2025 Edition: Best Credit Cards for Charitable Donations

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 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:

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?
Plat. Charge, Centurion	✓
All other cards	✕
	✕
	✓
	✕
	✕
	✕
	✕
	✕
	✕
	✕

This means you can use the following cards to earn rewards on charitable donations.

❤️  Best Cards For Charitable Donations
Card	Earn Rate
Chocolate Visa Card Apply	1 mpd (capped at S$1K per month, 0.4 mpd after)
AMEX Centurion Apply	0.98 mpd
AMEX Platinum Charge 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?