Comparison of Air Miles Credit Cards in Singapore

I have always enjoy travelling to different parts of the world. Wouldn't it be great if your daily expenditure can help you earn some air miles to exchange for free air tickets to your next destination? I have been researching on the different air miles credit cards in Singapore and here are the results. Guess which is my preferred air miles credit card?

I have made a comparison between 4 different credit cards namely UOB PRVI MILES PLATINUM, OCBC TITANIUM CREDIT CARD, ANZ TRAVEL VISA SIGNATURE CREDIT CARD and DBS ALTITUDE VISA CARD.

Local Spending:

For local spending, UOB and ANZ offer the highest miles of 1.4miles per $1. However, I would prefer ANZ over UOB. This is because ANZ minimum miles required to convert is only 2000miles. This means you only need to spend $1,429 to be able to make your first conversion. For UOB, you need to spend at least $7,143 for your first conversion. Furthermore, ANZ allows you a time of 5 years to accumulate the miles before it expires, compared to UOB of only 2 years. Thus ANZ not only provide higher miles for local spending, but also better flexibility than UOB.

Overseas Spending:

I don't usually put much attention in overseas spending to earn miles because I try not to use my credit cards overseas. This is because of the unattractive conversion rate charged by your bank as compared to changing at your local money changer. This is because when a foreign currency is charged to your credit card, it will first be converted to USD before converting it to SGD. Thus you are being charged on 2 conversion rates. However, it would be beneficial if your friends or family asked you to help them get some expensive goods from overseas but you don't want to carry too much cash with you.

Others 

Being an avid traveller, it seems that DBS Altitude suits my needs. You get to earn 3 miles per S$1 spend on all online and hotel transactions. That's a very attractive plus point of this card. However, the minimum required spending to make your first conversion is $8,334. But the good thing is there is no expiry date for your miles. So you can take as long as you want to accumulate. The only really downside of the DBS Altitude card is the conversion fee charged annually of $42.80 which is non-waivable.

To conclude, the best air miles cards that I prefer is actually 2 cards - ANZ Travel Card for your local spending and DBS Altitude Card for the booking of your air tickets and hotels. I would recommend to get both so that if you used up your ANZ credit limit, you can still earn 1.2 miles using DBS Altitude Card, which is not bad too. Please note that the above comparison does not include other benefits like welcome bonus, free travel insurance, limousine services etc that may be offered by some banks.

Value of Air Miles

In this section, we are going to explore the value of each air miles. Ever wonder how much each miles actually worth per Singapore dollar spend locally? We are going to use Singapore Airlines Krisflyer miles of a return trip tickets from Singapore to London as an example.

From the above table, we can see that if we use ANZ card and use the miles to convert to Economy class tickets, every $1 spent locally, it is equivalent to 1.442% rebate. For Business class, it is 4.438% and for First class, it is 8.862% rebate. Thus it is better if you aim to convert the air miles to at least a business class tickets as the rebate on economy class is really peanuts. This table also shows you that if there is a cash rebate credit card that can offer a rebates higher than 4.438%, than it is more worth it to use that card. However, one has to take note of other fringe benefits and costs that the air miles card might offer or incur (eg. free limousine service, free travel insurance, welcome bonus, conversion fee etc.).

Cheers~