Michaels™ Credit Card Review

Based on verified data, the Michaels Credit Card earns a flat 9% back on Michaels purchases, in-store and online, for cardholders. That’s the highest ongoing rate of any closed-loop store card reviewed on this site so far, well above most store-card competitors’ 3-6% range.

Nick’s one-line verdict: it’s a real 9%, but only for shoppers who return to Michaels often enough to actually use what they earn before it expires. Skip more than about five weeks between visits, and the same 9% quietly becomes 0%.

Comenity Capital Bank issues the card, and like most single-retailer store cards, it’s closed-loop: it works only at Michaels stores and Michaels.com, and it earns nothing anywhere else. Cardholders are placed automatically in the top 9% tier of the Michaels Rewards program; non-cardholder loyalty members only reach that same 9% after $1,000 or more in spend over a calendar year. Those are two different audiences earning the same top rate through very different paths.

Who This Card Is For

Two spending profiles collect this card’s rewards cleanly. A regular hobbyist spending $50 a month at Michaels, shopping about once a month, earns 9% x $50 = $4.50/mo, which adds up to $54 a year. A frequent or project-based crafter spending $100 a month, also shopping monthly, earns $9/mo, or $108 a year. Both figures are realistically fully collectible, because a monthly visit cadence comfortably clears the redemption window covered below.

Contrast that with an occasional, seasonal shopper: a single $150 purchase during a November holiday-crafts trip, then no other Michaels visit until spring, four-plus months later. That purchase earns $13.50 in rewards on paper (9% x $150). In practice it’s worth $0, because the reward vouchers it generates expire long before a spring-only shopper returns to redeem them.

That’s the closing rule for this card: if you visit Michaels only a few times a year for occasional projects, don’t expect to bank meaningful value from it, regardless of how much you spend per visit. The card rewards frequency, not purchase size.

Comenity Capital Bank doesn’t publish a minimum credit score for this card. See what actually drives store-card approval odds for the general pattern, and how store cards affect your credit before applying.

The Sign-Up Bonus: Is It Worth It?

New cardholders get 20% off your first purchase with your Michaels Credit Card. There’s no minimum purchase amount required, just the full transaction charged to the card (excluding tax, gift cards, shipping, and extended warranty purchases).

On an illustrative $75 first purchase, a realistic single-project size (framing, a fabric or yarn haul, a holiday-craft supply run), 20% off works out to a $15 discount. That’s a direct discount at checkout, not a points conversion, so there’s no redemption-path ambiguity to weigh here, unlike the card’s ongoing rewards.

Add that $15 to the ongoing math and the net first-year value depends entirely on one choice: paperless statements or not. Enrolled in paperless statements, it’s $15 bonus + $54 in annual rewards (Profile A above) – $0 fee = $69 net first-year value. Not enrolled, the paper-statement fee eats into that: $15 + $54 – $35.88 = $33.12 net first-year value. That $35.88 swing is large relative to this card’s total value, and it’s entirely avoidable.

Honest verdict: the sign-up bonus itself is easy money, no minimum spend, no time pressure described beyond it being a one-time offer. The real test of this card’s value is the ongoing 9% rate, and whether you’ll actually clear the roughly 35-day redemption window covered next.

Earning Rewards: The Math

This is a single-tier, flat-rate card. There’s no second earning category and no “everywhere else” base rate, because the card cannot be used anywhere except Michaels stores and Michaels.com.

Michaels Rewards aren’t a points program. They’re dollar-denominated vouchers: every $5 earned auto-converts into a reward voucher within about 72 hours. A one-time $60 purchase illustrates the mechanic cleanly: 9% x $60 = $5.40 earned, which cuts one $5 voucher, with $0.40 carrying toward the next one. Vouchers are issued in $5 increments, not a points threshold, so the first voucher requires only about $55.56 in total spend (5 / 0.09) to trigger, a trivially low bar on its own.

At the $50/month profile (Profile A), that’s $54/year nominal. At $100/month (Profile B), it’s $108/year nominal. Both are realistically fully collectible at a monthly shopping cadence, for the reasons covered in Redeeming Rewards below.

For comparison, the already-published Citi Double Cash® Card earns a flat 2% cash back that works everywhere: (2/100) x $50 x 12 = $12/year on the same $50/month, if that spending could go anywhere. This card earns $54/year nominal on the same $50/month, 4.5x the flat-2% card’s return, but only if every dollar is spent at Michaels and the shopper returns often enough to redeem what they earn. Fall below that cadence and the comparison flips: this card can earn $0 while a flexible flat-rate card never does.

