UOB Lady’s Card: Which bonus categories should you choose?

UOB Lady’s Cardholders can earn 4 mpd on up to S$2,000 of monthly spending on their choice of bonus categories. This includes restaurants, supermarkets, shopping, taxis, air tickets, hotels, and petrol but— here’s the catch — not all at the same time. 

That’s because cardholders have to choose which category or categories they’d like to earn bonuses on, a selection that can be rotated every calendar quarter. 

It’s a highly personal choice of course, as everyone’s spending patterns will be different. But given the availability of alternatives on the market, certain selections may make more sense than others. 

Here’s what you can pick, and what I would pick. 

UOB Lady’s Card bonus categories

UOB Lady’s Card
Apply
UOB Lady’s Solitaire
Apply
Income Req.	S$30,000 p.a. (Lady’s)	Points Validity	2 years
	S$120,000 p.a. (Solitaire)
Annual Fee	S$196.20 (Lady’s-FYF)	Min. Transfer	5,000 UNI$ (10,000 miles)
	S$414.20 (Solitaire-FYF)
FCY Fee	3.25%	Transfer Fee	S$25
Local Earn	0.4 mpd	Points Pool?	Yes
FCY Earn	0.4 mpd	Lounge Access?	No
Special Earn	4 mpd on 1/2 bonus categories	Airport Limo?	No
Cardholder Terms and Conditions
Note: A by-invitation-only metal version of the UOB Lady’s Solitaire also exists, with a higher annual fee of S$598.99 and a complimentary airport transfer + six lounge visits per year. Earn rates and bonus caps are the same as the plastic UOB Lady’s Solitaire

UOB Lady’s Card and UOB Lady’s Solitaire Card members will earn 10 UNI$ for every S$5 spent (4 mpd) on: 

• UOB Lady’s Card: 1 bonus category, capped at S$1,000 per calendar month
• UOB Lady’s Solitaire Card: 2 bonus categories, capped at S$2,000 per calendar month (the cap is shared between both bonus categories)

Any spending beyond the cap earns just 0.4 mpd, so be careful not to overshoot.

Choosing bonus categories

Cardholders choose their bonus categories via this link, and can change their selection every calendar quarter. 

Choose bonus categories

Selecting bonus categories requires entering your 16-digit card number. Even if you don’t have the physical card yet, you can obtain this from the UOB TMRW app. However, if you were recently approved (<24 hours) the system may throw an error message when registering your bonus categories. Try again after 24 hours.

Some important things to note:

• The first time you choose your bonus categories, they are effective immediately
• Bonus categories can be re-selected every calendar quarter, up till 2359 hours (SGT) the day before the first calendar date of the following calendar quarter
• The bank will take the most recent entry submitted as the bonus category for the following quarter. For example, if you submit ‘Fashion’ on 15 April, then submit ‘Dining’ on 21 June, your bonus category for 1 July to 30 September will be ‘Dining’ 
• If you do not manually re-select your bonus categories, the choices from the previous quarter will be automatically carried over
• If you upgraded from the Lady’s Card to the Lady’s Solitaire Card, your additional bonus category will only be effective from the following calendar quarter

Which category should you pick?

Here’s a rundown of which MCCs are included under each of the seven bonus categories available to UOB Lady’s Cardholders.

If you’re not certain about the MCC of a specific transaction, here’s three ways of looking it up before spending.

So how do you go about selecting a bonus category?

Your personal spending patterns

Sorry to be Captain Obvious here, but some categories will be complete non-starters for certain individuals. Someone who prefers staying home won’t get much mileage out of choosing Entertainment as a bonus category, and someone who rarely eats out won’t want to pick Dining. 

So your bonus categories should, at a minimum, match the sort of things you normally spend on.

Alternative cards

But just as important to consider are alternatives: if you could already earn bonuses on a particular category with a different card, then choosing it as your bonus category may be duplicative.

Why I say “may” is because there can be good reasons for choosing a bonus category already covered by another card.

The simplest example is that you spend a lot on a particular category, so much so that it busts the cap on other cards. Someone who spends big on restaurants may find the S$1,000 monthly cap on the HSBC Revolution to be insufficient, and supplements it by choosing Dining as his UOB Lady’s Card’s bonus category.

Another reason is that you may want to free up the alternative card’s bonus cap for other categories. For example, I might choose Dining as my UOB Lady’s Card bonus category so I can use the HSBC Revolution for cruises, gym memberships and rental cars.

It’s also important to remember that as whitelist cards, the UOB Lady’s Cards can help to reduce the load on your blacklist cards, and free up their more flexible caps for other purposes. For example, instead of using your DBS Woman’s World Card or Citi Rewards for Grab and gojek rides, you could choose Transport as your bonus category and use the UOB Lady’s Card instead. 

Blacklist vs whitelist cards: How I optimise between both

The MileLioness and I each have a UOB Lady’s Solitaire Card, and our bonus categories are:

• Mine: Travel + Family
• Hers: Transport + Dining

We each have a UOB Lady’s Savings Account with S$10,000 inside for an extra 2 mpd, and the combined monthly 6 mpd cap of S$4,000 (S$2,000 per card) works quite well for us.

Her bonus categories cover our day-to-day petrol, Grab/gojek rides, food delivery and eating out. My bonus categories cover groceries (though if it’s Cold Storage or Giant I’m more inclined to use the DBS yuu Card), as well as hotels and air tickets when we travel (with Amaze where applicable for better FCY rates).

I personally don’t see the value in Entertainment, or Beauty & Wellness, unless perhaps you happen to be buying a big ticket spa package that quarter.

Conclusion

The UOB Lady’s Cards are extremely versatile tools because of their shapeshifting ability to be different things at different times. It can be a dining card this quarter and a shopping card the next, or perhaps a travel card should you be going on vacation. 

If your income allows for it, you should aim to get the Solitaire version to enjoy a higher 4 mpd cap of S$2,000 instead of S$1,000 on the base version, and if you have some spare cash, parking S$10,000 in a UOB Lady’s Savings Account for an extra 2 mpd might not be the worst idea either.

UOB Lady’s Card cardholders: What bonus categories do you choose and why?