YouTrip increases wallet limit to S$20,000 and annual spending limit to S$100,000

Back in October 2022, the MAS published a consultation paper called “Proposed Amendments to Restrictions on Personal Payment Accounts that Contain E-Money”. What that meant, for those of you who don’t speak bureaucrat, was a proposed increase in e-wallet limits:

• Stock: To increase the maximum funds that can be held in an e-wallet at any given time from S$5,000 to S$20,000
• Flow: To increase the maximum total outflow over a rolling 12-month period from S$30,000 to S$100,000

This was an exciting development indeed, because it meant:

• More opportunities to earn rewards on bill payments with GrabPay-AXS
• Multi-currency cards like YouTrip and Revolut could compete with banks on big-ticket transactions, where their preferable exchange rates would be even more beneficial

But 2023 passed without any news, and the nerfing of AXS payments and rewards for GrabPay top-ups took much of the shine off for miles chasers anyway. 

Well, there’s been no official MAS announcement yet (that I’m aware of), but YouTrip has become the first major e-wallet provider in Singapore to announce increased stock and flow limits. 

YouTrip’s increased wallet limits

Details

Effective immediately, YouTrip customers can hold up to S$20,000 in their wallet at any point in time, and enjoy an annual spending limit of S$100,000. 

YouTrip has also introduced some additional safety features such as:

• a dedicated fraud reporting email address (hard to believe they didn’t already have one!),
• a kill switch to immediately suspend your YouTrip account
• a 12-hour cooling-off period when your account is logged into from a new device
• additional authentication for contact details changes
• a S$1,000 cap for each Peer-to-Peer transfer using YouTrip Send

I can see the 12-hour cooling-off period to be somewhat annoying for legitimate users, but I suppose the idea is to safeguard the higher wallet balances. 

Interestingly enough, there are no similar developments for Revolut or GrabPay. At the time of writing, both of them retain the old caps, i.e. S$5,000 stock and S$30,000 flow. That said, I can imagine they’re champing at the bit to follow suit, and will do so as soon as they get the green light. 

Why does this matter?

I don’t usually write about YouTrip or Revolut on this blog, for the simple reason that you can’t earn credit card rewards on such transactions.

After all, if given a choice between earning 4-6 mpd and paying an implicit FCY fee of 2% with Amaze, or earning no miles and paying a minimal spread with YouTrip/Revolut, I’d probably choose the former.

2023 Edition: Best cards for overseas spending

However, I do concede that YouTrip and Revolut can still come in useful in situations where:

• your only concern is minimising the total cost of the FCY transaction
• credit card rewards can’t be earned

With regards to the first point, the erstwhile S$5,000 transaction cap was a big impediment because it prevented you from using YouTrip on big ticket transactions. For example, if you had a S$10,000 FCY transaction, your only choice would be a credit card. Now that the caps have been raised, YouTrip becomes a viable alternative for such scenarios. 

With regards to the second point, if you can’t earn credit card rewards, you might as well keep the total cost of your transaction down. For example, most credit cards exclude rewards for education, so if you plan to pay overseas tuition fees, YouTrip would be the better option.

Conclusion

YouTrip has become the first major e-wallet provider to raise its transaction caps, with customers able to spend up to S$20,000 per transaction and S$100,000 annually. This significantly increases its usefulness, offering some much-needed competition to the banks where big ticket transactions are concerned. 

I imagine we’ll see other e-wallet providers increase their limits too in due course, so stay tuned.