Trust Freedom Card: Earn cashback, stockback…or miles?

Remember the Trust Cashback Card, which launched in August 2024 with grandiose claims of “15% cashback” — a figure which proved impossible to achieve in real life?

Well, Trust has now renamed it the Freedom Card. While this rebranding may sound distinctly Trumpian, it’s probably meant to highlight the flexible rewards that cardholders now enjoy.

The Trust Freedom Card — cue soaring eagles — lets customers choose how they want to be rewarded, be it cashback (with two different schemes), stocks, or miles, though that last one remains a work in progress.

The cashback rates are ho-hum, and even highly misleading, where the 15% figure is concerned. But it’s the stockback option that’s likely to hog the publicity, with the introductory rate of 3% stockback comfortably beating all other no-minimum-spend cashback cards in town.

There’s also a bigger strategic play here. Standard Chartered plans to transfer part of its credit card portfolio to Trust Bank, and the Freedom Card looks like a quick way of diversifying the digital bank’s card offerings (why launch three separate cards when you can have a three-in-one?).

For all you know, this card might be lurking in your future, whether you want it or not.

Overview: Trust Freedom Card

Trust Freedom Card
Apply
Min. Income	S$30,000 p.a.	Rewards Modes	Unlimited Cashback Bonus Cashback Stockback Miles (coming soon)
Annual Fee	None
FCY Fee	None
Cardholder Terms and Conditions 🤮 Warning: Unhealthy levels of emoji 🤮

The Trust Freedom Card has no annual fee, and a minimum income requirement of S$30,000 per year.

Cardholders can choose from three different rewards modes:

The selected rewards mode can be rotated every membership quarter (not calendar quarter), defined as three consecutive months starting from the month the Freedom Card is approved. You don’t have to rotate if you don’t want to.

Unlimited Cashback is the so-called “default mode” for the Trust Freedom Card. If you start spending on your card before making a rewards selection, Unlimited Cashback will apply until a selection is made.

Unlimited Cashback

Under the Unlimited Cashback mode, Trust Freedom cardholders will earn:

• 1.5% cashback on all SGD spend
• 0.5% cashback on all FCY spend

There’s little point bothering with this, if you ask me. 1.5% cashback on SGD spend is just mediocre, given what the competition has to offer.

💳 General Spending Cashback Cards (Without Min. Spends)
	Annual Fee	SGD Spend
DCS Ultimate Cashback Apply	S$130.80* (First Year Waived)	2% Cashback capped at S$200 per c. month
UOB Absolute Cashback Apply	S$196.20 (First Year Waived)	2%^
BOC Visa Infinite Apply	S$381.50 (First Year Waived)	1.6%
Citi Cash Back+ Card Apply	S$196.20 (First Year Waived)	1.6%
OCBC Infinity Cashback Apply	S$196.20 (First Year Waived)	1.6%
ICBC Chinese Zodiac Card Apply	S$150 (First 3 Years Waived)	1.6%
Maybank FC Barcelona Card Apply	S$130.80 (First 2 Years Waived)	1.6%
AMEX True Cashback Card Apply	S$174.40 (First Year Waived)	1.5%
Mari Credit Card Apply via app	None	1.5%
SC Simply Cash Card Apply	S$196.20 (First Year Waived)	1.5%
Trust Freedom Card Apply via app	None	1.5%
*Billed as S$10.90 per month ^Limited-time promotion for in-person contactless spend, valid until 31 January 2027. 1.7% for online spending

0.5% cashback on FCY spend is a bit better, considering the Trust Freedom Card has no FCY transaction fees. However, there are still superior alternatives, most notably the Mari Credit Card, which offers 1.5% cashback with no FCY fees until the end of 2026.

💳 General Spending Cashback Cards (Without Min. Spends)
	Annual Fee	FCY Spend Net of FCY fee
Mari Credit Card Apply via app	None	1.5% Cashback capped at S$22.50 per c. month Ends 31 Dec 26
UOB EVOL Card Apply	None	0.5-1% Ends 31 Dec 26
ICBC Global Travel Mastercard Apply	S$150 (First 3 Years Waived)	0.5%
Trust Freedom Card Apply via app	None	0.5%

Bonus Cashback

Under the Bonus Cashback mode, Trust Freedom cardholders will earn:

• “15% cashback” on a selected bonus category
• 1% cashback on all other SGD spend
• 0.5% cashback on all other FCY spend

Let’s start with that infamous “15% cashback”, a claim so ridiculously misleading one wonders why the regulators haven’t stepped in.

Trust advertises that cardholders can earn 5% or 15% bonus cashback on their preferred bonus category, subject to the following minimum monthly spends and quarterly caps.

It’s crucial to remember that the minimum monthly spend must be met for all three months in that membership quarter. You cannot spend more in Month X+1 to make up for a shortfall in Month X. Once you don’t hit the minimum spend for any particular month, it’s game over for that quarter.

Cardholders have a choice of six bonus categories, and can change their selection every membership quarter.

15% cashback would be amazing, but it’s not actually possible — at least, not in a meaningful way.

Let’s scrutinise those figures more closely. The 15% cashback requires a minimum spend of S$6,000 in a quarter (S$2,000 per month for three consecutive months), with a quarterly cashback cap of S$250.

The first hint that something is wrong is the fact that 15% of S$6,000 is S$900. Why the S$650 difference? Because out of the minimum spend of S$6,000, only S$1,667 can earn the 15% bonus cashback. The remaining S$4,333 earns just 1% cashback!

Remember: you can’t just spend S$1,667 and call it a day. You must meet the S$6,000 minimum spend in a quarter for the 15% cashback to become a reality.

