CareCredit is a health and wellness credit card from Synchrony Bank that covers medical, dental, vision, hearing, veterinary, cosmetic, and personal care expenses at more than 285,000 enrolled providers and at select retail chains like Walmart, Walgreens, and Sam’s Club. It’s not insurance. It’s a financing tool designed to pay for out-of-pocket costs, deductibles, copays, and services insurance often excludes, with promotional payment plans available on purchases of $200 or more.
The card works in two places: inside the CareCredit provider network, and at a limited list of retailers for qualifying health and personal care items only. Everything below sits inside one of those two buckets.
Health Care Services
The core use is medical care that insurance doesn’t fully cover. CareCredit is accepted at primary care offices, hospitals and health systems, labs, diagnostic centers, and urgent care clinics, along with a long list of specialties.
- Dental care, including preventive, restorative, endodontics, periodontics, cosmetic dentistry, and implants.
- Vision care: eye exams, glasses, contacts, dry eye treatments, LASIK and other refractive surgeries, cataract surgery, glaucoma procedures, and corneal transplants.
- Hearing: hearing tests, hearing aids, cochlear implants, tinnitus treatment, earmolds, and refittings.
- Behavioral health: counseling and therapy (individual, couples, family, group), psychological testing, crisis services, intensive outpatient programs, telepsychiatry, ketamine infusions, and transcranial magnetic stimulation.
- Fertility: IVF, egg and embryo cryopreservation, intracytoplasmic sperm injection, genetic testing, donor services, and lab work.
- Weight loss: bariatric surgery (gastric bypass, gastric sleeve, Lap-Band), GLP-1 medications, and digital programs like the Mayo Clinic Diet.
- Allergy and immunology, orthopedics, podiatry, ENT, gastroenterology, colorectal care, imaging and radiology, and OB/GYN.
CareCredit is commonly used to cover deductibles, copays, coinsurance, and services insurers exclude outright, such as cosmetic procedures, fertility treatments, hearing aids, and LASIK.
Cosmetic, Dermatology, and Spa Procedures
Elective and aesthetic care makes up a significant share of CareCredit spending. On the surgical side, the card can pay for tummy tucks, liposuction, brachioplasty, skin removal surgery, and medial thigh lifts. Non-surgical treatments include Botox, dermal fillers, chemical peels, and laser hair removal.
Medical and cosmetic dermatology are both eligible, along with skincare products sold through dermatology practices. Hair restoration is covered too, including follicular unit transplantation, follicular unit extraction, scalp micropigmentation, and beard transplants. The national average cost for a hair transplant runs between $4,637 and $12,513 depending on technique.
Day spas and med spas that enroll in the network can accept the card for massage, facials, body wraps, hydrotherapy, waxing, eyelash extensions, and injectables.
Veterinary and Pet Care
CareCredit is broadly accepted at veterinary practices for both routine and emergency care: wellness exams, vaccinations, diagnostics, surgeries, dental cleanings, grooming, boarding, prescriptions, supplements, and parasite control. Anything the vet’s office sells or provides is fair game, including pet food, nutrition products, and microchipping.
The card does not work at retail pet stores for items like toys or flea collars. Pet care coverage is limited to enrolled veterinary practices. If you have pet insurance through partners such as Pets Best or Figo, you can pay the vet with CareCredit and file for reimbursement afterward.
Pharmacy and Retail Stores
Outside provider offices, a limited list of retailers accepts CareCredit for qualifying health and personal care purchases only.
- Walmart, in all U.S. stores and on walmart.com, for prescriptions, over-the-counter medications, vitamins, durable medical equipment, personal care, oral care, baby essentials, vision products, and fitness equipment. Only items sold and shipped by Walmart qualify; third-party marketplace items do not.
- Walgreens, at more than 9,000 locations, for prescriptions, OTC medications, cosmetics, and personal care.
- Sam’s Club, for prescriptions, OTC medications, hearing aids, vision, personal care, baby essentials, and membership fees.
