How to Maximise Miles When Buying an Apple iPhone 16

Apple has taken the wraps off its latest iPhone 16, which is now available for sale in Singapore and around the world.

Needless to say, an iPhone 16 is no small investment. Depending on the version and storage you’re looking at, it’ll cost you anywhere from S$1,299 to S$2,499. 

With a purchase this size, it’s always a good idea to take a step back and ask yourself if you really need to upgrade your phone again. But assuming you’ve already decided to take the plunge, you might as well get the most miles out of it!

In this post, I’ll walk you through the best credit cards to use for this purchase, as well as some other ways of stacking additional miles.

What cards should I use to buy an iPhone 16?

The best card to use for an iPhone 16 purchase depends on where you’re buying it from.

Online

If you’re buying your iPhone 16 online, then any of the following cards would earn you up to 4 mpd on your purchase.

While the Citi Rewards Card and DBS Woman’s World Card will award 4 mpd so long as the transaction is processed online, you need to be slightly more careful with the HSBC Revolution and KrisFlyer UOB Credit Card. These will only award 4 mpd (3 mpd in the case of the KrisFlyer UOB) if the transaction codes as MCC 5732 Electronics Stores. Most places I can think of that sell the iPhone (like iStudio, Best Denki, Courts, Harvey Norman) would code under that MCC, but that doesn’t include generic ecommerce sites (like Shopee) or telcos.

If you want to check the MCC before making a purchase, I’ve written about three quick and easy ways of doing so- given that this is a big ticket purchase, it’s certainly worth the effort!

In-store 

If you’re buying your iPhone in-store, either of the following cards would earn 4 mpd on your purchase.

In both cases, you’ll need to pay via contactless methods to earn the bonuses. For the UOB Preferred Platinum Visa, add the card to your Apple or Google Pay wallet and tap your phone to pay. For the UOB Visa Signature, you also have the option of tapping your physical card at the reader.

Stack miles from Kris+

But if you only stop at credit card miles, you’re selling yourself short. There’s other ways of earning bonus miles on your iPhone purchase, at no additional cost. 

One such way is Kris+, which awards bonus miles on top of what you get from your credit card. Kris+ currently offers an additional 1 mile per S$1 spent with the following retailers

• Challenger
• Harvey Norman
• iStudio

This is stackable with up to 4 mpd from your credit card. As Kris+ transactions code as online, and retain the MCC of the underlying merchant, you can use the cards mentioned in the previous section for online purchases. 

Don’t forget to transfer any miles earned from Kris+ to krisFlyer within 21 days of the transaction, in their entirety. If you wait longer than 21 days, or use Kris+ to spend any portion of the miles earned, the remaining balance will be stuck inside Kris+.

Stack miles from KrisShop

The iPhone 16 is also available for purchase on KrisShop, which has its own loyalty programme called KrisShopper.

Purchases made via KrisShop are eligible to earn an extra 1.5 to 4 miles per S$1, as shown below:

• Non-KrisShopper: 1.5 mpd
• Member: 2 mpd
• Insider: 2.5 mpd
• Icon: 3 mpd
• Ambassador: 4 mpd

Since the Member tier is free to join, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be taking home at least 2 mpd extra on your iPhone purchase.

The main thing to note here is that KrisShop will change the transaction’s MCC to 5309 Duty Free Stores, so the optimum cards to use also change. 

KrisShop is also offering a bonus 2,000 KrisFlyer miles for Mastercard customers who spend a minimum of S$1,000 on Apple iPhones by 30 September 2024 (or when 2 million miles are given away, whichever comes first).

Stack miles from HeyMax 

Instead of buying an iPhone directly from the retailer, you can consider buying vouchers via HeyMax instead. HeyMax offers Max Miles for voucher purchases, which can be converted to 27 airline and hotel loyalty programmes. The rates continuously change, but you can generally earn 0.5-1.5 mpd with Amazon SG, Courts, Lazada and Shopee.

What’s great about HeyMax is that voucher purchases code as MCC 5311 Department Stores, which is currently a 6 mpd bonus category for the OCBC Rewards Card till 31 December 2024. 

The other good thing about buying vouchers instead of the item outright is that you can split your transaction up. For example, if you were buying the most expensive iPhone Pro Max 1TB, the S$2,499 charge would bust the 4 mpd bonus caps on every card out there. But if you’re buying Courts vouchers, for instance, you could buy multiple vouchers to optimise the bonus cap on each card.

Conclusion

Apple’s latest iPhone 16 will put a dent in your wallet, but at least it’ll help you pad your miles account. Be sure to look for stacking opportunities with Kris+, KrisShop and HeyMax for extra miles on top of your credit card, making that four-digit purchase a little less painful.