How to check credit card points breakdowns

Tracking credit card points can be a headache, but thankfully, most banks in Singapore now allow cardholders to view their earnings down to a transaction-level basis.

This is particularly important when you’re using a specialised spending card like the UOB Preferred Platinum Visa. How do you know a given transaction really earned the points it should? Without a breakdown, you’re going to have to trust that the bank’s systems are properly capturing and crediting bonus points, or call them up and waste time manually going through transactions over the phone.

In this post, I’ll explain how to check points breakdowns with various card issuers in Singapore.

Which banks don’t offer points breakdowns?

If you have points with the following banks, the only way to get transaction-level points breakdowns is to call up the bank and chat with a CSO:

• Bank of China
• Citibank
• Maybank 

I want to highlight Citibank in particular, because this is a new development. Until February 2024, it was possible to use the Citi ThankYou Rewards Portal to view points breakdowns. It wasn’t perfect in the sense that points were presented by day instead of by transaction, but with a little bit of back calculations you could generally get the answer you needed. 

Unfortunately, the portal has been retired, and Citi has shown no interest in adding similar functionality to its app.

American Express

Membership Rewards & HighFlyer

(1) Login to your AMEX account

(2) Select the card you wish to view in the top right hand corner

(3) Click on “Use Points”

(4) Click on “My Points”

(5) Use the drop down menu on the left to see different time periods. Breakdowns can be viewed for the past 12 months.

You can toggle to a different card in the top right hand corner to check breakdowns for your HighFlyer Card too.

KrisFlyer

The AMEX desktop site does not show breakdowns for KrisFyer points, so you’ll need to use the AMEX Mobile app instead. 

(1) Login to your account

(2) Select the card you wish to view

(3) Tap Membership at the bottom of the screen

(4) Tap View Activity

(5) You’ll see a breakdown of points earned in the previous statement period (you can’t go back further than that, sadly).

Unfortunately, this interface only shows you the points, not the transaction amount. This makes reconciliation a lot more troublesome. 

DBS

(1) Login to your DBS account

(2) Click the Virtual Assistant icon at the bottom right hand corner (if it doesn’t respond, disable your ad blocker)

(3) Type “Rewards Enquiry” and click “View Rewards” ➤ “Points Per Transaction”

(4) You will now see the points awarded per transaction. Click on “See More” to populate additional entries

For bonus points, look for a consolidated entry labelled “Ecom” (e-commerce). It’s not disaggregated, however, so you’ll still have some work to do. 

Do note that for whatever reason, not every DBS user will see the “Ecom” entry, even if they have eligible bonus transactions.

In that case, you’ll have to call up customer service to check your bonus points. 

HSBC

(1) Login to the HSBC mobile app

(2) Tap on the card you wish to check points for ➤ View More ➤ Redeem Your Points

(3) Tap on Show Points History

(4) You can then view the points awarded per transaction. Do note that this screen will show points earned from all cards, not just the card you selected in step (2). Don’t worry- the last four digits of each card is shown, so you’ll know where each set of points came from.

Bonus points from the HSBC Revolution will be credited in one lump sum tagged as “Miscellaneous- Bonus”, posted the following month after transactions were made.

OCBC

(1) Login to your OCBC account

(2) Hover your mouse over “Rewards”, then click “Rewards”

(3) Click on “Transaction History”

(4) Click on the reference number of the transaction you want to investigate

(5) Scroll down and see the points awarded on this transaction

Unfortunately, OCBC uses reference numbers rather than merchant names for tracking, so it’s far from intuitive. You’ll need to cross refer to your card statement to figure out which transaction is which. 

Standard Chartered

(1) Login to your Standard Chartered account

(2) Click on your name on the top right, then “Transaction History”

(3) Choose which card you want to see a breakdown for. Points breakdowns can be viewed for up to three months.

UOB

(1) Login to the UOB TMRW app and tap Rewards+ ➤ My Rewards ➤ UNI$

(2) You’ll see a breakdown under the UNI$ history section (tap “view all” to see more), for the past three months. 

If you spend using the UOB Preferred Platinum Visa, you’ll see a transaction-level bonus entry.

If you use the UOB Lady’s Card, UOB Lady’s Solitaire or UOB Visa Signature, you’ll see a consolidated monthly bonus entry at the start of each month.

Conclusion

It’s up for debate how closely you should track your points. Some believe it’s enough to give it a cursory glance each month, others track it obsessively with hyper-detailed spreadsheets. Regardless of which camp you fall into, I think we can all agree that more granular information is better than aggregated lump sums!

My hope is that Citibank, Maybank and Bank of China (hahahahahaha) will make it easier for customers to track points in the future, which would save a lot of CSO bandwidth.