Manage your finances like a boss, rack up those air miles, and earn cash back when you use handy new website CardUp to pay all of your big monthly expenses with your credit card
Though your shiny credit card may have promised the lure of bountiful air miles, sometimes racking up those points ain’t as easy as you first thought (unless you really are a crazy rich Asian in Singapore!). But if you’re more of a savvy spender (imperative when living in the world’s most expensive city), fret not! For we’ve recently come across a top new website that enables you to earn miles, cash back, and points on big expenses you’re already paying for through bank transfers or cheque payment – and getting absolutely no rewards in return. “How so?” we hear you cry: read on for the skinny on the ultimate money-saving, mile-building hack that is CardUp.
What exactly is CardUp?
In a nutshell, CardUp is a swish new online platform that allows you to make big payments using your credit card (even if the recipient doesn’t accept credit cards!). And we reckon it’s high time we started reaping the rewards for those unavoidable, regular big expenses (we’re talking rent, school fees, insurance, and taxes, to name but a few). Set up an account online for free here, schedule your payments, and start racking up your credit card rewards faster than ever before. From now ’til 19 February 2017, make your first payment of up to $5,000 on CardUp with zero fee charges. Simply enter promo code HELLO2017 when scheduling your first payment here – this offer is limited to the first 250 users. Terms and conditions apply.
Hold up, that sounds too easy…
Well, it kinda is that easy. What’s more, once you’ve set up an account you can schedule payments in advance, set up recurring payments weekly or monthly, easily view past payments, and view future and in progress transactions. Our finances feel more organised just thinking about it.
What if the recipient doesn’t accept credit cards?
It doesn’t matter! The recipient will receive the funds into their bank account as normal, in fact, they don’t need to do anything at all – they don’t even need a CardUp account. You can even split payments across several cards to maximise your benefits. And if you’re an expat without a local bank account, CardUp is about to make your life one helluva lot easier.
What kinda benefits can I expect?
With the $0 fee promotion, you’ll earn the full value of the miles or cashback on the credit card of your choice! But even with the regular CardUp fee of 2.6%, we did some maths and calculated that you could save over $550 on your rent or school fees if you’re into cashback cards. Use the UOB One Card to pay your $2,000 monthly rent or school fees and even net of CardUp’s 2.6% fees, you end up saving over $550. Or how about flying business class for less than half the price? Just use a UOB PRVI Miles Card to pay your $4,000 monthly rent via CardUp (with a 2.6% fee) and you’d rack up over 5,700 miles each month, or about 69,000 per year. That’ll get you a Singapore Airlines business class return flight to Japan (worth $4000) for a mere $1,248 (CardUp fee).
We did even more homework and found that aside from these two credit cards, there are loads of others that give similarly generous rewards, so you shouldn’t have any problem finding a card offering benefits that outweigh the fee. Plus, if you are strapped for cash when your child’s school fees are due, by using your credit card via CardUp you get to delay your payment by another month!
Are you sure I can trust this service?
CardUp uses bank industry standard encryption and does not store your card details. CardUp has also come out of 2 accelerator programmes this year – the first run by The Finlab (a joint venture between UOB and Infocomms Investments) as well as the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Global FinTech Hackelerator – so we’re pretty sure you have nothing to worry about!
Want to earn rewards on your big payments – sign up for free now!
This article is brought to you in partnership with CardUp