Once again, I can't use these card efficiently cos of my difficulty hitting my minimum spend on my 2 UOB credit cards. But they may be useful for you.
These are good stand alone credit cards, meaning they don't tie in with any bank accounts to give you better interest rates. (Except the BOC Family card but... more about this below)
A top stand alone credit card would definitely be the Citibank Cashback card.
Pros
Savings of up to 20.88% at Esso, up to 20.8% at Shell and 8% cash back at all other petrol stations
8% cash back at all supermarkets and grocery stores worldwide
8% cash back at all restaurants, cafes, food and beverage outlets globally
8% cash back on Grab rides
10% rebate in terms of Citi Rebate when spending at Starbucks
Citi Rebate has no expiry, but can only be earned and redeemed at participating merchants
Accumulate at Starbucks at 10%, spend at Sheng Shiong as Sheng Shiong rebate rate is low
Cons
0.25% for other spending.
Need to accumulate $50 cashback before it is applied to your next bill
Min spend of SGD888 to qualify for the cashback
Max cashback of SGD25 per category Petrol, Grocery, Dining, meaning max SGD312.50 per category to be efficient. Anymore spending in that category would only earn 0.25%
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POSB Everyday Card
This card has been getting better. The rebates come in the form of Daily$.
If you use online banking, you can redeem your Daily$ as cash credit to offset your credit card bill.
So it's better not to redeem it at the merchant cos you only earn rebates on what you pay. If you redeemed $2 out of a $10 purchase at the merchant, you will receive rebates based on $8.
But if you pay the full amount of $10, you will receive rebates based on $10 and you can use online banking to redeem the $2 to offset your bill.
Pros
Dining bonus cash rebate til 30 Sept 2017 for now :
14% cash rebate for online food delivery (UberEATS is excluded)
9% cash rebate for weekend dining
3% cash rebate for weekday dining
Until 31 July 2018
3% rebate at healthcare, hospitals, dental, etc
(card holder must be an existing POSB Smiley Child Development Account Trustees)
I don't have kids so I'm not too aware of this, but you can click the T&C above to find out more.
No minimum spend for most rebates
20.1% total savings & rebates on SPC petrol stations
5% rebate at Sheng Shiong (Max rebate $50)
1% rebate on SP Services (Utilities) (Max rebate $1 together with Starhub Services)
1% rebate on Starhub payments (Max rebate $1 together with SP Services)
3% rebate at Watsons (maybe even more depending on promotion period)
Cons
Base rebate is only 0.3%
No minimum spend for most rebates
But the best rebate is the dining rebate but...
To qualify for Dining bonus cash rebate, $600 minimum spend, max $50 rebate per month
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Bank of China Family Card
As a stand alone card, this card is already a very good card giving better rebates than most cards.
You can also use it to combo with bank accounts.
However, the bonus interest in the account isn't really exciting as it's quite hard to attain and UOB One account would probably be easier to play with. But even if you don't combo it with a bank account, it is still a good card.
Pros
7% rebate on dining
1% on telco bills
5% on online purchases
5% at Supermarkets
5% on Hospital bills
5% on NETS FlashPay Auto Top Up (first 4 top-ups)
5% at Selected merchants depending on merchant code
(Eg, BEST Denki, BIG BOX, Unity Pharmacy, Watsons, Toys ‘R’ Us and others)
2% rebate on all other spend on the supplementary card (max rebate $20)
Cons
0.5% on all other spend
Minimum spend $500
$100 max rebate +$20 supplementary card all other spend per month (max $1,440 per year)
(It's a con if you can max it out)
($100 includes rebates from food, supermarkets, etc from both principle & Supp card.
$20 is purely "all other spend" on the Supp card.)
2% rebate on supplementary card on other spend requires minimum $200 per mth spending for 3 months by calendar quarter
Add on feature
BOC SmartSaver
Up to 3.55% for the first $60,000
Base interest 0.25%-0.475% depending on deposits (0.4% at $60,000)
Credit card spend bonus interest
+0.80% if credit card spend is between $500-$1,499
+1.6% if $1,500 and above
Salary credit
+0.8% when salary is $2,000-$5,999
+1.2% when salary is $6,000 and above
Payment bonus
+0.35% when you successfully complete 3 bill payments of at least S$30 each via GIRO or BOC Internet Banking/BOC Mobile Banking Bill Payment function
Extra savings bonus
+0.6% for amounts above $60,000 when you have fulfilled at least one of the above criteria up to $1 million
*A minimum monthly average effective balance of S$1,500 is required to enjoy bonus interests.
