Want to know if your local water company accepts Visa? How about whether your gas company will take MasterCard as a payment? Charging your necessities (like utilities) on a credit card is probably one of the easiest ways to accumulate reward points and miles, but finding out which merchants actually accept plastic can be a chore.

Fortunately, both Visa and MasterCard have compiled directories to help with this very task.

• See Visa’s excellent Biller Directory where you can actually search by either category or biller name, or just see which billers are common in your zip code.
• See MasterCard’s Directory of Service Providers where you can search merchants by either category or state.

Of course just because a merchant accepts credit doesn’t mean you should use it. You’ll still want to check that there is no additional ‘convenience fee’ being charged for using your credit card.