Redeeming Rewards

Redemption here is fully automatic. Every $5 earned converts into a voucher on its own, within about 72 hours of hitting that threshold, with no manual redemption step. Up to 5 vouchers can be redeemed per transaction.

The central caveat, and the single most decision-relevant number on this page: each voucher expires 32 days after its own issuance date, not a shared account-wide clock. Add the up-to-72-hour issuance delay, and the effective return window from the purchase that earned the reward is about 35 days.

A month-by-month simulation of this mechanic found a sharp cliff tied to visit frequency, not spend amount. Shoppers who return to Michaels every 30-35 days, roughly monthly or more often, realize 95-97% of their nominal reward value; almost nothing is lost, a small amount is simply always in transit toward the next voucher. Shoppers who return every 36 or more days realize 0%, every time, for as long as that cadence holds. It isn’t a partial loss. It’s total: every voucher earned expires before the next visit arrives.

There are no transfer partners here; every dollar earned converts to a Michaels store voucher, full stop. Mechanically this is simple: no manual steps, no strategy required. But it’s a genuine “use it or lose it” program in practice, so check your account or email for voucher notifications rather than assuming rewards bank indefinitely.

Fees and Costs

$0 a year, no stated annual fee on this card. But a $2.99/month paper-statement fee, up to $35.88/year, applies unless you’re enrolled in paperless statements, and it’s waived entirely if your balance is $3.50 or less.

That fee changes the real break-even math: $35.88 / 9% = $398.67/year (about $33.22/month) of Michaels spending needed just to earn enough in rewards to cancel out the fee, for a cardholder who never switches to paperless billing. Below that spend level, an un-enrolled cardholder is running at a net loss relative to the advertised 9% rate. Since paperless enrollment is free, instant, and entirely within the cardholder’s control, the honest recommendation is simply to enroll the day you’re approved, not to treat this as a real trade-off worth weighing.

The purchase APR is a flat 35.99% variable rate, not a range across a credit-score spread. Miss a payment and the rate can jump to as much as 39.99% variable, and it can stay there indefinitely.

There’s no foreign transaction fee, but that’s not a travel perk here. It’s not applicable because this closed-loop card can’t be used outside Michaels at all, so a foreign transaction isn’t possible in the first place.

Balance transfers aren’t offered on this card at all. No introductory purchase APR exists either; the standard 35.99% rate applies from the moment the account opens.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• A flat 9% back on Michaels purchases, the highest ongoing rate of any closed-loop store card reviewed on this site so far, well above the 3-6% most competitors run
• 20% off the first purchase, no minimum spend, no time pressure beyond it being a one-time offer
• No annual fee, and the only cost that exists is fully avoidable with a free, instant paperless-statement enrollment

Cons:

• Closed-loop card, earns nothing anywhere except Michaels stores and Michaels.com
• Reward vouchers expire just 32 days after issuance, an effective ~35-day return window once the issuance delay is included, which turns the 9% rate into 0% for anyone who shops less often than about once a month
• A $2.99/month paper-statement fee, up to $35.88/year, for anyone who doesn’t switch to paperless statements
• A high 35.99% variable purchase APR, with a penalty APR of up to 39.99% that can apply indefinitely

How It Compares

This card’s 9% rate is more than double Sephora Credit Card‘s 4% and more than 4x Citi Double Cash’s 2%, the best headline rate of the three by far. But it also carries the tightest, least forgiving redemption window: Sephora gives shoppers a much more forgiving 90 days, and Citi Double Cash has no redemption window at all.

One-line verdict: this card wins decisively for anyone who’s actually a regular Michaels customer. Sephora’s card is the safer bet for someone with a similar but less frequent shopping pattern in its own category. Citi Double Cash is the right choice for anyone who wants a flexible everyday card with zero redemption risk instead of a high but conditional store rate.

Nick’s Verdict

Based on verified data, this card’s entire pitch rests on one variable: shopping frequency, not spend amount. For a $50/month Michaels shopper who visits about once a month, this card returns roughly $54 a year in real, collectible rewards, plus a $15 first-purchase discount and no annual fee, if they enroll in paperless statements.

Skip more than about five weeks between visits and that same math produces $0, not a smaller number. This is a strong pick for frequent or project-based Michaels regulars who shop at least monthly, and a poor one for occasional or seasonal shoppers, no matter how much they spend per visit.

Check our Best Store Credit Cards roundup for how this card stacks up against the wider field.