If you’ve been reading The MileLion for a while (and I hope you have!), you might be familiar with the standard blurb I trot out whenever the OCBC Titanium Rewards card is mentioned, which goes something like this:
The OCBC Titanium Rewards earns 4 mpd on eligible online and retail purchases like department stores, electronics and fashion. The 4 mpd is capped at S$12,000 per membership year, and both the Blue and Pink cards have their own caps.
So ingrained are the terms that I can bang out this paragraph like muscle memory.
Except it’s not accurate. Yes, it earns 4 mpd, yes, the Blue and Pink cards have their own caps, yes, the cap is applied based on membership year.
But no, the 4 mpd cap is not S$12,000.
Re-examining the OCBC Titanium Rewards’ 4 mpd cap
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MileLion reader Ernest recently sent me a question about the OCBC Titanium Reward’s T&Cs:
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The OCBC Titanium Rewards Card is a card bearing the name MASTERCARD and/or the
1) The maximum Bonus OCBC$ earned from spending in the abovementioned |
He highlighted the part in red, which states that the maximum Bonus OCBC$ that can be earned in a membership year is 120,000.
As a reminder, the OCBC Titanium Reward’s 4 mpd is broken down as follows:
- Base: 5 OCBC$ per S$5 spend (0.4 mpd)
- Bonus: 45 OCBC$ per S$5 spend (3.6 mpd)
If it’s the bonus component that’s capped at 120,000 OCBC$, you’d indeed max it out with S$13,335 of spending (not S$13,333 because of the S$5 rounding blocks).
That’s quite a Copernican shift, given how S$12,000 had been hardcoded into my mind. But I checked with OCBC, who confirmed this understanding is correct- their system caps the bonus 3.6 mpd at S$13,335, not S$12,000.
What’s more, this isn’t a new development. This is the way the system has been set up since the OCBC Titanium Rewards was enhanced in 2016 to offer 4 mpd on shopping.
How did we get it wrong for so long?
What I found hard to understand was how this had gone unnoticed for so long. I mean, I’m sure I miss things, but I’d like to believe there’s enough sticklers in the MileLion community that someone would have pointed this out sooner rather than later.
But I pulled an older version of the T&Cs, and suddenly it became clear. You may remember that in June 2020, OCBC added new exclusion categories and shifted to S$5 earning blocks. Prior to that, the T&Cs read as follows.
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(a) The OCBC Titanium Rewards Card (โCardโ) is a card bearing the name MASTERCARD and/or the service mark of MASTERCARD issued by Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Limited (โOCBC Bankโ) (including any substitution, replacements or renewals thereof) which comes with the following features:
a. The maximum OCBC$ earned from spending in the abovementioned categories that can be credited to each Eligible Cardmemberโs card account in each card anniversary year (i.e. 365 days from the date of (i) the establishment of the card account; or (ii) renewal of the card account) is 120,000 OCBC$. The maximum OCBC$ earned is shared between the main and supplementary cardholder and will be credited to the main cardholderโs OCBC$ account. |
Notice how the wording refers to “maximum OCBC$”, not “maximum Bonus OCBC$”. If it’s the total and not the bonus component that’s capped at 120,000 OCBC$, then indeed, the 4 mpd cap would be S$12,000 per membership year.
However, that’s apparently not the case, and OCBC has now refined the T&Cs to make the situation clearer.
Come to think of it, I vaguely recall someone emailing me about this a couple of years ago, saying he’d managed to earn 4 mpd even beyond the S$12,000 cap. I didn’t think much of it at the time, assuming he’d goofed on his calculations. Looks like this gentleman has the last laugh!
Conclusion
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The OCBC Titanium Rewards earns 4 mpd on eligible online and retail purchases like department stores, electronics and fashion. The 4 mpd is capped at S$13,335 per membership year, and both the Blue and Pink cards have their own caps.
That’s the correct version, and what you should be remembering going forward.
What I particularly like about the OCBC Titanium Rewards is that it applies the cap based on membership year, instead of calendar month or statement month. This makes it a better choice for big ticket purchases, even more so if there’s an opportunity to pair it with the Amaze.
A cap that’s 11% higher than expected just sweetens the deal.
Hello – just to confirm (because the it sounds too good to be true) 1 account holder can have 1 blue and 1 pink? Spend 13,335 a year on each and therefore get 106,680 miles from those 26,670 sgd spent?
bingo.
Cards approved and delivered next week. The wife is going to be happy about that.
I understand OCBC titanium points cannot convert to Krisflyer
why cannot? I always do that
Next time pls carry out some fact check before you remark. If miles cannot be converted, this would not even be a topic covered by a miles blog.
OCBC titanium points ?
With OCBC titanium Rewards Card you earn OCBC$ which can be converted to KF Miles at a rate of 25K OCBC$ to 10K KF miles.
Also Iโm not aware of any conversion to Krisflyer by any CC. itโs conversion to KF miles.
OCBC only converts to Krisflyer, yes? So this card has had a 20% devaluation just this week. An extra $1000 of 4mpd spend isn’t going to help much is it.