OCBC 365 Credit Card: Dismal Cashback When Minimal Spending of $800 is Unmet

The OCBC 365 Credit Card offers attractive cashback rates, including up to 6% on dining, groceries, and online shopping. However, its $800 minimum spend requirement for eligible transactions each month can be a significant hurdle at times.

While the cashback potential is high, meeting the $800 minimum spending threshold can be sometimes difficult. Recently trying to optimise my spending, I ended up with in a situation where regular expenses like dining and groceries did not add up to $800, and not all purchases qualify for cashback. For instance, spending on medical bills, entertainment, and certain services do not count. 

The pressure to increase unnecessary spending then arises, which can lead to financial strain or debt accumulation.

The real downside of not meeting the $800 threshold is the dramatically reduced cashback. If you fail to reach the required spend, there is only 0.3% cashback on all eligible transactions, which is far less than the card's usual 6% for dining, groceries, and online shopping, or even the 3% on recurring bills.

This sharp drop in cashback can make the card less worthwhile, especially for those who may not regularly hit the $800 mark. Therefore, if you’re unable to regularly meet the minimum spend, the rewards earned may just not be attractive.

While the OCBC 365 Credit Card offers great rewards for those who can consistently meet the $800 minimum spend, failing to do so leads to disappointingly low cashback. For some, the difficulty of hitting this threshold may outweigh the benefits, making it important to carefully evaluate if this card suits your spending habits.

NETS Fee Hike

Network for Electronic Transfers, NETS, is owned by DBS, OCBC and UOB and it has just recently announced that transaction levies are going to be upped by between 0.75 and 2 percentage points over 3 months from 1 Jul 2007. This is going to be pegged at between 1.5 and 1.8 per cent of purchases bringing the levy close to credit-card transaction fees which stand at about 2 per cent for Visa transactions and around 3 per cent for American Express.

While around 83 per cent of Singaporean residents currently use NETS for purchases in a strong embrace of cashless transactions, many retailers are starting to advise customers to pay cash or pay more for purchases.

The levy increase appears to be against the original purpose of NETS, to offer alternative system for cashless payment.

While NETS tries to justify that it is facing increasing competition from international card schemes and the increase is necessary to maintain its viability, insisting that NETS transaction fees are still the lowest in the market, it fails to deliver good logic.

Which business raises prices when consumers are not using its products? With the advent of debit cards, cashcards and other more innovative products, NETS is under intense competition and it appears to have made the wrong strategic move in trying to maintain revenues.

More worrying is the fact that NETS is owned by DBS, OCBC and UOB. While these banks had been paying minimal interest rates for savings deposits and lending it out at high rates, pocketing handsome profits, they had opted to squeeze more profits out of retailers with this NETS levy increase. When the backlash against this increase materialises and consumers start abandoning NETS and paying in cash instead, banks are likely to start considering charging consumers for the use of the automated teller machines and cornering the consumer even more.

Consumers are on the way to the guillotine, to be placed at the mercy! Woe!

Fairprice Plus Savings Account and Credit Card

FairPrice Plus is a collaboration between NTUC FairPrice Co-operative Limited (NTUC FairPrice) and Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Limited (OCBC Bank) with all banking products and services being provided by OCBC Bank unless stated.

This collaboration seeks to offers simple banking solutions at all FairPrice supermarkets islandwide.

This is a very new player on the banking market but it is worth taking a good look because of various interesting features...

The Fairprice Plus Savings Account provides an interest rate of 1% p.a., much higher than that offered by most banks. Futhermore, there is no minimum opening balance, monthly balance requirements and monthly service charge and with this account, there is access to over 770 OCBC and UOB ATMs islandwide!! Being able to earn 1% interest from the first dollar deposited is something that had not been available to many in a long long time.

Sounds good so far? There is more to come! The Fairprice Plus credit card offers free membership into LinkPoints loyalty program and gives 2 LinkPoints per $1 spent at FairPrice Plus Stores... It even offers 1 LinkPoint per $2 spent for VISA transactions!

FairPrice Plus hopes to stay steadfast to the values of Value, Simplicity and Transparency and I do think that this offer is a very good start. With the entry of such a competitive offering, hopefully it can help shake up the banking sector and get incumbent banks to start revising up their interest rates for basic saving accounts.