Once you factor in the 1% base cashback on S$6,000, the total cashback is S$310 (S$250 bonus + S$60 base). This means the best possible cashback outcome — assuming you use the Freedom Card exclusively for spending in your bonus category — is 5.2% (S$310/S$6,000). That may still be a decent figure, but it is not 15%.

It’s a similar story for the 5% tier, as summarised in the table below.

Therefore, claims of 15% cashback are fundamentally misleading, because so long as the minimum spend exceeds the spending that can earn bonus cashback, the bonus % simply becomes a meaningless headline number.

I mean, I could just as easily advertise 20% cashback if I wanted to, keeping the minimum spend and quarterly cashback caps the same. In this case, the 20% cashback would only apply to the first S$1,250 of spending (S$250), and after adding the base cashback (S$60), you again have S$310 cashback on S$6,000 of spend — the same 5.2% effective cashback.

Heck, I could advertise 30%, 40% or 50% cashback. I could say “The Trust Freedom Card offers 90% cashback on your choice of bonus category, with a minimum spend of S$2,000 per month, and capped at S$250 of bonus cashback per quarter”. All the advertised percentage does is determine how quickly the S$250 cap is hit — it has little relation to the cardholder’s actual return.

Maybe the “freedom” refers to Trust’s ability to invent figures out of thin air.

Stockback

Under the Stockback mode, Trust Freedom cardholders will receive stocks or ETFs equivalent to up to 3% of their spending until 31 December 2026, and up to 2% after that.

No minimum spend is necessary, but Stockback is capped at S$500 per membership quarter, equivalent to S$16,667 of spending at 3%.

You must pre-select your stock or ETF in the Trust app, though you can change it at any time, with changes effective from the next market opening. Fractional stocks will be credited once you’ve accumulated at least S$10 of stockback, equivalent to S$333 of spending at 3%.

Here’s an illustration of how the process works.

The following stocks and ETFs are available for selection.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: why not spend on a cashback card, and use the cashback to buy stocks on your own?

Well, a 3% rebate with no minimum spend is a significantly better return than any other no-minimum-spend cashback card on the market — at least until 31 December 2026. Once the rate goes down to 2%, then yes, you’re better off earning 2% cashback with the UOB Absolute Cashback Card or DCS Ultimate Platinum Mastercard and using that cash however you please. Mind you, some of the rebate will be eaten into by whatever spread Trust charges for converting Stockback value to and from USD.

Still, there’s something to be said about the convenience of stocks being automatically purchased on your behalf. It’s not rocket science to set up a DCA auto-invest arrangement, but if you can’t bring yourself to do that, then I guess this would be the next best alternative.

Stocks/ETFs will be held in your Trust Stocks account, which has:

• No custody fee
• No platform fee
• No settlement fee
• Zero commissions for US stocks and ETFs trading until 31 December 2026
• 0.05% fee (min. US$2.99) for US stocks and ETF trading from 1 January 2027

As an aside, Trust may be the first in Singapore to offer a Stockback credit card, but it’s not the first to introduce the concept — that honor goes to the Tiger BOSS Debit Card, though its 1% stockback pales in comparison to Trust.

Switching rewards mode

As I mentioned earlier, Trust Freedom cardholders have the flexibility to switch their rewards mode every membership quarter. A change can be requested at any time, but it only takes effect when the next quarter starts. If you don’t make a new selection, your existing rewards mode automatically continues. 

Do note that the reward is determined by transaction date, not posting date. For example, if your quarter finishes at the end of September, and you switch from Unlimited Cashback to Stockback mode, any transactions charged in September will still earn Unlimited Cashback, even if they post in October.

Also, if you switch from Stockback to another reward mode, your accumulated Stockback value will be kept until its expiry. Stockback value expires at the end of the following calendar year. For example, all stockback value earned from 1 January to 31 December 2026 will expire on 31 December 2027.

A fourth rewards mode: Miles

According to a LinkedIn post by Trust’s Chief Product Officer, the Trust Freedom Card will soon offer a fourth rewards mode: miles.

We don’t have any details at the moment about the earn rates or transfer partners, but given what I know about the prices that Singapore Airlines charges, I wouldn’t hold my breath for fantastic conversion rates to KrisFlyer (if even HSBC feels the need to devalue conversions…).

I’d be interested to see whether Trust goes down the general spending or specialised spending route here, or even offers both via different rewards modes. And given how tricky their cashback T&Cs are, I’d expect a similar level of complication for miles. Maybe they’ll advertise a 15 mpd card, where you need to spend at least S$2,000 per month for three consecutive months, with a bonus cap of 1,500 miles per quarter!

Perhaps I’m being cynical, but then again, this is the bank which thinks nothing of padding its headline figures by including “savings from exclusive partners” in its calculations…

I’m generally skeptical about cards which offer a choice between cashback or miles, because if history’s any guide, one of the options usually sucks — just look at the DCS Flex Card, or even the DBS Vantage (Did you remember the DBS Vantage Card has a cashback mode? Me neither). Either the conversion rate to miles is so poor that it’s not worth sacrificing the cashback, or vice versa.

Prove me wrong, Trust!

Conclusion

The new Trust Freedom Card gives customers a choice of earning cashback or stocks, with an introductory rate of 3% for the latter until the end of 2026. While I don’t consider myself the foremost authority on cashback, I can imagine some people will be very happy with the opportunity to earn 3% with no minimum spend.

What I find more intriguing is the tease that the Freedom Card will eventually offer miles, though given Trust’s less-than-transparent approach towards marketing headline rates,  it might be prudent to be very suspicious of any figures they provide.

Watch this space.