The Checkout Insurance Add-Ons You Keep Clicking Past: Are They Worth It?

Every checkout flow that involves any element of risk, a train journey, a flight, a new phone, an EMI, now has a small add-on sitting right before the final payment button: travel insurance, extended warranty, EMI protection. Individually each one looks cheap enough to ignore. Add them up across a year of bookings and purchases and it’s a real, if quiet, line item.

IRCTC travel insurance: cheap, but check the default

When you book a train ticket on IRCTC, you’ll usually see an optional travel insurance add-on for a fraction of a rupee per passenger, covering accidental death or disability during the journey. The premium itself is genuinely negligible. What actually matters here is that IRCTC has, at points, shifted this from an opt-in checkbox to an opt-out one, meaning passengers are covered and charged by default unless they actively decline. If you’re booking for multiple people on one PNR, remember each passenger needs the option set individually, it isn’t a single toggle for the whole booking.

The honest verdict: at this price, whether you keep it or not barely moves your spending. The point isn’t the money, it’s noticing that a default has been flipped on you without asking first, since that’s the same mechanism that costs real money elsewhere on this list.

Flight and hotel booking insurance: check for real overlap first

Online travel agents like MakeMyTrip, Yatra, and Cleartrip commonly offer trip cancellation or travel insurance as a checkout add-on, often priced per traveler per day for international trips. Before adding this, check two things you likely already have: whether your credit card includes travel insurance as a card benefit (several premium and even some no-fee travel cards do), and whether your existing health or term insurance has any travel-related rider. Paying again for coverage you already hold isn’t protection, it’s a duplicate premium.

Extended warranty on Amazon and Flipkart: read what it actually extends

Extended warranty add-ons on electronics purchases (commonly branded things like “Flipkart Protect”) extend coverage beyond the manufacturer’s standard warranty period, typically by 1-2 years. The genuine question to ask before adding one isn’t “is this cheap enough,” it’s “what does my manufacturer warranty already cover, and does my credit card already extend it.” We’ve covered how several Indian credit cards bundle purchase protection or extended warranty as a card perk in our credit card add-on subscriptions guide, and if that applies to the card you’re paying with, an extra warranty purchased at checkout is coverage you’re buying twice.

EMI protection insurance: usually the weakest value on this list

Some lenders and BNPL providers offer “EMI protection” insurance at checkout, covering your remaining EMI payments if you lose your job or are hospitalized. These tend to have narrow payout conditions (specific job-loss criteria, waiting periods, exclusions for pre-existing conditions) relative to their cost, similar to the credit shield insurance already covered in our card add-ons piece. Read the actual payout conditions, not just the premium, before adding this to a loan or BNPL checkout.

The pattern across all of these

None of these add-ons are individually a scam, they’re legitimate optional products. The actual leak is the habit of clicking through checkout screens without reading what’s being added, especially once a platform shifts a box from opt-in to opt-out. Before you hit pay on your next booking or purchase, take the extra 15 seconds to read what’s been added, and check it against coverage you might already have through a card or existing policy. Track any recurring insurance add-ons (EMI protection billed monthly is the one most likely to become recurring rather than one-time) in the SubsCut calculator alongside everything else.

FAQ

Is IRCTC travel insurance actually worth adding? At under a rupee per passenger, the cost is trivial enough that declining it saves you almost nothing. The bigger issue is that IRCTC now includes it by default and asks you to opt out rather than opt in, so check the checkbox state before you assume it’s off.

Should I ever buy extended warranty on electronics from Amazon or Flipkart? Only after checking what your card’s purchase protection or the manufacturer’s own warranty already covers. If a credit card add-on already extends the warranty (a benefit we’ve covered separately), paying for a second overlapping one is pure duplication.