Taking Stock: How My Credit Card Strategy Has Changed Since The Start Of 2024

The miles game is by its very nature dynamic, with nerfs and buffs happening all the time.

Therefore, it’s important to pause every now and then and take stock of credit card strategy. Are there any cards we should be adding? Are there some which should get the chop? 

In that spirit, here’s how I’m keeping my strategy up-to-date.

At the start of 2024, the UOB Lady’s Cards were in the midst of an excellent promotion which boosted their earn rates by 50% from 4 mpd to 6 mpd. 

Given the caps of S$1,000 per month (UOB Lady’s Card) and S$3,000 per month (UOB Lady’s Solitaire; now reduced to S$2,000), cardholders could look forward to a jaw-dropping 216,000 miles per year – enough to fly two people to Tokyo and back in Business Class! 

That promotion ended on 31 March 2024, but thankfully it’s not game over yet. UOB took the opportunity to revise the UOB Lady’s Savings Account, opening it to men and adding an extra 2-6 mpd on spending, depending on account balance.

For example, by depositing S$10,000 in a UOB Lady’s Savings Account, UOB Lady’s Cardholders can continue to earn an extra 2 mpd on their bonus categories, for a total of 6 mpd. Even though the interest from the account is a paltry 0.05% p.a., the bonus miles should more than make up for it.

Less lucrative are the next two tiers of S$50,000 (bonus 4 mpd) and S$100,000 (bonus 6 mpd), so I’d recommend sticking to S$10,000 at a maximum.

This is currently positioned as a limited-time offer that will lapse on 31 March 2025, so don’t delay in getting your account opened.

The DBS Woman’s World Card has long been a fixture in my wallet. Actually, that’s metaphorical more than anything else, because you don’t actually carry this card around.

Instead, you keep it at home for your online shopping, or add it to your food delivery and ride-hailing apps. You’ll earn 4 mpd on these transactions, an easy way of turning daily spending into upsized rewards.

Unfortunately, the DBS Woman’s World Card reduced its monthly bonus cap by 25% in March 2024, going from S$2,000 to S$1,500 per calendar month.

While that’s obviously not as good as before, this remains an excellent option for online spending, even with the reduced cap. The key drawback continues to be its one-year points expiry, which means you’ll need to be disciplined about transferring your points out every 12 months.

Unfortunately, 2024 has not been kind to the HSBC Revolution.

The year got off to a bad start, when the card dropped MCCs 4722 and 7011 from its bonus whitelist on 1 January 2024. This meant no more bonuses for popular activities booking platforms like Klook and Pelago, as well as OTAs such as Trip.com, Hotels.com, Expedia and Traveloka. AirBnB and many hotels were also excluded.

But worse was still to come in May 2024, when bonuses for groceries, food delivery and fast food were also nerfed. And from 15 July 2024, bonuses will no longer be awarded for in-person transactions; only online spending will count. Oh, you thought we were done? Hardly. In January 2025, bonuses for travel-related transactions will also be removed!

It’s just utter carnage, and long story short, there’s very little reason to keep the HSBC Revolution anymore when other cards offer the same rewards with much less hassle. The only real benefit I can think of here is that the card has no annual fee, and comes with a free complimentary copy of The Entertainer. But I reckon you’d do better with the newly-launched HSBC Live+ Card instead, enjoying its 8% cashback on dining, entertainment and shopping till the end of 2024.

The OCBC Rewards (then known as the Titanium Rewards) suffered a really bad nerf in November 2023, which saw bonuses for electronics stores and IKEA removed, and its bonus cap changed from annual to monthly (which meant you couldn’t use the entire year’s 4 mpd allowance in a single big-ticket transaction).

Because of this, I considered the card to be largely irrelevant given that other cards offered the same rewards with a much broader list of bonus categories. 

But 2024 has been quite the turnaround story. Since April 2024, the OCBC Rewards Card has been offering 6 mpd on department store transactions which code under MCC 5311, capped at S$1,000 per calendar month. This promotion goes on all the way till 31 December 2024, and the best part is: you don’t need to shop at Takashimaya or Isetan.

As it turns out, HeyMax sells a wide variety of gift cards for merchants including Amazon, Grab, Klook, foodpanda, Deliveroo, Lazada, Zalora, courts and more. These would normally code under a wide range of MCCs, but when gift cards are purchased through HeyMax, they universally default to MCC 5311.

I hope you see where I’m going here. You could leverage the OCBC Rewards Card’s 6 mpd bonus for a whole range of everyday spend, making it an extremely versatile card.

Of course, it remains to be seen how useful this card is in 2025 after the promotion ends. Stay tuned!

The DBS yuu Card has been nothing short of a phenomenon ever since it boosted its rebates on yuu merchants to 18% back in April 2023. Imagine earning 18% rebates on groceries at Cold Storage and Giant, on food delivery with foodpanda, on ride-hailing with gojek, on pharmacy essentials at Guardian and more – I’d certainly choose that over 4 miles per dollar!

Obviously, 18% rebates is not a sustainable value proposition, and sooner or later the music has to stop. But that day hasn’t come yet. While the end date was initially set at 29 February 2024, the 18% rebates have now become “valid until further notice”.

We don’t know exactly when that day will come, so make hay while you still can!

Citi PayAll began the year in the midst of a promotion which boosted the earn rate on all bill payments to 1.8 mpd. Given the admin fee of 2.2%, the cost per mile was reduced to 1.2 cents apiece.

That promotion ended in March but even so, an argument could be made that with the regular earn rates of 1.2 mpd (Citi PremierMiles) or 1.3 mpd (Citi Prestige), buying miles at 1.83 cents (Citi PremierMiles) or 1.69 cents (Citi Prestige) could make sense under certain circumstances.

Unfortunately, in April that all changed when the Citi PayAll admin fee was hiked to 2.6%. Yes, it also launched a promotion for income tax season which offers 2 mpd on tax payments and 1.6 mpd on non-tax payments till 31 July 2024, but that will eventually cease, while the 2.6% admin fee is a permanent thing.

In the absence of a promotion, the cost per mile has increased to 2.17 cents (Citi PremierMiles) or 2 cents (Citi Prestige). Does that still make sense? Well, it all boils down to how much you value a mile, but for me personally it’s too much to pay when rival services like CardUp offer cheaper miles for bill payments. 

Therefore, Citi PayAll has lost a lot of its lustre in my eyes, and I’d only consider using it when there’s an ongoing promotion.

When Maybank relaunched the Maybank Horizon Visa Signature last year, it turned a relatively obscure card into something practically essential. 

For a limited period, the card earned 3.2 mpd on air tickets, capped at S$10,000 per month, and 3.2 mpd on overseas spend, with no cap at all! Even better, the overseas bonuses applied even to categories like education and charitable donations, which are normally surefire exclusions for other banks.

The earn rate now has reverted to 2.8 mpd, but it’s still extremely compelling given the lack of cap for overseas spend. Maybank even brought back the 3.2 mpd rate for May and June 2024, and I’m hoping we see another promotion in time for year-end travel.

That’s a summary of how my card strategy has changed since the start of the year, and hopefully you’re giving yours some thought too.

After all, card strategies should never be static, given the pace of changes in the miles game. What served you well at the start of the year may already be obsolete by now, and spending some time reviewing your game plan can reap dividends down the road.