What you should know about UOB’s points rounding policy

If you’re a UOB cardholder, I hope you’re aware of the bank’s rounding policy, which can result in lost points on every transaction.

In short, UOB rounds transactions down to the nearest S$5 before awarding points. A S$9.99 transaction earns the same number of points as a S$5 transaction, and a S$4.99 transaction earns no points at all!

Does that mean you should simply avoid using UOB cards for any transaction that doesn’t end with a 0 or 5? Well, it’s slightly more complex than that. While UOB’s rounding policy can be punitive, it affects some cards more than others. 

tl;dr:

In this post I’ll explain how UOB’s rounding policy works, and how badly you’ll be affected.

General Spending Cards

With general spending cards, UOB’s rounding policy can be extremely punitive.

Suppose you hold a UOB PRVI Miles Card, which awards points as follows:

Even though UOB advertises the earn rates as 1.4 mpd for local spend, and 2.4 mpd for FCY spend, rounding can cause your effective earn rate to be quite far off. 

Consider the following transactions (all in SGD, for the ease of illustration):

Two things to note here.

First, UOB’s rounding can hit twice. For example, a S$9.99 transaction is first rounded down to S$5, which earns 3.5 UNI$. But since UOB doesn’t award partial UNI$, this is further rounded down to 3 UNI$, equivalent to 6 miles- an effective earn rate of just 0.6mpd!

Second, the effect of rounding fades as the transaction gets larger. That makes intuitive sense, because the maximum you can lose on a single transaction with the UOB PRVI Miles Card is 8 miles (4.99*1.4 [lost due to trxn. rounding] +1 [lost due to UNI$ rounding]), a figure which becomes less and less significant with size. For example, someone charging a S$218.90 transaction would lose ~6.5 miles (3.90*1.4 [lost due to trxn. rounding] +1 [lost due to UNI$ rounding]), but the effective earn rate is still very close to 1.4 mpd.

UOB’s rounding policy means that a card with a lower earn rate but more generous rounding policy (e.g. Citi PremierMiles) can outperform the UOB PRVI Miles Card on smaller transactions.

	UOB PRVI Miles Earn rate: 1.4 mpd	Citi PremierMiles Earn rate: 1.2 mpd
S$5	6 miles	6 miles
S$9.99	6 miles	11 miles
S$15	20 miles	18 miles
S$19.99	20 miles	23 miles
S$25	34 miles	30 miles
S$29.99	34 miles	35 miles
S$35	48 miles	42 miles
S$39.99	48 miles	47 miles

tl;dr: if your transaction is ≥S$40, you generally don’t need to worry about rounding on your UOB PRVI Miles or UOB Visa Infinite Metal Card, because it’ll still outperform any 1.2/1.3 mpd card with a more generous rounding policy. 

However, for smaller transactions that don’t end in a 0 or 5, you might be better off using a Citi PremierMiles or DBS Altitude Card instead.

Specialised Spending Cards

With specialised spending cards, the impact of UOB’s rounding policy depends on whether the card: 

• awards bonus points together with base points
• awards bonus points separately from base points, as a consolidated lump sum the following month

Card	Base Points (1X)	Bonus Points (9X)
UOB Pref. Plat. Visa	When transaction posts	Together with base points
UOB Lady’s Card	When transaction posts	Separately from base points (1st of following calendar month)
UOB Lady’s Solitaire	When transaction posts	Separately from base points (1st of following calendar month)
UOB Visa Signature	When transaction posts	Separately from base points (1st of following statement month)

This distinction is important because UOB cards which award bonus points together with base points are more affected by rounding than those which award bonus points separately. 

To illustrate, consider the UOB Preferred Platinum Visa, where base and bonus points are awarded together.

Here’s how many points you earn on the same set of transactions. 

Notice how base and bonus points are equally hit by rounding; a S$9.99 transaction is rounded down to S$5 which yields 1 UNI$ (base) and 9 UNI$ (bonus) for a total of 10 UNI$ (20 miles), an effective earn rate of 2 mpd. 

Because of the higher earn rate for the UOB Preferred Platinum Visa, you’re losing as much as 20 miles on each transaction (S$4.99 x 5) to rounding. 

It’s a much different story for the UOB Visa Signature and UOB Lady’s Card/Lady’s Solitaire Card, where base points are awarded when the transaction posts, and bonus points are awarded separately at the start of the following period.

Using the UOB Visa Signature as an example, here’s how the same set of transactions will be processed:

To be sure, the 1X base points still suffers from rounding. A S$9.99 transaction is rounded down to S$5 and awarded 1 UNI$; a S$23.50 transaction is rounded down to S$20 and awarded 4 UNI$.

But the 9X bonus points are relatively less affected because at the end of the relevant month (either calendar or statement, depending on the card), all eligible transactions, including cents, will be summed up. The consolidated figure is then rounded down once to the nearest S$5 before the 9X points are calculated.

To put it another way, with the UOB Preferred Platinum Visa, I’m losing a maximum of 20 miles per transaction. With the UOB Lady’s Card, Lady’s Solitaire and Visa Signature, I’m losing a maximum of 20 miles per bonus period. No one likes losing miles, but I’d much rather take the latter over the former.

So the advantage of the UOB Preferred Platinum Visa is that you get your bonus points faster, while the advantage of the UOB Visa Signature/Lady’s/ Lady’s Solitaire is that you get hit by rounding only once, as opposed to on every transaction.

Conclusion

UOB’s rounding policy can be very damaging to smaller transactions on general spending cards, but its impact is less severe the larger the transaction gets, or with specialised spending cards (UOB Preferred Platinum Visa aside). 

As a reminder, you can see a detailed breakdown of points on a transaction level via the UOB TMRW app to know how much rounding is affecting you. For more details on how to do this, refer to this article.