Can You Actually Use a Credit Card to Buy Lottery Tickets? Here's What You Need to Know

Planning to try your luck with this week’s $1.5 billion lottery draw? You might want to think twice about reaching for your credit card. Despite the modern convenience of plastic money for almost everything, lottery tickets remain one of the few purchases where credit card usage faces serious restrictions across the United States.

The Reality: Most States Say No to Plastic Payments

The short answer is: probably not. Only 17 states currently allow lottery ticket purchases with a credit card, which means the vast majority of Americans are out of luck if they want to pay with plastic. In many states, lottery ticket sales with credit cards are outright banned by law, while in others, retailers and banks have their own prohibitions.

Want to buy Powerball tickets online? The situation gets even more restrictive. According to official Powerball regulations, 42 out of 44 states in the Powerball network—along with Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands—forbid online ticket sales through official state lottery sites. Only Illinois and Georgia permit online Powerball purchases, and even then, buyers must be residents purchasing within state boundaries.

This patchwork of regulations means that if your state isn’t part of the Powerball network and doesn’t allow online sales, you may need to travel to a participating state to legally purchase a ticket in person.

Who Really Controls Payment Methods: State Laws, Retailers, and Banks

The rules about credit card payments for lottery tickets depend on three layers of authority, and unfortunately for consumers, they don’t always align.

State-level regulations set the foundation. Connecticut, for instance, prohibits credit card purchases but allows gift cards and debit cards—unless your specific retailer says otherwise. Tennessee takes a harder line, permitting only cash transactions. States like Pennsylvania and Kansas take a different approach, letting individual retailers decide which payment methods they’ll accept.

Retailers have significant power over whether you can use plastic at their store. Even in states where credit card lottery purchases are technically legal, the shop owner can refuse to process credit card transactions.

Card issuers and banks have the final say. American Express explicitly prohibits its cards from being used for gambling services, including lottery tickets. Visa and MasterCard don’t publicly comment on lottery policies, but they leave the decision to individual issuing banks. Banks can choose to block lottery transactions even if state law and retailers technically permit them—a practice called “overblocking.” This is perfectly legal.

Why the Credit Card Restrictions Exist

The primary concern driving these restrictions is straightforward: protecting people from compulsive gambling debt. Regulators worry that making lottery tickets too accessible through credit might enable problem gamblers to accumulate unmanageable debt without sufficient cash-on-hand considerations.

“If you don’t have enough cash to buy a lottery ticket, you shouldn’t be paying with a credit card,” warns Bruce McClary, spokesman for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. Overspending fueled by gambling can spiral into serious financial consequences, and credit counselors regularly see how irresponsible credit use worsens the situation.

There’s another warning worth heeding: Never get a cash advance from an ATM using your credit card just to buy lottery tickets. Because credit card cash advances typically carry sky-high APR rates, you’ll end up paying significantly more than the ticket costs—“a very dangerous move,” according to financial experts.

The Online Reseller Trap: Buyer Beware

Third-party lottery websites like CongaLotto.com (based in Nicosia, Cyprus) promise to let you purchase lottery tickets online using credit cards. They claim to send someone to buy tickets on your behalf and hold them until you win—for a fee, of course.

The risk here is substantial. The official Powerball organization warns: “There are no regulations of websites that claim to sell tickets or to sell you a ‘service’ to buy and hold tickets for you.” Many lotteries believe paying out on tickets purchased by unlicensed resellers would violate state and federal laws. Your winnings—even if your numbers match—could be deemed illegitimate, leaving you with nothing.

State-by-State Online Lottery Expansion

While most states prohibit online lottery ticket sales, a few have begun offering their own platforms. Illinois pioneered this in 2012, becoming the first state to allow residents to purchase individual lottery tickets online. Since then, Minnesota, Georgia, and Kentucky have followed suit. The Kentucky Lottery even launched a mobile app for convenience.

However, these state-approved platforms typically only work for residents of that specific state and through official channels. Crossing state borders to purchase lottery tickets online remains illegal.

The Bottom Line: Check Your State, Retailer, and Card Issuer

Whether you can use a credit card to buy lottery tickets depends on multiple factors working in your favor simultaneously:

• Your state must allow it (only 17 do)
• Your retailer must accept it
• Your card issuer must permit it

Before attempting a credit card lottery purchase, read your cardholder agreement carefully to see if your bank has restrictions. Ask your retailer what payment methods they accept. And verify your state’s specific lottery rules.

In most cases, cash remains king when it comes to buying lottery tickets. Until regulations loosen significantly, plastic payments for lottery tickets will continue to be the exception rather than the rule across most of the United States.