DBS has really been ramping up the offers recently, and its latest deal offers a $200 rebate when you spend a minimum of $5,000 in foreign currency between 15 November 2018 and 14 February 2019 on its AMEX cards.
This offer is limited to the first 10,000 registrants who enroll their cards on the promotion landing page. Your transaction can be in person, in app or online.
Is it worth registering for?
It costs you nothing to register, so yeah, it is.ย Whether that’s worth switching away from another high-earning card like the BOC Elite Miles World Mastercard (5 mpd, until 31 Dec 2018, 3 mpd after) is another question.
A 4% rebate (200/5,000) won’t set the world on fire, but it’ll at least help to offset the 3.0% foreign currency transaction fees levied by DBS on AMEX transactions. If you hold the DBS Altitude AMEX, you’ll also earn 2.0 mpd on all your spending.
Another way of viewing this is that spending $5,000 would earn you 10,000 miles for a total fee of $150. That would be more than offset by the $200 rebate, so you wouldn’t be paying any premium to earn miles on your spending.
Which cards are eligible?
Any of DBS’s four American Express cards can be registered for this promotion
- DBS Altitude AMEX
- DBS Takashimaya AMEX
- DBS Black AMEX
- DBS Treasures Black AMEX
If you have a principal and supplementary DBS AMEX card, both cards can be registered for this promotion, and each will have their own $200 rebate assuming $5,000 of spending is hit. However, you should note that unlike regular bank spending promotions, the spending of the supplementary card willย notย be combined with the principal card for the calculation of qualifying spend. In other words, each card stands on its own.
What other DBS offers are currently available?
The DBS Altitude AMEX is currently offering a sign up bonus of 10,000 miles for customers who sign up by 31 January 2019 and spend $2,000 per month for the first 3 months. This means a total haul of 17,200 miles (10,000 base + 7,200 bonus) for $6,000 of spending, a tidy haul by any means.
DBS Altitude Visa cardholders can get up to 3,100 bonus miles when they use their card for overseas and Expedia spending. This offer is available till 28 February 2019, and you can read more about it here.
Don’t forget that travel transactions on DBS cards will count towards your chances of winning a pair of SQ Suites tickets under the “Win the Suite Life” promotion. That runs until 31 December 2018.
Finally,ย DBS Altitude cardholders can also participate in the ongoing DBS “More Miles to Fly in Style” promotion which lets you buy miles at 2.2 cents each, but you really shouldn’t.
If use Altitude Amex card in ipaymy or Cardup, will DBS give points/miles?
But of course, Amex will make a killing out of FCY charges. Taking *that* into account, the rebate you get will actually be less or approximately same as the FCY fees they’d charge you.