Latest GrabPay Power Up Challenge: Up to 20K bonus GrabRewards points

Grab has launched its latest set of GrabPay Power Up Challenges, which award bonus GrabRewards points to users who complete a certain set of tasks.

The latest challenges run from 15 July to 14 August 2021, or until all rewards are redeemed (which usually happens first). You must opt-in to participate, either via the banner on the home page of the Grab app or under Account ➔ Challenges

New GrabPay Power Up Challenge

The GrabPay Power Up challenge involves topping-up the GrabPay wallet and making a certain number (and volume) of transactions. 

Offers are targeted, and different people will see different permutations. Here’s the ones I’m aware of: 

The bonus GrabRewards points are given on top of the base points you normally earn, i.e. 3 pts/S$1 for Member/Silver, 4.5 pts/S$1 for Gold and 6 pts/S$1 for Platinum. 

Given a value of 0.2 cents per GrabRewards point, your effective rebate (including base points) for completing the challenge looks like this:

It’s about 1-2% less generous than what we had last month, simply because Grab has reduced the bonus points while keeping the spending requirement the same. For example, Offer 1 last month paid out 3,000 rewards points (versus 2,500 now), and Offer 2 last month paid out 7,500 rewards points (versus 5,000 now). 

I was targeted with Offer 1 this time round, which looks fairly easy to finish. As a general rule, the higher your spending requirement, the less attractive the offer not just in terms of rebates, but the opportunity cost of diverting spend away from 4 mpd cards.

At least the Grab interface shows (in real time) exactly how many rewards are left, so you don’t go spending to attain something that’s already not available (ahem UOB ahem). 

What spending counts towards the challenge?

Qualifying transactions are defined as online and in-person payments to GrabPay-enabled merchants using the Grab wallet or GrabPay card, excluding Grab rides, GrabFood, GrabMart, and GrabExpress. 

The following MCCs are also excluded:

In an ideal world, you’ll minimize the opportunity cost of using GrabPay by clocking your minimum spend with transactions that don’t earn points with credit cards. 

However, many GrabRewards exclusions now overlap with banks’. For example, charitable donations, education, and insurance transactions will not be eligible for GrabRewards points or the Power Up Challenge. This leaves a very narrow range of transactions where using GrabPay entails no opportunity cost. The two I can think of are:

• MCC 9399 Government Services, so you could pay off your road tax or some other bill on a government portal (not AXS) that accepts the GrabPay Mastercard
• MCC 4900 Utilities, but keep in mind there are still some credit cards (e.g SCB and UOB) which reward this category

What card should I use for GrabPay top-ups?

While the vast majority of credit cards no longer offer rewards for GrabPay top-ups, there are four exceptions I’m aware of:

Card	Earn Rate
AMEX SIA Business Card Apply	6.8 mpd (if registered for AMEX Offer, otherwise 1.8 mpd)
AMEX True Cashback Card Apply	1.5% cashback
CIMB World Mastercard Apply	1.5% cashback
UOB Absolute Cashback Card Apply	1.7% cashback

Using any other credit card to top-up your GrabPay balance is pointless (literally). 

FYI: Grab had originally intended to add a S$1 admin fee to all top-ups of less than S$400 made with a Visa credit card, but is temporarily suspending this until further notice. 

Conclusion

If you were targeted with Offer 1 & 2, I wouldn’t worry too much about opportunity cost since the effective rebate is high enough (especially when you factor in the double dip from selected credit cards). 

The other offers are much harder to justify going out of your way to accomplish, and I wouldn’t bother. 

Any other GrabPay Power Up offers you received?