing the date with the due date marked prominently, and as mhoran_psprep's comment points out, the payment can be scheduled well in advance of the date that the payment will actually be made, that is, I don't need to worry about being without Internet access because of travel and thus being unable to login to the credit-card website to make the payment on  the date it is due. I can also sign up for AutoPay which takes afixed amount/minimum payment due/payment in full (whatever I choose)  on the date due, and this will happen month after month after month  with no further action necessary on my part.  With either choice,  it is up to the card company to collect money from my account on the day specified, and if they mess up, they cannot charge late payment fees or finance charge on new purchases etc.  Also, unlike  my bank, there are no fees for this service. It is also worth noting that many people do not like the idea of the credit-card company withdrawing money from their bank account, and so this option is not to everyone's taste." Probably not. I say probably because your credit card's terms of service may treat certain purchases (I'm thinking buying traveler's checks off-hand) as cash advances. See also this question. I'm not sure if you are including the use of credit cards in the intent of your quesiton.  However, I will give you some good reasons I use them even when I can pay cash: 1) I get an interest free loan for almost 30 days as long as I don't carry balances. 2) I get a statement detailing where I am spending my money that is helpful for budgeting. I'd never keep track to this level of detail if I were using cash. 3) Many cards offer reward programs that can be used for cash back. 4) It helps maintain my credit rating for those times I NEED to buy something and pay it off over time (car, house, etc.) 5) Not so much an issue for me personally, but for people that live paycheck to paycheck, it might help to time your cash outflows to match up with your inflows. For a business, I think it is mostly a cash flow issue. That is, in a lot of B2B type businesses customers can pay very slowly (managing their own cash flows). So your revenue can sometimes lag quite a bit behind the expenses that were associated with them (e.g payroll). A business line of credit can smooth out the cash flow, especially for companies that don't have a lot of cash reserves. 1) Every credit card company charges vendors a fee. That's sufficient to make an acceptable profit per charge even if some of that money goes into marketing expenses -- and the cash-back offer is a marketing expense. 2) Many if not most consumers pay interest; probably everyone does so occasionally when we get distracted and miss a payment. 3) The offer encourages you to put more payments on the card -- and in particular on their card -- than you might otherwise. See #1; that increases net income. So, what's the point of a charge-back, if they simply take the word of the merchant? tl;dr: They don't. As both a merchant and a consumer I have been on both ends of credit card chargebacks, and have received what I consider to be mostly fair outcomes in all cases. Here are some examples: Takeaways from this: I strongly urge all consumers who are considering doing a chargeback to try to work with the merchant first, and use the CC dispute as a last resort. In general, you can think of the credit card dispute department like a judge. They hear the arguments presented by both sides, and consider them to the best of their ability. They don't always get it right, but they make their best attempt given the limited information they are provided. "There are hidden costs to using rewards cards for everything. The credit card company charges fees to the merchant every time you make a purchase.  These fees are a small amount per transaction, plus a portion of the transaction amount.  These fees are higher for rewards cards.  (For example, the fees might be 35 cents for a PIN-transaction on a debit card, or 35 cents plus 2 percent for an ordinary credit card or signature transaction on a debit card, or 35 cents plus 3.5 percent on a rewards card.) After considering all of their expenses, merchant profit margins are often quite small.  To make the same amount of profit by serving a rewards-card customer as a cash customer, the merchant needs to sell higher profit-margin items and/or more items to the rewards-card customer. People who ""pay with plastic"" tend to spend more than people who ""pay with cash"".  If you pay with a rewards card, will you spend even more?"