Standard Charted adds donations to credit card rewards exclusions list

Standard Chartered has rolled out an updated set of rewards T&Cs that affects all credit cards, effective 6 January 2021. 

The long and the short of it is that you will no longer earn rewards for making donations with your Standard Chartered credit card. Parking lots and janitorial services have also been excluded, but as we’ll see in the next section, that doesn’t really matter in Singapore. 

Standard Chartered new rewards exclusions

Under the new T&Cs, the following transactions will not earn any 360 Rewards Points or cashback effective 6 January 2021: 

Thanks to the Visa Supplier Locator, I was able to lookup some examples as shown above. Interestingly enough, Visa says there are no merchants processing under MCC 7349 or 7523 in Singapore (Parking.sg codes as government spend, cleaning services like Helpling code as computer software stores [probably because they offer a platform, not cleaning per se]). 

Frankly speaking, these inclusions are in line with the rest of the industry. It was awesome that Standard Chartered offered points on charitable donations for as long as they did, but we all knew that wouldn’t last. 

	Awards Points for Donations?
	✓
	✕
	✕
	✕
	✕
	✓
	✕
	✕
	✕

Were the terms backdated?

I only just became aware of these changes, and the meta data of both the SCB X Card and SCB Visa Infinite’s T&C files shows a creation date of 13 January 2021. This begs the question: were the terms backdated? 

Apparently not. I reached out to Standard Chartered Bank, who clarified that the updated terms were in fact posted on the bank’s website back on 3 December 2020. It’s just that everyone missed it till now. 

So there’s no shenanigans as such here, but I do think they could have done a better job of giving notice. Even UOB, which is no stranger to T&C games, sends out SMSes regarding T&C updates. 

Conclusion

Standard Chartered’s new exclusion terms leave American Express and Maybank as the only banks which still award points for donations. If you’ve got a recurring billing arrangement for any charitable giving, now’s the time to update your card. 

I’ve updated the What Card guide to reflect this latest information, as well as the dedicated article for earning points on charitable donations.