I signed up for OCBC Premier Banking recently. One of the push factors is that I needed to get a "free" Mastercard (preferably with no fees/permanent waiver) quickly because Amazon was threatening to impose a 0.5% surcharge on all Visa payments in September which was like a few weeks' time. As it turns out, Amazon has since postponed the 0.5% to November.
Like most other banks, there are no charges for signing up but conversely no real benefits. Not really enough to make me sign up earlier, but since I needed a Mastercard I guess it was time.
The Mastercard in question is the Premier World Elite Debit Card. Since its a debit card, why wouldn't it be free?
So far, if I were to rank the benefits, it would be Standard Chartered no.1 due to online trading have lower comms + no minimum commission and the USD account. Their Visa infinite is only 2 years fee waiver and after that you have to request the card department to waive the fee. My SCB RM says he is powerless to do anything regarding card waiver.
UOB privilege banking would be no.2 because their Privilege Banking Visa Signature has half decent rewards and is lifetime fee waiver.
In the meantime, I am looking out for a better Mastercard. My key criteria are:
- Lifetime fee waiver or very easy to waive fees
- Good petrol discounts (not SPC pls 😂) - at least until I get my EV. But with COE hitting $70k, I may want to hold on to my ICE car with $30k COE for a bit longer.
Update: I received a letter from OCBC saying that I will also be receiving an OCBC Premier Visa Infinite with no annual fee and that I can contact OCBC if I don't want it. The RM didn't mention this to me. Anyway, since its lifetime fee waiver I'll just keep it and lock it up somewhere together with my OCBC Frank card which is also lifetime fee waiver.
No comments:
Post a Comment