WahLiao reference desk · Researched guide · Product terms checked 29 September 2026. General information, not a personalised credit-card recommendation. Cards are included to explain different reward structures, not ranked from best to worst. Worked examples assume eligible retail transactions and no revolving interest unless stated otherwise.
Credit cards in Singapore look easy to compare until the conditions arrive. A flat 1.6% cashback card, a card paying a fixed quarterly rebate after three identical spend months, a category cashback card, a 4-miles-per-dollar category card and a general travel card are not five versions of the same product. They reward different behaviour, use different caps, and can produce very different results from the same monthly bill.
The useful comparison is therefore not “Which card advertises the highest number?” It is: what do you actually spend on, which conditions can you meet every month, what happens when you miss them, where does the reward stop, and what annual fee or conversion cost sits underneath it? This page shows how to do that calculation with current product examples.
Go to five reward structures · flat cashback · quarterly thresholds · category cashback · category miles · general miles · worked spending profiles · fees and break-even · application checklist · questions and answers.
Five current cards, five different pieces of maths
The following cards are not a market-wide shortlist. They are examples with current official product pages that expose five different reward designs clearly enough to demonstrate the calculation. Promotions and welcome gifts are excluded from the baseline comparison unless specifically dated, because an acquisition bonus is not the same thing as the card’s standing economics.
| Example card | Core reward structure checked 29 Sep 2026 | Main condition to model | Annual fee position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Citi Cash Back+ Card | 1.6% cash back on eligible spend, no minimum retail spend and no cap on the base cash back. | Transaction eligibility; optional Citi Plus bonus has separate requirements and cap. | S$196.20 basic fee; first year waived. |
| UOB One Card | Quarterly base cash back of S$60 / S$100 / S$200 when the S$600 / S$1,000 / S$2,000 monthly tier is met for all three months, with at least 10 purchases each month. | Same tier across the qualifying quarter, purchase count, selected-category additional cash back and caps. | S$196.20 principal fee; first year waived. |
| OCBC 365 Credit Card | Category cash back including 6% petrol, 5% dining and 3% groceries, land transport, utilities, streaming, Watsons and EV charging. | At least S$800 posted spend for Tier 1 or S$1,600 for Tier 2; cash-back cap S$80 or S$160 respectively. | S$196.20 principal fee; first two years waived; S$10,000 annual spend for automatic service-fee waiver thereafter. |
| HSBC Revolution Credit Card | For cardholders without the specified S$50,000 deposit relationship: 10× Reward points on qualifying online/contactless categories, stated by HSBC as up to 4 miles per S$1; 9,000 Bonus Points cap per calendar month. | Payment mode, merchant category and monthly bonus-point cap. | No annual fee. |
| DBS Altitude Card | Up to 1.3 miles per S$1 on local spend and up to 2.2 miles per S$1 on overseas foreign-currency spend. | DBS Points are awarded per S$5 spent on a per-transaction basis; conversion fees and foreign-currency costs matter. | S$196.20 principal fee; first year waived on the current product page. |
The annual-fee figures above are costs to keep in the model when they are charged. A first-year waiver is not a permanent zero fee. Likewise, a high reward percentage does not apply automatically to every transaction: exclusions, merchant-category codes, posting dates, statement cycles and transaction definitions can all change the result.
Flat cashback: Citi Cash Back+ makes the arithmetic simple
Citi Cash Back+ states 1.6% cash back on eligible spend with no minimum retail spend and no cap on the base cash back. Its published basic fee is S$196.20 including GST, with the first year waived. This is the easiest structure on this page to model because there is no base-reward spend threshold to cross.
For S$800 of eligible purchases, the base arithmetic is S$800 × 1.6% = S$12.80. At S$2,000 it is S$32. The reward scales linearly as long as the transactions qualify. That simplicity is useful when spending is irregular or spread across categories that do not fit a specialist card.
Citi Plus customers who are the primary account holder of a Citi Interest Booster Account can receive an additional 0.4% Bonus Cash Back after meeting the published S$500 retail-spend requirement, with the bonus applying only up to S$2,000 of retail spend a month. That relationship benefit is not part of the 1.6% baseline used here. Do not add it to the comparison unless the banking relationship and monthly condition actually apply.
“No minimum spend” also does not mean every movement of money earns cash back. The product agreement excludes categories including fees, interest, cash advances, instalment-related items, balance transfers and a range of payment and financial transactions. Use the current card agreement when a large or unusual payment is central to the calculation.
Quarterly thresholds: UOB One has cliffs, not one continuous rate
UOB One pays its standing quarterly base cash back in three tiers. Meet S$600 a month and at least 10 purchases in each month of the qualifying quarter for S$60 quarterly cash back. The S$1,000 tier pays S$100; the S$2,000 tier pays S$200. UOB describes each threshold as up to 3.33% because S$60 ÷ S$1,800, S$100 ÷ S$3,000 and S$200 ÷ S$6,000 are each approximately 3.33%.
