If you’ve used your UOB PPV to pay a Cardup bill recently you may have received the following email. I’ve extracted the relevant bits here-
We noticed you may have used the UOB Preferred Platinum Visa Card on CardUp and wanted to inform you of the recent updates UOB made to this card’s terms and conditions.
Effective 3 July 2017, the categories eligible for the online bonus have been reduced and CardUp payments will unfortunately not qualify. We have updated the information on CardUp’s website to reflect this but also wanted to let you know directly.
Rest assured there are still many credit cards where the value of the rewards gained will outweigh our fees. For example, you can use the UOB PRVI Miles Visa Card to earn 1.4 miles per dollar with no cap to the number of miles earned. Read more about how you can continue racking up miles and 5 other ways to save with CardUp here
The email makes reference to UOB updating the T&C of its PPV card. Effective 3rd July, only the following transactions earn 10X points
Cardup’s MCC does not fall within these categories.
There were those who said it was unlikely UOB would exclude Cardup from 10X earning, given that Cardup is backed by UOB’s FinLab tech accelerator and the loss of 10X would be quite a blow. I guess we have an answer to that now.
The email tries to convince you that paying a 2.6% admin fee is still worth it without 10X, pointing to the example of the UOB PRVI Miles card which earns you 1.4 mpd on Cardup payments. We’ve done the math before, and it’s not very convincing:
$1 spend on Cardup attracts 2.6 cents fee which earns 1.4 miles. Therefore the cost of 1 mile= 2.6/1.4=1.86. That’s below the magic 2 cents threshold but definitely not a must grab deal, given that you can buy miles through credit card annual fees at around the same price.
If 10X points were available, then $1 spend on Cardup attracts 2.6 cents fee which earns 4 miles, making the cost of 1 mile= 2.6/4=0.65 cents. Now that is a good deal, and even better than the 0.76 cents per mile that Citibank is now offering through its Premiermiles Visa card.
I’m interested to see where Cardup will go from here, given that two 10X cards (DBS Woman’s + UOB PPV) have now ruled out bonus points earning. Let’s hope they’re able to make some deals with banks that help them remain a viable option for miles chasers.