For $60,000
Best case scenario
0.4% +1.6% +1.2% +0.35% =3.55%
Worst case scenario
0.25% +0.8% +0.8% +0.35% = 2.2%
Reasonable scenario
0.4% +0.8% +0.8% +0.35% = 2.35%
For the best case, you need $1,500 mthly credit card spend and $6,000 salary credit. Both of which are hard to achieve.
The difference between the reasonable case scenario is that the amount of deposits in the account determines the base interest rate. At $5,000 deposits, the base interest is 0.25%.
====================
OCBC 365 Card
After many years, this card is still one of the cards to use, along with the opportunity to combo it with better interest rates with the 360 account.
It's starting to lose it's position as the key card. Actually, this combo is pretty out of fashion already. Just that it's probably better than the other cards which gives miles.
If you compare this card and the bonus interest combo, it is actually worse than the BOC combo above.
Or you could just combo the UOB One card and the One Account.
(The UOB combo is intentionally left out of this post cos this post is about stand alone credit cards. And the UOB One card is not a really good card to use, cos it is troublesome to monitor and the realistic rebate is usually under 3.3%)
Pros
6% rebates on dining on weekend dining
3% on weekday dining
3% online spending
3% groceries, watson, unity, body shop
3% recurring telco bills
5% on petrol
3% rebate at healthcare, hospitals, dental, etc
(card holder must be an existing POSB Smiley Child Development Account Trustees)
Cons
Need to spend $600
0.3% on other spend
Add on feature
OCBC 360 Account
For the 1st $70,000
+1.2% if you credit your salary of $2,000 or more
+0.3% if you pay 3 bills via GIRO or online with a total value of $150
+0.3% if you spend $500 on your credit card
+0.6%-1.2% if you buy one of their wealth management products (probably unrealistic to include)
Most likely interest you can reasonably hope to achieve
0.05% base +1.2% +0.3% +0.3% = 1.85%
If your account average balance is $200,000 and above, you can earn 1% interest on the amount between $70,001 and $200,000
====================
I'll just paste the CIMB Visa Signature stats from my previous post here for easier comparison.
My personal average cashback is 5%-7% when I hit the criteria.
Pros
+9.8% bonus cashback on wine and dine (excluding any F&B in hotels)
+9.8% bonus cashback for ONLINE Foreign spending
No admin fee for FX transactions (1.4% rebate will be cashback to your account after foreign spending)
Member for life, no annual fee (you don't need to bother to cancel)
Cons
Base cashback 0.2%
Member for life, no annual fee
(you won't bother to cancel, means you will not be able to re-apply for more promos after 12 mths)
Bonus cashback capped at $60 per month
Criteria for bonus cashback
Minimum spending $500
AND
8 x $30 transactions within the month
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There are other credit cards from HSBC, Standard Chartered, Maybank, Amex, which give cashback, however, they aren't really worth mentioning. I get a feeling that they aren't even really trying.
Anyway, that's it for this post. Please comment below if you think I've missed out an a card worth mentioning.
Edit :
Card Worth mentioning (Many thanks to HW for indicating in the comments section)
DBS Visa Debit Card (Not a credit card)
It's not a credit card but it's a VERY good card if you can utilize it with your overall planning.
I think it is perfect for use as an additional spending card. For example after clearing all the minimum spending, there's some additional spending for the month, this would be a perfect card to utilize.
Pros
5% cash back if you pay using Visa payWave, through your card, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay or Android Pay.
Cons
Cashback capped at $50 (meaning a total Paywave spend of $1,000)
Cashback is only eligible when you keep your cash withdrawals to three times or less and up to S$400 every month across ALL your DBS/POSB Cards as well as local DBS/POSB ATMs and branches in the same month.
Only valid for local payments.
(I'll just have to transfer my funds to my OCBC/UOB account before withdrawing.)
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