Thanks for reaching out to the QuickBooks Community page, @confused_office_mgr,

Allow me to share some more insights about the credit card payment options in QBO. When you pay your credit card dues, there are several ways to record payments.

There is not much difference with the "record as transfer" and "record as credit card payment", as it's main function is to offset the liability.

If the CC and the paying bank account are both connected for online banking, the system will let you record a payment as a transfer. This means that you are directly transferring the funds from the bank to categorize the CC payment. Reduce the bank balance and the CC liability.

It goes the same way as using the Record as credit card payment option. The only difference, is it requires you to add a vendor name to it. The entry is then added to the list of transaction under the name specified on the payment.

To give you some more ideas about recording CC payments, please see this article: Record your payments to credit cards

Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help you. Reach out back to me again so I can assist you again. Have a good one!