Standard Chartered X Card offering 50,000 miles anniversary spending promotion

As the first anniversary of the Standard Chartered X Card draws near, the question on many a cardholder’s mind is: keep or cancel? 

Standard Chartered X Card: Keep or Cancel?

I shared some thoughts on the matter last month, but it looks like Standard Chartered has fired an opening salvo of sorts. The problem is: it’s still not enough to warrant a renewal, in and of itself. 

Standard Chartered’s new X Card offers

The Standard Chartered X Card’s landing page has been updated to reflect an “up to 85,000 miles” promotion for new cardholders, and an “up to 50,000 miles” promotion for existing cardholders. 

The main difference between these two promotions is that new cardholders get a 35,000 miles acquisition gift, so let’s look at that quickly before moving on to the 50,000 miles spending offer. 

New Cardholders: Acquisition gift of 35,000 miles

New Standard Chartered X Card members who pay the mandatory first year fee of S$695.50 will receive 35,000 miles, split as follows:

As far as acquisition offers go, this is actually weaker than the one we saw previously. Back in March, it was possible to get 40,000 miles upon paying the S$695.50 annual fee, with no card spending required. 

New & Existing Cardholders: Up to 50,000 miles with S$20,000 spend (but more realistically, 34,000 miles)

Now the second part: Standard Chartered is offering both new and existing cardholders up to 50,000 miles when they spend S$20,000 from now till the end of 2020. 

More specifically, they’ll need to spend S$4,000 per period in one or more of five spending periods:

• 15 Jul- 31 Aug 2020
• 1 Sep- 30 Sep 2020
• 1 Oct- 31 Oct 2020
• 1 Nov- 30 Nov 2020
• 1 Dec- 31 Dec 2020

If they meet the requirement in each period, they’ll receive up to 50,000 miles. Note the “up to” qualifier- this assumes that all your S$20,000 is spent in foreign currency:

If you spend the S$20,000 in Singapore Dollars instead (more likely, given how none of us are travelling anytime soon), you’ll end up with 34,000 miles instead:

Regardless of whether you spend in foreign currency or Singapore dollars, this is really just an incremental 0.5 mpd for spending S$4,000 per month (except the first period, where you have 1.5 months).

It goes without saying that by taking up this promotion, you’re also committing to pay S$695.50 for a second year, given that the spend period goes all the way to December 2020. In my opinion, it’s simply not worth paying that much for the chance to earn an incremental 0.5 mpd. 

The T&C of this offer can be found here. 

When will the bonus miles be credited?

The upfront gift of 35,000 miles (30,000 for the annual fee, plus a 5,000 bonus) will be credited by 30 November 2020 in the form of 87,500 SCB Rewards points.

The additional 2,000 miles for each of the five qualifying spend periods will be awarded in the form of 5,000 SCB Rewards points, according to the following timeline:

What spending is eligible?

Standard Chartered is excluding certain transactions from counting towards the S$4,000 minimum spend in each of the five spend periods. It’s a fairly long list so I won’t copy the whole thing (you can view it from point 9.1 onwards in the T&Cs), but here are the important ones:

• CardUp
• ipaymy
• RentHero
• Insurance

There is no exclusion for charity payments, interestingly enough, and it’s been confirmed that Standard Chartered credit cards do in fact earn points on donations. Likewise, education and government transactions are also not excluded. 

What can I do with SCB Rewards points?

Standard Chartered does have a wider range of transfer partners than most banks in Singapore. You can transfer your points to 9 airline frequent flyer programs and 2 hotel loyalty programs, although not all at the same ratio. 

Airline Programs
Loyalty Program	Conversion Ratio
	2.5:1
	2.5:1
	2.5:1
	2.5:1
	3:1
	3:1
	3.5:1
	3.5:1
	3.5:1
Hotel Programs
	5:1
	2.5:1

Standard Chartered has also run a handful of bonus transfer promotions in recent history:

• 100% bonus on Emirates Skywards transfers
• 100% bonus on Accor Live Limitless transfers
• 45% bonus on United MileagePlus transfers

It seems likely they’ll run further transfer promotions going forward, but their randomness means it’s hard to factor them into the decision to renew the card. 

Conclusion

The first batch of Standard Chartered X Cards were approved in end-July 2019, and every day that passes brings us closer to R-day: renewal day. 

As of right now, we still don’t know whether there will be any renewal miles for paying the 2nd year’s annual fee, much less whether any of the card’s benefits will be upgraded. 

While there’s nothing wrong with offering a bonus miles spending promotion, the Standard Chartered team needs to understand that the issue with the X Card was never (really) the miles earning rates. The S$535 Citi Prestige gets along just fine with offering 1.3/2.0 mpd, a mere 0.1 mpd more than the SCB X Card. 

The problem has more to do with the lackluster benefits of the X Card (especially since it’s SCB’s new flagship offering). Offering two lounge visits and nothing else is simply not good enough for a S$700 card. For customers to bite, there needs to be a clear path to recovering the annual fee, and unless something dramatic happens in the next few weeks, there could be a lot of new paperweights soon.