- Albertsons Companies, at nearly 2,200 locations under banners including Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, ACME, Shaw’s, and Jewel-Osco.
- Duane Reade, at all New York-area locations.
- Sunglass Hut and LensCrafters, for eyewear.
- Sleep Number, for mattresses.
At these retailers, the register separates eligible items from ineligible ones. If your Walmart cart mixes qualifying health items with general merchandise, only the qualifying items get charged to CareCredit and the rest need another payment method.
Durable Medical Equipment
CareCredit finances durable medical equipment when insurance falls short or doesn’t cover it. Eligible items include motorized scooters, power wheelchairs, stair lifts, power lift chairs, portable oxygen concentrators, CPAP machines, nebulizers, hospital beds, and accessibility lifts for home and vehicle. Prices vary widely: a motorized wheelchair runs from $1,000 to $15,000, a portable oxygen concentrator from $2,000 to $6,000, and a home hospital bed from $500 to over $6,000.
Funeral, Cremation, and Burial Expenses
End-of-life costs are one of the less obvious categories. Participating mortuaries, crematories, and cemeteries accept the card for funeral director fees, transportation and preparation of the deceased, facility use for services and receptions, caskets, urns, monuments, headstones, cemetery plot fees, embalming, catering, flowers, and keepsakes. A traditional funeral with burial averages about $8,230 nationally; direct cremation averages about $2,159.
GLP-1 and Weight-Loss Medications
As demand for GLP-1 drugs has grown and many insurers decline to cover them, CareCredit has become a way to spread the cost. Enrolled pharmacies accept the card for Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound, and Saxenda, along with older weight-loss medications like phentermine, Contrave, and Qsymia.
Monthly costs are steep. Synchrony’s own research puts semaglutide (Wegovy) at about $1,403 per month and tirzepatide (Zepbound) at roughly $1,001 per month. Because major pharmacy chains such as Walgreens, Walmart, Sam’s Club, and Albertsons accept the card, cardholders can put the recurring prescription on CareCredit and pay it down monthly.
Where CareCredit Doesn’t Work
The card has real limits. At retail locations it only covers qualifying health and personal care categories, not general merchandise. Walmart and Sam’s Club restrict it to “select merchandise only.” Retail pet stores are off-limits for non-veterinary purchases.
Promotional financing, the reason most people apply for the card in the first place, is available only inside the CareCredit network and at participating retailers. The CareCredit Rewards Mastercard variant can be used anywhere Mastercard is accepted, but purchases outside the CareCredit network carry standard account terms with no promotional period. Services or products must generally be delivered within 30 days of purchase, and promotional financing requires a minimum purchase of $200.
How the Financing Changes What You Actually Pay
What CareCredit covers is only half the picture. How it charges interest determines the real cost, and the terms are unusual enough that they deserve their own read.
Two promotional structures are available at enrolled providers for purchases of $200 or more:
- Deferred interest for 6, 12, 18, or 24 months. No interest is charged if the full balance is paid off within the promotional window. Interest accrues from the purchase date, though, and if any balance remains when the window closes, the entire accrued amount gets added to the account retroactively.
- Reduced APR financing for 24 to 60 months. Available on purchases of $1,000 or more ($2,500 for the 60-month option), with fixed monthly payments at rates between 17.90% and 20.90% APR depending on term.
For purchases that don’t qualify for a promotion, or after a promotional period ends, the standard APR applies. As of May 2024, that rate is 32.99% on new accounts, with a penalty APR of 39.99%. There is no annual fee, but late fees can reach $41.
Minimum monthly payments during a promotional period are often not enough to clear the balance before the promotion expires. On a deferred-interest plan, paying only the minimum will almost certainly leave a balance, which then triggers retroactive interest on the full original purchase amount. If you plan to use the card for any of the categories above, size your monthly payment to pay off the balance before the promotional window closes rather than relying on the minimum due.