Confirmed: SCB X Card’s sign up bonus to be cut to 60,000 miles

Based on conversations with SCB CSOs, it seems like X Card applications submitted after 31 July will receive a downsized 60,000 miles sign up bonus.

Late last night, Standard Chartered decided to pull the plug early on the X Card’s 100,000 miles sign up bonus. The new deadline was moved up to 31 July, a full month before the original 31 August expiry.

I’ve been spending the morning on the phone with various SCB CSOs, and here’s what I’ve gathered:

  • If you apply by 31 July 2019 and receive approval by 31 August 2019, you will be eligible for the 100,000 miles sign up bonus
  • If you apply after 31 July 2019 and receive approval by 30 September 2019, you will be eligible for a new offer

The new T&C are now available. I’d strongly recommend downloading a copy of the oldย  T&Cs to save for yourself.

The new SCB X Card offer

X Card applicants who apply from 1 August 2019 onwards will receive the revised sign up offer below:

Original Offer (ends 31 July) New Offer (ends 30 Sept)
Miles from $695.50 Annual Feeย  30,000 30,000
Spend $6K within first 60 days 70,000 30,000
Base miles earned on $6K spend 7,200 7,200
Total Miles 107,200 67,200

The miles from the first year’s $695.50 annual fee remain the same, as does the base earning rate of 1.2 mpd on local spend. What has changed is that the bonus miles for spending $6,000 in the first 60 days has beenย cut from 70,000 to 30,000 miles.ย 

Is it worth it?

Let’s get one thing out of the way first.ย In and of itself,ย this is still a good sign up bonus compared to what’s on the market. The chart below summarizes the different sign up bonuses that other banks are offering, and we can see that a “spend $6K Get 30K miles offer” would be second only to the AMEX Platinum Charge.

Does not include base miles, or miles from paying the annual fee. First year fee for Citi PremierMiles Visa is normally waived, but it must be paid to enjoy the sign up bonus.

Of course, we can’t just pretend like the old offer never existed, and it’s quite another thing when you take that into account. This poses an interesting psychological experiment, I suppose: would you take a good offer, if you knew it’d just been downgraded from a great one?

Only you can answer that, but I personally wouldn’t spring for the X Card with the new sign up bonus simply because I’m happy with my current miles balance. I mean, I’d be willing to pay $695.50 for the opportunity to earn 100,000 miles, but I wouldn’t pay the same for only 60,000.

You should also remember that there’s an inherent opportunity cost in the X Card’s sign up bonus. Spending $6,000 on the X Card means you can’t spend it on a better general spending card (e.g. the BOC Elite Miles World Mastercard @ 1.5 mpd) or, in certain cases, a better specialized spending card (e.g. the Citi Rewards Visa or DBS Woman’s World Card @ 4 mpd). You’ll need to adjust the 30,000 miles bonus downwards to account for this.

I’d probably still recommend the X Card to someone new to the miles game with big ticket spending planned, but only after he/she had exhausted other no-fee sign up bonuses like the DBS Altitude and the AMEX KrisFlyer Credit Card. I’d also not make them feel bad by saying “oh but if you’d only started earlier, you could have got 40,000 more miles for the same cost” because I’m nice that way.

Conclusion

This all the more drives home the point that if you’re intending to apply for the X Card, you absolutely, positively need to do so today.

If you’re hoping that the 100,000 miles offer will come back, don’t. The offer has served its purpose- it made headlines, drove applications, and now that the internal KPI has been hit, it’s going to disappear into the lore of 8 mpd everywhere.

Last point: none of this changes the fact that the X Card’s existing benefits and price point don’t make it a good candidate for renewal in the second year. If SCB is looking to cut its losses on the 100,000 miles sign up promotion, let’s hope they redeploy resources to boosting the X Card’s otherwise underwhelming core benefits.

Aaron Wong
Aaron Wong
Aaron founded The Milelion to help people travel better for less and impress chiobu. He was 50% successful.

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L

One big remaining question: what happens to those who applied before 31 July and gotten approval from 1 August onwards?

Amileteur

Refer to first bullet point of this post?

No miles for me

There is a post in the x-card forum on hardwarezone that CSOs are now saying that people who applied by 31st July and approved in August are not eligible for 100K promotion!! Don’t know the truth in this. Maybe SC is digging a deeper hole.

Ed

Have they approved your card?

L

Still nope. Applied on launch day. Only received email saying application received. Calling CSO was not helpful. Till now still no affirmative answer.

andy lau

The X card benefits are going to need a good buff for the annual fee to make sense…

>1.8mpd general spend maybe?

Bizflyer

Lol….SCB learnt from Huawei izit?

trackback

[…] as time sensitive as some offers. But it is really unfortunate that on the day I unboxed my card,ย hints of a reduction in bonus miles seem to be on the horizon. Word is that 31 July (today) is the last day under the “old […]

Hector

Thanks Aaron for updates. Totally a mess. I am done with SCB.

Casey

31st July evening. Can’t submit the application. Guessing website can’t handle the demand or SCB has decided to close the lines.

DJ

Same, it would have been great if the website was actually working if they say the deadline was yesterday!!!

milecat

Hi Aaron,

you can confirm it now, https://www.sc.com/sg/credit-cards/x-card/
the website says 60k miles now, the tile below the video.

Psyman

Yup, new terms and conditions are available now at:
https://av.sc.com/sg/content/docs/x-card-tnc.pdf

It’s official:
Application before 31st July, Approved before 31st Aug = 70,000 miles
Application FROM 1st Aug, Approved before 30th Sep = 30,000 miles

Adam

New T&C explicitly state KrisFlyer miles. I wonder if they pull the plug on the other transfer partners as well. Hmm…

Chris

Havenโ€™t applied. Will call SCB to cancel all my accounts.

A

SCB are idiots. applied on 28 July immediately approved. but till today still has not sent the card. Called and said production issues. Not sure when it will be ready. Can’t use it for coming trip. 60 days to spend left with 50 and reducing.