Should You Pay Credit Card Bills with Other Cards?

Just out of the top of your head, think about the various mobile apps which allow you to make credit payments. We’re sure you know at least some of these. In fact, you may use these every day. Some of the most common apps that allow you to pay credit card bills include CRED, PhonePay and PayTM.

These are apps that not just allow you to pay multiple credit card bills, but also give cash back offers and more to keep you interested in using the services.

However, these are still third-party apps at the end of the day. Should you trust these blindly? Are they completely safe, or are there loopholes and risks? Remember, you are linking these apps to your bank accounts and credit cards. 

But before we get to that, let us learn a bit more about these platforms, and why these are so popular.

A look at third—party credit card bill payment apps

Let’s look at CRED first. This is on top of our list, not just because of its popularity and positive reviews, but because of its high-end nature and myriad features. What do we mean by that?

CRED is an app which saves the details of your credit card or cards when you register on it. You can use it to pay your credit card bills by net banking by using the UPI and auto-payment feature on the app. It is ‘high-end’ because you need a credit score of more than 750 to just join. If your credit score is lower than that, you won’t be brushed aside, but shall be given time and even advice on how to increase your score. Pretty helpful, right? There’s more! 

CRED gives you CRED Coins each time you make a credit card bill payment. For every rupee you give, get a coin. These can be used later to get various rewards in the form of shopping coupons and discounts. You can even get cash back. For every 1000 coins, you get Rs.5 to Rs.10 credited. 

Now, let’s come to PayTM. It gives you 1000 PayTM First Points, which is what they call it, whenever you make credit card bills of Rs. 2500 or more from their platform. These points can be redeemed for offers and cashbacks.

As for PhonePay, there is no need to save credit card details like PayTM. Just select your provider network, the bank, card details, and you can make the payment.

Here’s what is good about these apps

CRED is great because it encourages you to build up your credit score, because it analyses your spending pattern, lets you know about charges and unexpected fees on your credit card, suspicious activities on your credit card, due date for fees, and much more. It gets these info from your bank account and from your email ID. 

PhonePe for one is safe since your credit card details are not saved when making payments, and you need to enter it each time you make a transaction.

What is bad about these apps?

Remember, we are not reviewing the apps here, but how safe these are. There is always a risk of database hack and data privacy issues. Apps like CRED access your Email ID for data on spending patterns and credit card statements. For a skilled hacker, all this information can be accessed.

The bottom line- To Pay Or Not to Pay

Should you pay your credit card bills using these apps? You surely can, but only after knowing and understanding the risks. Know that using these apps, or any third-party app that keeps a record of your money, is risky. 

In case you are still worried, you can always come back to using the traditional methods like net-banking and NEFT.

But what about paying off a credit card bill with another debit or credit card?

Is that possible?

You can pay off a credit card bill with a debit card, but not by another credit card directly. We’ll explain this a bit.

Let’s say that you have a credit card bill from Bank A. You have a debit card from either the same bank or from another bank. You withdraw money with the debit card directly and feed it into your credit card account. The other thing is to do the same digitally. 

With paying credit card bills with another credit card, it gets tricky. You can’t do it directly, meaning that you can use one card to pay the bills of another. But there are other things you can do. 

1. You can withdraw money with a credit card from an ATM, much like a debit card, and use it to repay the credit card debt or bill on another credit card. However, do remember that this is a very expensive option. The interest rate of withdrawing money with a credit card is huge. This is called Cash Advance.

2. You can use an e-wallet. Upload your credit card details, and use it to pay the bills of another credit card. 

3. You can use Balance Transfer. Transfer your balance to another credit card to pay its bills. The benefits of doing this are that the interest rate shall be lower after a balance transfer, and you get an interest-free period as well!

So as you can see, there are some ways by which you can make this possible. You can’t directly pay one credit card’s bill with another, but there are other ways to do it.