5 Smart Reasons Not to Buy Lottery Tickets with Credit Cards

While it might be tempting to put a few lottery tickets on your credit card when you're making a purchase at a convenience store anywhere, it’s important to note that buying lottery tickets with credit cards is a bad idea. Here are five smart reasons to only pay cash for your lottery purchases.

1. Charging Lottery Tickets Is Illegal in Most U.S. States

Lottery ticket laws aren’t simple in America. Depending on where you are, you might not be allowed to buy your lottery tickets with plastic. Over 40% of the U.S. states have laws against using a credit card for tickets. The federal government enforces broad lottery regulations within the United States, but individual states have jurisdiction over the finer points of buying and selling tickets. Whether or not you can charge tickets to your credit card is one of those finer points.

29 states plus the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands prohibit lottery ticket sales on credit. However, research indicates that the following states allow credit purchases in (at least) some cases:

• Arizona
• California
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Indiana
• Idaho
• Illinois
• Kansas
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Maine
• Michigan
• Missouri
• Nebraska
• New York
• Ohio
• Oregon
• Rhode Island
• South Dakota
• Vermont
• Washington

So unless you’re making your purchase in one of those states, you can leave your credit card in your wallet when you go to make your picks.

If you’re in one of the states that allow you to charge lottery tickets, you still need to double-check your state lottery’s policies. Some of the listed states allow credit card purchases only at certain retailers or under specific conditions.

2. Other Obstacles to Buying Lottery Tickets With Credit

Even when states allow you to use credit cards for lottery purchases, many merchants refuse to accept them. For example, the Pennsylvania Lottery website says that there are no laws against charging your lottery tickets in that state, but that most retailers don’t allow it.

And there’s another hurdle: Even if the state and the retailer are okay with it, some credit card issuers won’t let you use your card to gamble, including buying lottery tickets.

3. Charging Your Lottery Tickets Incurs Additional Fees

When retailers let you buy your lottery tickets with your credit card, they don’t treat them like other types of purchases. Rather, they handle lottery ticket sales as quasi-cash purchases.

A quasi-cash purchase means that instead of charging the purchase directly, you’re actually getting a cash advance for the amount your tickets cost.

And cash advances are a bad financial decision. Most credit cards charge additional fees for cash advances, and unlike with regular purchases, interest starts accruing immediately, not at the end of your billing cycle.

Furthermore, those interest rates are usually higher than the rate for other purchases, which means buying your lottery tickets with credit cards can cost you significantly more than paying with cash or debit.

4. You Won’t Get Credit Card Rewards for Lottery Ticket Purchases

Some people pay for as many things as possible with their credit cards so that they can rack up rewards points. If you're one of them, you'll be disappointed if you buy lottery tickets.

Most credit cards have restrictions about which types of purchases accrue points, and gambling purchases, including lottery tickets, don’t count. So playing the lottery with your credit card won't help you accrue points.

5. Buying Lottery Tickets With Credit Cards Puts You in Debt

Even if you can buy lottery tickets on your credit card legally and without any financial disadvantages, it's still a bad idea. It’s too easy to get carried away and run up significant debt.

For people who are vulnerable to gambling addiction, this is obviously a bad idea. But even if you haven’t had a problem with addiction, gambling on credit is an unnecessary risk.

This risk of spending more than you can afford on the hope of striking it big is why many states prohibit buying lottery tickets on credit, especially since the people who are most likely to buy lottery tickets are also least likely to be able to pay off their credit card debt.

Furthermore, if you’re buying online lottery tickets with your credit card, you run the risk of being scammed. Your credit card, or even your identity, might be stolen.