The important word is threshold. If you spend S$800 in each month and remain in the S$600 tier, S$60 over S$2,400 of quarterly spend is 2.5%, not 3.33%. If you spend S$999 each month, the S$60 base rebate over S$2,997 works out to about 2.00%. Crossing to exactly S$1,000 each month changes the quarterly base rebate to S$100, which restores the 3.33% rate on S$3,000.
| Illustrative monthly eligible spend for 3 months | Assumed base tier | Quarterly base cash back | Effective base cash back over that spend |
|---|---|---|---|
| S$600 each month | S$600 tier | S$60 | 3.33% |
| S$800 each month | S$600 tier | S$60 | 2.50% |
| S$999 each month | S$600 tier | S$60 | about 2.00% |
| S$1,000 each month | S$1,000 tier | S$100 | 3.33% |
| S$1,999 each month | S$1,000 tier | S$100 | about 1.67% |
| S$2,000 each month | S$2,000 tier | S$200 | 3.33% |
UOB also publishes additional cash back for selected partners, groceries and Singapore Power, with a separate monthly cap. Those categories can materially lift total rewards, but they make the comparison more sensitive to the exact spending mix. The current new-to-UOB enhanced first-quarter promotion runs only through 30 September 2026 and is therefore treated as an expiring acquisition promotion rather than a durable feature of this guide.
Category cashback: OCBC 365 depends on what the S$800 or S$1,600 contains
OCBC 365 publishes 6% on petrol, 5% on dining, and 3% on groceries, land transport, utilities, streaming, Watsons and EV charging. The standing programme uses two spend tiers: at least S$800 in posted transactions for a maximum S$80 monthly cash back, or at least S$1,600 for a maximum S$160. If monthly spend is below S$800, OCBC states a flat 0.25% cash back instead of the higher category programme.
The percentage therefore cannot be calculated from total spend alone. Suppose an illustrative S$800 month contains S$300 dining, S$250 groceries, S$100 land transport and S$150 recurring utilities, and all of those transactions qualify in the expected categories. The cash back would be S$15 + S$7.50 + S$3 + S$4.50 = S$30. That is 3.75% on the S$800 illustrative mix, comfortably below the S$80 Tier 1 cap.
Change the mix and the result changes. The same S$800 entirely outside the promoted categories is not a 3.75% month. A restaurant coded by its payment network under a category OCBC does not recognise as dining can also miss the dining rate. The bank specifically notes, for example, that some hotel, bar or country-club transactions may not be classified as dining.
The principal annual fee is S$196.20 and is waived for the first two years. OCBC states a S$10,000 annual-spend condition for automatic annual service-fee waiver thereafter. That makes the card’s category fit and annual usage relevant together: a household can have a good dining month without necessarily meeting the later annual-fee condition.
Category miles: HSBC Revolution rewards the transaction type as much as the amount
HSBC Revolution currently has no annual fee. For cardholders outside HSBC’s specified S$50,000 deposit-balance relationship tier, the published structure is 1× Base Point plus 9× Bonus Points on qualifying online and contactless merchant categories, which HSBC expresses as 10× Reward points or up to 4 miles per S$1. The 9× Bonus Points are capped at 9,000 per calendar month.
Because the bonus portion is 9 points per S$1 and the cap is 9,000 Bonus Points, the ordinary bonus cap is reached at S$1,000 of qualifying spend in a calendar month. That S$1,000 can generate 10,000 total Reward points before considering any redemption rules, which HSBC equates to up to 4,000 miles. Qualifying spend beyond the bonus cap continues to earn the published base points if the transaction is otherwise qualifying.
That calculation is useful only when the payment method and merchant category qualify. An online or contactless transaction at an excluded merchant category does not become a 4-miles-per-dollar transaction merely because a phone was tapped. Read the current qualifying MCC list before moving a large planned purchase to the card.
HSBC also advertises a higher relationship tier: maintaining at least S$50,000 average daily balance in the specified sole Everyday Global Account can lift eligible transactions to 20× Reward points, described as up to 8 miles per S$1, with a higher monthly Bonus Points cap. That is a banking-relationship condition, not the universal Revolution rate, so it is kept outside the baseline calculation.
General miles: DBS Altitude is simpler by category, but transaction rounding matters
DBS Altitude publishes up to 1.3 miles per S$1 on local spend and up to 2.2 miles per S$1 on overseas spend made in foreign currency. DBS Points earned on the card do not expire under the current product description. The principal annual fee is S$196.20, with a first-year waiver on the current eligibility-and-fees page.
