Which card should I use to pay tuition fees? [2019 update]

Tuition fees are the burden of every parent/student. Back in January 2018, I made a post where I detailed which cards can earn you miles from the payment of tuition fees.

The time is coming where tuition fees are going to be due again, at least for the universities. So I thought it appropriate to consolidate the various methods you can use to pay your (or your child’s) tuition fees and earn some miles while you’re at it.

Which cards don’t earn miles

For starters, here are the banks/cards which are officially excluded from earning any points/miles when making payments to educational institutes:

• DBS (all cards)
• Citi Premiermiles, Citi Prestige, Citi Rewards
• OCBC VOYAGE

Which cards do earn miles

Here’s a table of cards that you can use for the payment of tuition fees if credit card payments are accepted. Note that I am only referring to tuition fees payable in universities (NUS, NTU etc.) and polytechnics.

Card	Earn Rate	Remarks
HSBC Revolution Visa	2.0	Only valid for online payments. Earn 0.4 mpd first, 1.6 mpd to be credited by the end of second calendar month from when the transaction was made
BOC Elite Miles World Mastercard	1.5
UOB PRVI Miles Card	1.4	Payments made after 1 September 2019 will not earn UNI$
Standard Chartered Visa Infinite	1.4	Minimum spend of S$2,000 required per statement month. Otherwise, 1.0 mpd
HSBC Visa Infinite	1.25	Minimum spend of S$50,000 in previous membership year required.  Else, 1.0 mpd.
KrisFlyer UOB Credit Card	1.2	Payments made after 1 September 2019 will not be awarded KrisFlyer miles
AMEX KrisFlyer Ascend Credit Card	1.2
AMEX KrisFlyer Credit Card	1.1

Consider sign up bonuses

Tuition fees are not small amounts. If you/your child is studying in a course such as law, your tuition fees can easily hit close to or even exceed S$5,000 a semester. As such, knowing the due dates of your child’s tuition fees payment date is extremely important especially if you are applying for cards with sign-up bonuses.

To see which cards are currently offering sign-up bonuses, you can check out this page below:

Current Credit Card Sign Up Bonuses

With the imminent launch of the X-card, I will be waiting to see what will be the sign-up offer spending requirement for that card before making my decision on which card to use to pay for the upcoming semester’s school fees.

Concluding Thoughts

Tuition fees are a great way to rack up a decent miles pool, and it gets even better if you can use these big-ticket payments to hit the sign up bonus spending amounts. Just be sure to read the T&Cs of the card you use- don’t use a card that excludes these payments!