The Milelion Credit Card Omnibus Week 5: ANZ

The Milelion is running a new series that aims to profile every credit card available in Singapore. Each week we will cover a different bank. The appendix below will be updated weekly with hyperlinks as more banks are added, allowing you to navigate between weeks seamlessly

Week 1- OCBC
Week 2- DBS
Week 3- UOB
Week 4- Citibank
Week 5- ANZ
Week 6- American Express
Week 7- HSBC
Week 8- Standard Chartered

ANZ is one of the smaller card issuers in Singapore (4 publicly available cards) but they have one or two decent cards. Actually, scratch that. They only have one, the ANZ Travel Visa, and everything else kind of sucks. Be prepared to be underwhelmed!

ANZ Optimum World MasterCard

• Annual Fee: $180  (First year fee waiver)
• Income Req: $80,000 (Singaporeans and PRs)
• Marketing Spiel: 5% cashback on one category of groceries,
• The catch: Cashback is capped at $30 per transaction, cashback can only be redeemed in intervals of $50
• APPLY HERE

This card is positioned as a premium card, given its $80,000 minimum income requirement. Despite the fanfare when this card was launched, nothing could hide the fact that it is, at the end of the day, another cashback card. And you never win with cashback cards.

I think you already know what I’m going to say here- don’t bother. It’s true that there are some interesting aspects of the Optimum card, but the capped nature of the bonus earnings requires a lot of micromanagement.

Here’s the deal. You pick one category each quarter- groceries, shopping, dining or travel. This category gets 5% cashback. All other spend gets 1% cashback.

The cashback earned is limited to $30 per transaction. Which means that once your transaction is >$600, you’re not earning any more incremental. Which makes the card a terrible choice for big ticket item purchases.

It gets better. You can only cash out when you’ve accumulated $50 of cashback, and then only in $50 intervals. Meaning that you need to spend at least $1,000 before you can cash out.

Don’t waste your time with this card. If you want a dining card, use your UOB Preferred Platinum AMEX (assuming you got it before UOB stopped issuing it…)

Yay or Nay: Nay. Friends don’t let friends get cashback cards

ANZ Travel Visa Signature

• Annual Fee: $200  (First year fee waiver)
• Income Req: $60,000 (Singaporeans), $90,000 (PRs)
• Marketing Spiel: 1.4 miles per $1 on local spend, 2.8 miles per $1 on spend in Australia/NZ
• The catch: No bonus for overseas spend other than Australia and NZ, making it really hard to achieve any sort of critical mass for your miles
• APPLY HERE

On paper, the ANZ Travel Visa Signature card is an attractive proposition. You earn 1.4 miles per $1 of local spend, it’s a Visa with wide acceptance, you get unlimited lounge access and 10,000 bonus miles when you pay the $200 annual fee (2 cents per mile- good value for premium cabin redemptions).

The big downside is this card doesn’t reward overseas spend outside of Australia or NZ. So no 2.8 miles for you if your overseas spend isn’t in Australia/NZ. That in itself is a major black mark against the card .

The ANZ Travel Visa Signature is a classic example of a somewhat solid card let down by a weak supporting ecosystem of other cards. Suppose I’m using the DBS Altitude Visa. Sure, I earn 1.2 miles per $1 of local spend, inferior to the ANZ Travel card. But I can pool the miles I earn from the Altitude with those I earn from the DBS Woman’s card, which makes it easier to hit the minimum block of 10,000 miles I need to cash out.

With the ANZ Travel card (assuming you’re doing all local spend) you’d need to spend ~$7K before you can cash out 10,000 miles. With the DBS portfolio, you could theoretically do this with as little as ~$3.5K (assuming you max out the $2,000 of online spend on the DBS Woman’s World Card).

The fact is that because there’s no overseas spend bonus for the ANZ Travel card outside of Aus/NZ, you’ll be spending a lot before you can bring yourself up to any decent number of miles that makes the conversion fee worth it

For what it’s worth, ANZ has a promotion from now till 25 Jan 2016 where you can earn a bonus 2.8 miles per $1 with a minimum of $500 spend on the ANZ Travel Card. This allows for a theoretical maximum of 5.6 miles per $1 for Aus/NZ spend. The maximum bonus you can earn is 2,550 miles though, meaning that if you’re spending locally you’d max this out at ~S$910 (yielding 1,272 base miles and 2,550 bonus).

Yay or nay: Hesitant yay- you’re looking at a long slog to build up any decent amount of miles with this card

ANZ Platinum Card

• Annual Fee: $160  (First year fee waiver)
• Income Req: $30,000 (Singaporeans), $60,000 (PRs)
• Marketing Spiel: 20X bonus points at selected merchants, 6x points for groceries and entertainment, 2x points for online/overseas
• The catch: That translates into 8 miles at selected merchants (capped of course), 2.4 miles on groceries and entertainment and 0.8 miles for online/overseas
• APPLY HERE

This is a plain vanilla rewards card which earns 0.4 miles per $1 of local spend and 0.8 miles per $1 of online/overseas spend. Yawn.

However, there’s a very interesting promotion currently ongoing. When you spend a minimum of $500 a month (on anything), you’re eligible to enjoy 20X rewards points for every $100 spent at

• Caltex
• Cortina Watch
• Courts
• Dorothy Perkins
• FOX Kids and Baby
• G2000
• IT
• Miss Selfridge
• Tangs
• TopMan
• TopShop

This means $1=8 miles. Of course, there are conditions. First, the eligible spend for calculating your bonus miles is rounded down to the nearest $100. Meaning that if you spend $95, you get no bonus. If you spend $190, you get a bonus based on $100 spend (ie 800 miles).

The maximum bonus points you can earn per month are capped 7,800. If $5 spending yields 20 rewards points, you will max this out at $1,950. Not a bad deal, but the limited number of merchants you can get this bonus at somewhat reduces the attractiveness.

I’d say if you believe that you are going to spend regularly at these merchants, you can get this card and pair it with the ANZ Travel Visa to earn a good number of miles, but otherwise you’re better off looking at another bank’s card portfolio

Yay or nay: Nay, unless you intend to spend a lot at these merchants

ANZ Switch Platinum Card

• Annual Fee: $0
• Income Req: $30,000 (Singaporeans), $60,000 (PRs)
• Marketing Spiel: No annual fee, enjoy the same 20X rewards program that the ANZ Platinum enjoys
• The catch: Not a catch per se, only that outside the selected 20X merchants the card doesn’t have much use
• APPLY HERE

This card enjoys the same bonus rewards program as the Platinum. In fact, I see no compelling reason to get the Platinum card over the Switch Platinum card, given that you’re paying a $160 annual fee for the Platinum card and nothing for the Switch Platinum (couldn’t you have given them more distinct names, ANZ?)

The main difference is that the Switch Platinum does not enjoy the 2X points that the ANZ Platinum has for online and overseas purchases. But really, would you even be using the ANZ Platinum for this? 0.8 miles per $1 spent is a pathetic rate, and you could do so much better with the DBS Woman’s World card for online spending

Yay or Nay: Yay, over the ANZ Platinum card, but nay if you’re not going to spend a lot at the 20X merchants