The phrase “per S$1” is not the whole calculation. DBS states that miles are awarded in the form of DBS Points for every S$5 spent on a per-transaction basis, at 1 DBS Point = 2 miles. Transaction-level rounding can therefore reduce the realised earning rate when many purchases do not divide cleanly into S$5 blocks.
For a simple illustration, one S$800 qualifying local transaction that receives the full 1.3-mile rate corresponds to about 1,040 miles. Forty S$20 transactions would also divide cleanly into the S$5 unit. A month made of many S$6 or S$9 purchases will not reproduce the same result exactly because the award mechanics operate transaction by transaction.
DBS also charges a fee when DBS Points are converted through a manual miles redemption, and offers a separate paid auto-conversion programme. Overseas transactions additionally need the card’s foreign-currency costs considered; a higher overseas miles rate is not the same thing as a lower total transaction cost. Keep those costs in the travel calculation rather than valuing miles alone.
Worked spending profiles: compare the same household, not five headline rates
The examples below are decision tools, not recommendations. They deliberately ignore welcome gifts, bank relationship bonuses, merchant promotions and subjective valuations of a mile. Where a card needs three months to earn a quarterly reward, the example assumes the same qualifying pattern is repeated for all three months.
Profile A: S$800 a month, mostly everyday categories
Assume S$300 dining, S$250 groceries, S$100 land transport and S$150 utilities, all qualifying and posted within the relevant period.
| Card structure | Illustrative result | What the result depends on |
|---|---|---|
| Citi Cash Back+ base | S$800 × 1.6% = S$12.80 cash back for the month. | All S$800 must be eligible retail spend. |
| UOB One base | At S$800 each month, the household remains in the S$600 tier: S$60 over a 3-month S$2,400 quarter = 2.5% base cash back. | At least 10 qualifying purchases each month and the qualifying-quarter rules. Additional category cash back not included. |
| OCBC 365 categories | S$15 dining + S$7.50 groceries + S$3 transport + S$4.50 utilities = S$30. | All four categories must post under qualifying merchant categories; S$800 Tier 1 requirement must be met. |
| HSBC Revolution | If the entire S$800 falls within qualifying online/contactless MCCs, 10× points corresponds to up to 3,200 miles. | Payment mode, MCC eligibility, monthly bonus cap and reward-conversion rules. |
| DBS Altitude local | At the full 1.3-mile rate, S$800 corresponds to about 1,040 miles before transaction-rounding effects. | Per-S$5 transaction award unit and transaction eligibility. |
Cash back and miles are deliberately not converted into one winner. A mile has no single cash value on this page: its value depends on the redemption, availability, taxes, transfer fees and whether the reader would otherwise have bought that travel. Converting miles to an assumed cents-per-mile figure would add another assumption rather than remove one.
Profile B: spend sits just below or above a threshold
Threshold products deserve their own stress test. On UOB One, S$999 a month for three qualifying months produces the S$60 base quarterly rebate if the lower-tier conditions are met, roughly 2.00% over S$2,997. S$1,000 a month raises the base rebate to S$100, about 3.33% over S$3,000. One dollar per month in this constructed example changes the quarterly reward by S$40 because it crosses a tier.
That does not mean a household should invent S$1 of spending to chase a reward. It means a threshold card should be modelled with the household’s normal spend before application. If the usual month is S$850, a S$1,000 tier is not a S$1,000 budget. The reward structure should follow spending; spending should not be built to rescue the reward structure.
Profile C: category fit changes during the year
A household may have strong dining and transport spend for six months, then move, work from home or have a child and shift heavily toward different merchants. A category card’s historical return is therefore not a promise about the next year. Review the last three to six months of actual transactions, then test a second scenario in which the largest category falls by half. If the card stops making sense only because one category changes, that dependency should be visible before application.
Annual fees: treat a waiver as a condition, not as the permanent price
The standing principal annual fees checked on this page are S$196.20 for Citi Cash Back+, UOB One, OCBC 365 and DBS Altitude, while HSBC Revolution currently states no annual fee. Citi, UOB and DBS show a first-year waiver; OCBC shows the first two years waived and a S$10,000 annual-spend threshold for automatic waiver thereafter.
A simple break-even shows why later-year fees matter. At 1.6% flat cash back, S$196.20 ÷ 0.016 = S$12,262.50 of eligible spend merely to generate cash back equal to that fee, if the fee were charged and not waived. That is not a claim that a user must spend S$12,262.50; it is the cost arithmetic for one fee-and-rate combination.
For points and miles cards there is no honest single break-even without choosing a value for each mile and including transfer fees. The annual fee can sometimes come with bonus miles, as DBS currently describes for Altitude, but the resulting trade is “cash fee for a specified number of points or miles,” not “free miles.” Keep the fee and the reward as two separate lines in the calculation.
