Yes this is exactly it.

I like to review stuff and typically don't keep a large cash balance. An expensive month could 5x or more my spend; maybe I just paid for an overseas vacation, my home owners and auto insurance is hitting, and whatever all in the same month. Want to make sure everything is in place before kicking off the payments.

I do as the GP, autopay the minimum to avoid fines (not just interest) but then go in and pay the remaining balance before the end of the month.

Autopaying the full amount would work 95% of the time, except when I put something like a big holiday on my card and autopay pays the entire balance and the payment either fails because I forgot to have sufficient funds in my debit/checking account, or leaves me with very little whilst I wait for the money that was going to come in to pay for it.

But if you're going to check it every month anyway, why have the backstop be the minimum payment and not the full payment? You don't lose the right to dispute a charge just because autopay paid the statement off, and setting it to pay in full means you won't be charged any interest at all if you forget to check one month.

Most credit cards pull the auto-payment either on the due date or the day before, which means that you have ~1 month to check your statements and file disputes/disable autopay in the event of anything unusual.

I used to review charges, and it was always a pain. I know where I shop and don't shop, so if I see a charge for a place I don't shop, it is clearly fraud. But, a lot of fraud happens where you shop(because that is where people may have access to your card). That is, I gas up at Shell, but did I really gas up 23 days ago?

Now, I have a text message/app notification come through immediately whenever there is a charge > $0.00 (chase at least supports this). Reviewing immediately, and then knowing that all charges are real at the end of the month, has been a real pleasant change in that workflow.