If you’re privileged enough to be able to give, there’s no shame in asking which credit card lets you earn some miles in return. After all, I’m sure a charity would prefer to receive S$100 less an admin fee than nothing at all!
Unfortunately, the list of cards that offer rewards for charitable donations keeps shrinking, and 2025 sees an all-time low of just three.
💳 What’s the Best Card for… | ||
❓ Overall Guide |
||
✈️ Air Tickets |
🌎 Amaze | 🛍️ Atome |
💰 CardUp | 🚗 Car Rental | 💗 Charity |
🍽️ Dining | 🏫 Education | ⚡ EV Charging |
🥡 Food Delivery | 🏨 Hotels | ☂️ Insurance |
📱 Kris+ | ⚕️ Medical | 🏖️ Overseas |
💊 Pharmacies | ⛽ Petrol | 🚍 Public Transport |
🛒 Supermarkets | 🚰 Utilities | 💒 Weddings |
What MCC do charitable donations code as?
The MCC for charitable donations depends on the type of organisation you’re donating to. The two you’re most likely to encounter are:
- MCC 8398- Organisations, Charitable and Social Service
- Examples: Giving.sg, Give.asia, Ray of Hope
- MCC 8661- Religious Organisations
- Examples: giving to churches or temples
Transactions under these MCCs receive preferential interchange rates (the fee charged for accepting credit cards). This helps charities save on administrative costs, but also means the transaction is less profitable for the card-issuing bank. Consequently, banks tend to exclude donations from earning rewards.
In case you’re uncertain about the MCC, there are three ways of looking it up before making a purchase:
Method | Ease of Use | Reliability |
❓HeyMax | ●●● | ● |
📱 Instarem app | ●● | ●● |
🤖 DBS digibot | ● |
●●● |
Note: “Ease of use” and “reliability” are all relative. HeyMax already provides a solid baseline for reliability, and the DBS digibot is still simple enough to use, despite requiring more steps than the other two methods. |
What cards earn points/miles on donations to charity?
With Maybank adding charitable donations to its exclusion list from 1 July 2025, the only card-issuers still rewarding this category are American Express (selected cards) and Chocolate Finance.
Bank | Awards Points for Charity? |
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✓ |
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✕ |
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✕ |
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✓ |
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✕ |
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✕ |
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✕ |
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✕ |
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✕ |
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✕ |
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✕ |
This means you can use the following cards to earn rewards on charitable donations.
❤️ Best Cards For Charitable Donations | |
Card | Earn Rate |
![]() Apply |
1 mpd (capped at S$1K per month, 0.4 mpd after) |
![]() Apply |
0.98 mpd |
![]() Apply |
0.78 mpd |
I’m guessing most readers don’t qualify for a Centurion, and I don’t think it’s worth shelling out S$1,744 for an AMEX Platinum Charge just to earn points on donations. That leaves the Chocolate Visa Card as the only real alternative, and even then, it only works for donations to Singapore-based charities. Transactions to overseas-based charities aren’t excluded per se, but are blocked on the back end due to compliance reasons.
To make matters worse, the “Wogi workaround”, where you could earn up to 4 mpd buying gift cards for charities such as Children’s Aid Society, Singapore Cancer Society and Food from the Heart, is no longer possible.
Does that mean it’s time to look at cashback options? Well, the picture’s not much better:
- The AMEX True Cashback card earns 1.5% cashback on donations, but most charities don’t accept AMEX, if they accept cards at all
- The UOB Absolute Cashback card earns 0.3% cashback on donations (with the same AMEX-acceptance problem)
Other ways to earn points on donations
Provider | Fee | Cost Per Mile |
![]() |
2.6% | 1.63 to 2.17 cents |
If you really want to earn miles on donations, and don’t mind paying an admin fee, then Citi PayAll would be an option (CardUp, SC EasyBill and AXS Pay+Earn do not support donations to charities).
Given a 2.6% admin fee and earn rates of 1.2-1.6 mpd, your cost per mile will be 1.63 to 2.17 cents. For most people, it won’t be worth paying the admin fee outside of a promotion, though at the time of writing there is an offer that reduces the cost per mile to 1.63 cents across all cards.
Citi PayAll offering 1.8 mpd on tax & 1.6 mpd on non-tax payments
Conclusion
If you’re hoping to earn miles for charitable giving, there are only three cards left on the market which still reward such transactions. There’s also the option of donating via Citi PayAll, but the 2.6% admin fee makes the cost per mile rather unattractive outside of promotions.
And to think, not too long ago you could earn 4 mpd!
Any other ideas for earning miles on donations?
I can confirm a plain vanilla donation on http://www.giving.sg does not get points for Citi Premiermiles card. Donated last month
Workaround for Community Chest Donations with tax deduction using GPMC: Donate via their website (https://www.comchest.sg/) and select Paypal as the payment method (GPMC is rejected when using the credit card payment method). Grabpay points are also awarded.
Ah, that’s very clever.
Can confirm SCB X card gives points for one-off donations via giving.sg, as well as church online tithing.
thank you for the confirmation
Works for Maybank F&F card too
thanks for the data point!
Hi, has anyone tried and confirmed the Lazada workaround with the OCBC Titanium and Citi Rewards cards?
I just made a donation to giving.sg via grabpay mastercard. It went through and I earned points for it. I’m not sure if it worked because I already had the money in my grabpay wallet (did not need to pull from a card).
I’m so sorry for the wrong info!! Grab worked for give.asia but not giving.sg 🙁
Anybody tried the Lazada workaround?
Just tried paying GiveAsia with GrabPay Card. It get declined and contacted CS said like below.
Thank you for your details. As per our terms & conditions, GrabPay wallet cannot be used for political, religious, spiritual, charitable and non-profit organizations of any kind. https://www.grab.com/sg/terms-policies/payment-rewards/
Do we know if Maybank platinum visa can get Cashback for donations to overseas charities?
Successfully donated and earned miles on the Amex krisflyer. an interesting thing to note is that Amex doesnt charge extra 1% for the benevity platform, unlike Visa.
Successfully donated via Amex krisflyer and earned 1.1 mpd. Interesting thing to note is that Amex doesnt seem to charge the extra 1% charged by Benevity donation platform. I donated with visa last week and got charged 1% extra
Need to update/ delete the section on using Amex/ UOB Absolute card to top-up GrabPay.
AMEX Krisflyer Card –
Exclusions: Transactions relating to education and other non-profit purposes (including charitable
donations) (with effect from 1 October 2023)
TrueCashBack Amex – 1.5% Cashback on Charities spends
Has anyone tried the wogi.sg method? Can’t seem to add any vouchers for purchase on their website.
no more charity organisations registered with wogi from Mar 25 onwards. Wonder what happened? anyone knows?