Interest can overwhelm the reward calculation
The worked profiles assume no interest-bearing balance because they are comparing rewards. If a balance revolves, finance charges and late-payment costs can dwarf a 1.6%, 3%, 4-mile or 5% reward. WahLiao already keeps that mechanics explanation separately in Credit Card Late Fees and Interest: What Missing a Payment Really Costs. Link the two decisions: first understand the borrowing cost, then decide whether reward optimisation is worth your attention.
A credit limit is also not a spending target or an emergency fund. For how lenders and bureaus interpret repayment history and outstanding credit, continue to Your Credit Score in Singapore. This page owns reward structures and comparison arithmetic; it does not duplicate the credit-bureau guide.
A pre-application checklist that fits on one screen
| Question | What to record | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|
| What did I actually spend? | Three to six months of normal spending by category, without moving spend merely to satisfy a card. | Starting with the card’s bonus categories and forcing the budget to fit them. |
| Is there a threshold? | Minimum monthly spend, purchase count, qualifying quarter and posting/statement dates. | Reading “up to” as the rate on every dollar. |
| Where is the cap? | Cash-back cap, bonus-point cap, category cap and the spend at which the cap is reached. | Applying the headline rate to spend above the cap. |
| What is excluded? | Large expected transactions and their merchant/payment category under the current terms. | Assuming all card payments are eligible retail spend. |
| What is the annual cost? | Annual fee, waiver conditions, points-transfer fees and any banking relationship needed for bonus rates. | Treating a first-year waiver or welcome gift as a permanent feature. |
| Am I comparing cash to miles? | Keep them separate unless you can state a redemption assumption and its fees. | Using an optimistic cents-per-mile number as though it were cash. |
| Will I carry a balance? | Model borrowing costs before reward value. | Optimising a small reward while paying much larger finance charges. |
You do not need to upload statements or disclose card numbers to use this framework. A private spreadsheet with category totals is enough. Keep account credentials, full card numbers, CVVs and one-time passwords out of any comparison document or chat.
How to compare a new promotion without rebuilding the whole article
Separate the standing card from the acquisition promotion. First calculate the ordinary reward and fee structure. Then put the welcome gift in a separate first-year row with its application dates, new-to-bank definition, qualifying spend and fulfilment timing. At the end of the first year, delete that row from the forward-looking calculation.
This is especially important on 29 September 2026 because several bank promotions visible today expire on 30 September or are limited to new cardmembers. An article that turns those offers into the permanent description of the product will be wrong as soon as October begins. The standing card mechanics on this page are therefore prioritised over sign-up bonuses.
Questions people ask
Which credit card gives the highest cashback in Singapore?
There is no single answer without a spending pattern and the current conditions. A category card can advertise a higher rate than a flat card and still produce less cash back for a household whose transactions do not fall into those categories or whose spend misses the threshold. This guide therefore compares mechanics rather than declaring an overall winner.
Is no minimum spend always better?
No. It is simpler and can suit irregular spend, but a threshold or category product can generate more reward when the household naturally meets its conditions. “Better” depends on the actual spend and the value placed on simplicity, not the absence of one rule.
Should I choose cashback or miles?
Cashback is already denominated in dollars; miles require a redemption assumption. If you compare them, state the trip, number of miles, taxes and fees, alternative cash fare and any transfer fee. Without that, “4 miles per dollar” and “3% cashback” are different units rather than competing percentages.
What is the most important cap to check?
The cap attached to the reward you care about. That can be a monthly cash-back cap, quarterly rebate threshold or monthly bonus-point cap. Convert the cap back into the maximum spend that earns the headline reward so you know what happens to the next dollar.
Do annual-fee waivers make a card free?
Only for the period and conditions stated. First-year and first-two-year waivers expire, and later automatic waivers can require annual spend. A card can also carry points-transfer, foreign-currency, late-payment or other charges unrelated to the annual fee. Model the costs you expect to encounter rather than using “fee waived” as a synonym for “no costs.”
Sources, evidence and refresh triggers
Official product pages checked 29 September 2026: Citi Cash Back+, UOB One, OCBC 365, HSBC Revolution and DBS Altitude. Bank terms govern. Product examples are not affiliate placements and their order is not a ranking.
Refresh this article when a standing reward rate, minimum spend, reward cap, annual fee, fee-waiver condition or qualifying-category framework changes. Short-lived sign-up offers should be dated or omitted from the evergreen comparison rather than silently replacing the baseline. A modification date by itself does not mean all five cards were rechecked unless the source-check line says so.
This guide does not advise the reader to obtain, retain or cancel a card. Use the issuer’s eligibility assessment and current terms for an application, and seek suitable professional help where personal debt or financial advice is needed. Read How WahLiao Judges for the distinction between researched guidance and first-hand evidence.
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