How To Maximise The Cashback On Your UOB One Credit Card

Cashback credit cards are Heartland Boy’s absolute favourites and the UOB One Credit Card consistently ranks amongst one of the best. To earn the well-deserved cashback, the card holder would have to fulfil certain conditions. Based on approximately 2 years of personal experience using the credit card, Heartland Boy realises that the conditions are hardly intuitive at all. Drawing from his own episodes of near misses, this is a review on how you can maximise the cashback on your UOB One Credit Card.

UOB One Credit Card- How Does It Work?

The UOB One Credit Card rewards 3.33% cash back for a minimum spend of $500; provided that the cardholder achieves this minimum spend for 3 consecutive months within a qualifying quarter. If the cardholder achieves a minimum spend of $2,000 per month, the cashback is immediately bumped up to a tantalising 5%. Note that a minimum of 5 transactions must be achieved in a statement period in order to qualify. Failure to meet these requirements would result in a big fat zero percent of cashback for that quarter. The cashback earned would then be reflected and used to offset the bill in the month immediately following the end of the qualifying quarter.

When compared to the rest of the cashback credit cards available in Singapore, the UOB One Credit Card requires more mental effort. This is because it requires the cardholder to studiously monitor the monthly spending and ensure that the various criteria are met so as to qualify for the cash back. In addition, depending on the total amount spent, the cashback rate can drop below 3.33% and 5% as advertised respectively. Therefore, here are some tips on how you can maximise the cash back on your UOB One Credit Card.

1. Stop When You Reach The Minimum Spend Amount

As shown in Table 1, cashback is given out in fixed blocks of $50, $100 and $300. Therefore, any amount spent within the tiers will result in a diminished cashback rate. For instance, spending $800 a month each for 3 months only leads to a 2.1% cash back rate ($50/$2400). As Heartland Boy is never able to hit $2,000 spending per month for 3 consecutive months (Tier 3), he only allocates $500 of his expenditure towards the UOB One Credit Card. To meet this minimum spend, he channels all fixed spending into this card via automated GIRO payment. (eg: mobile, broadband bills etc)

As a pro-tip, Heartland Boy logs onto the UOB Mighty App to get a quick view of his accumulated spend on his UOB One Credit Card.

2. Check Your Statement Period

UOB’s definition of a quarter is simply a period of 3 consecutive statement months, of which the 1^st quarter shall start from the date on which the card member was issued the UOB One Credit Card. Therefore, it does not follow the calendar quarter of Jan to Mar, Apr to June etc. Here is a step-by-step guide to determine your qualifying Quarter.

1. Find out your monthly Statement Date by checking under “Statement Summary” found on the top right-hand side of your monthly electronic bill.
2. Find out the qualifying period for your quarterly rebates from the footnotes under “Rewards Summary” of your monthly bill.

From the example above, Heartland Boy’s quarterly rebates are as such:

• 18 Feb – 17 May
• 18 May – 17 Aug
• 18 Aug – 17 Nov
• 18 Nov – 17 Feb

Do note that only for your first quarter, your cash rebate will be pro-rated based on the number of months within the quarter that your credit card is in effect. Continuing from the example above, if Heartland Boy receives his card in April and spends $1000 from 18 April to 17 May, his cash rebate would be pro-rated ($100/3 = $33.33) and credited next month. The slate is then wiped clean as he progresses to the next quarter which follows the effective range of 18 May to 17 Aug.

As a pro-tip, Heartland Boy arranges for GIRO payment for his UOB One Credit Card by deducting from his UOB One Savings Account.

3. Be Careful Of Exclusions

As per most cashback credit cards, there are certain types of spending that do not qualify as an eligible retail spend. For the UOB One Credit Card, Heartland Boy would like to bring your attention on the Exclusions stated in the Terms and Conditions. Note that typical exclusions that would not have counted as a valid Card Transaction have been omitted in this review.

1. Payments made to government institutions and services (ministries and government agencies, town councils, government hospitals & polyclinics, People’s Association);
2. Payment made to charitable/religious organizations;
3. Monthly instalments under 0% Instalment Payment Plan and SmartPay
4. Payment of funds to any of the following prepaid accounts: AXS, EZ-LINK/Reload, Paypal (selected merchants only), Nets Flashpay, Transitlink, Saxo, Oanda etc.

Note that not only do these transactions not earn cashback, they also do not count towards the monthly minimum spend as well. Well, if you look on the other side of the coin, this make the UOB One Credit Card a great credit card to use for large expenses such as wedding banquet, home renovation, private hospital bills etc.

4. Bonus Cashback On Petroleum

If you drive a car, the UOB One Credit Card is fantastic for refuelling your tanks at Shell or SPC. Assuming that you achieve the 5% cashback tier, the respective saving rates for Shell and SPC are 20.8% and 24% respectively. Note that Shell is one of the eligible SMART$ merchants which qualify for 7% SMART$ rebates. Of course, you are also entitled to the dining privileges extended to all UOB card members.

Most importantly, if you clock $500 in a calendar month on your UOB One Credit Card, you would satisfy the critical criteria in the UOB One Savings Account. The UOB One Savings Account yields potentially 2.436% on the first $75,000 of your deposits.

SINGSAVER PROMOTION IN OCTOBER 2018

SingSaver is rolling out some awesome promotions for the month of October 2018 if you sign up any of the credit cards listed below. Receive up to $200 cash or cash-in-kind per credit card by applying through the links below:

• HSBC Credit Cards (Advance, Visa Platinum, Revolution) – $150 cash credit for new customers, $100 cash credit for existing customers. This is in addition to the Bank’s own promotion.
• Standard Chartered Credit Cards (Unlimited, Rewards+) – $150 cash for new customers, $100 cash for existing customers. This is in addition to the Bank’s own promotion.
• UOB Credit Cards (One,  YOLO, Lady’s,) – $50 cash for both new and existing customers
• Citibank Credit Cards (Rewards, Cash Back) – $200 NTUC/Taka/Grab vouchers for new customers, $50 NTUC/Taka/Grab vouchers for existing customers. A further $10 Grab Code is available upon completing the first step!
• AMEX Credit Cards (True Cashback, KrisFlyer, KrisFlyer Ascend)

If you want to read more about the mechanics of the SingSaver’s promotion, read this link: SingSaver-Rewards-Campaign-Terms-and-Conditions(October 2018).

*Do note that Heartland Boy earns a small fee for each successful referral via the links.