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With the end of the year in sight and holidays looming, it may also be the time that you can sit down and breathe… and also prepare to pay your insurance premiums. For those of you who pay your insurance premiums regularly for that bit of cost savings, did you know you can save even more with a cashback feature on your credit card by signing up for CardUp?
3 Cs of CardUp: Cashback, Convenience And Cost Savings
CardUp is a platform that allows you to charge expenses, including insurance policy premiums, to your credit card in order for you to maximise rewards on your credit cards by the way of cashback and miles.
Basically, what happens is that instead of paying your premiums directly to the insurer, you will pay them via CardUp. So, this means that while CardUp pays the premiums, you can pay CardUp via your cashback credit cards.
Not only do you get cashback for your insurance premium payments, but CardUp also helps to automate your billings, which means that successive monthly insurance payments will be automatically processed on the platform without you having to remember to schedule your next payment.
How To Charge Your Insurance Premium Payments: 3 Simple Steps
#1 Collate Your Insurance Premiums Per Pax
Make a list of insurance premiums payable. If you are paying for other family members do collate those policies too. Do note that the premiums that you can get enjoy cashback are those that need to be paid using cash (via credit cards). For policies such as Medishield Life where a large part of the premiums is paid through Medisave, you can only receive cashback for the riders that are paid through cash.
#2 Choose Which Credit Card(s) You Want To Charge Your Premiums To
While you do need to pay a processing fee to CardUp of 2.6% when charging the insurance premiums to your credit card that is linked to CardUp, you can enjoy cashback of up to 5%, depending on how you use the credit card. However, do note that many of the cards mentioned below do require you to hit some form of a minimum monthly spend for you to be eligible for the higher quarterly cashback; this means if you are paying your premiums on an annual basis it could be difficult for you to make full use of these cards.
The list of the 4 best cashback credit cards are as follows:
Already known as one of the best cashback credit cards in the market, it has a 3-tier spend system that rewards 3 levels of cashback to the cardholder. There is a minimum number of 5 purchases per statement for you to earn the quarterly cashback rewards. You also have to make 3 consecutive monthly premium payments before you can qualify for the cashback.
| Minimum Monthly Spend | Expenditure Per Quarter | Cashback Per Quarter | % Cashback |
| $500 | $1500 | $50 | 3.33 |
| $1000 | $3000 | $100 | 3.33 |
| $2000 | $6000 | $300 | 5.00 |
In order to maximise the cashback rewards on this card, you will have to ensure that your premium payments are as close to the maximum amount for each tier per month. If you pay $1,800 in premiums per month, you will only qualify for the $100 cashback for that quarter and your effective cashback rate is only 1.85%, which is less than CardUp’s processing fee. To optimise your cashback, you will need to make sure your payments are precise and do not exceed the minimum monthly spend by too much. For example, if you can clock a spend of $500 each month, you will receive a cashback of $50 per quarter which gives you an effective cashback rate of 3.33%.
Bank of China Family Card
An often overlooked cashback card locally is the Bank of China Family card. It’s a great cashback card for everyday spend because it offers a rather high percentage of cashback compared to other cards in the market.
| Minimum Monthly Spend | Max Cashback Per Month | Cashback Per Quarter | % Cashback |
| Less than $800 | – | Less than $7.20 | 0.3 |
| More than $800 | Capped at $25 per Card Account per billing cycle | $75* (assuming a $25 cashback per month) | 3 (for Online Purchases including payments for financial services) |
If you have premium payments totalling $800 per month or slightly above that amount, the BOC Family card could be something you could apply for. Do take note that there is a cap of $25 per card account per billing cycle, so it might be good to not exceed that $800 by too much.
Enjoy up to 3.33% cashback on local purchases including CardUp payments. Similar to the UOB ONE Card, the minimum monthly spend and cashback given are on a quarterly basis. But you will need to only charge a minimum of S$300 monthly for each quarter to qualify.
| Minimum Monthly Spend | Expenditure Per Quarter | Cashback Per Quarter | % Cashback |
| $300 | $900 | $30 | 3.33 |
| $1000 | $3000 | $100 | 3.33 |
If you have a monthly recurring savings plan or a life plan with a monthly premium of about $300, this could be a good card to use with CardUp.
Standard Chartered MANHATTAN Platinum / World Mastercard card
This card is suitable for those with large monthly expenses. With 3 cashback tiers capped at S$200 per quarter, you can get up to S$800 in cashback a year with no minimum spend required. Here’s how the 3 tiers work: 3% cashback when you spend S$3,000 or more a month, 1% cashback when you spend between S$1,000 and S$2,999 a month and 0.5% cashback when you spend below S$1,000 a month.
| Minimum Monthly Spend | Expenditure Per Quarter | Cashback Cap Per Quarter | % Cashback tier (per month) |
| Less than $1000 | Less than $3000 | $200 | 0.5 |
| $1000 to $2999.99 | $3000 to $8999.97 | $200 | 1 |
| $3000 and above | $9000 and above | $200 | 3 |
For this card, the cashback is calculated monthly and separated according to the cashback tiers. An example to illustrate this would be:
| Statement date | Eligible Spend Amount | Cashback Tier (based on Eligible Spend) | Cashback earned ($) |
| 15 Jan | $1900 | 1% | 19.00 |
| 15 Feb | $4745.40 | 3% | 142.36 |
| 15 Mar | $3100 | 3% | 93.00 |
Even though you may have earned a total cashback of $254.36 over 3 months, your actual cashback is capped at $200 per quarter.
This card is great if you are the one paying for most of your family’s insurance premiums. It also offers a bit of flexibility in terms of tiered rewards compared to the other cards.
Other than these 4 cards, you can also use the following credit cards to earn cashback on CardUp, according to this list by CardUp:
Other Popular Cashback Cards
– American Express® True Cashback Card
– Standard Chartered Spree Credit Card
– Standard Chartered Unlimited Cashback Credit Card
#3 Sign Up For A CardUp Account And Charge Premiums To Your Credit Card
You can create a CardUp account in under a minute here. All you need is an email and password, and you are good to go.
After you create your account, you will be directed to the dashboard where you can set up your credit card in a few simple steps.
You can then complete identity verification (this is to prevent fraud) using SingPass. It is more convenient to use SingPass as your personal information will be filled in for you and you only have to verify your phone number to get to the final step: link your credit card to your CardUp account.
After you’ve completed identity verification, the final step is to complete the email verification and you can begin scheduling payments. Simply click on the insurance tab and there will be a dropdown menu indicate which company you are paying to and what kind of policy you are making payment for.
Enter your premium payment details as well as your credit card and promo code and confirm the payment and you can automate all future premium payments through CardUp. After the insurance company has confirmed the payment has been received, the cashback rewards will then be credited into your account.
Illustration of Cashback / Cost Savings
An illustration of cost savings via CardUp
As illustrated from the table, if you are using a credit card that gives you 5% cashback on your spend, the cashback you would get from your card can help offset the 2.25% discounted fee and help you save money in the long run.
This is also especially useful if you are paying insurance premiums for your dependants or other family members. CardUp helps to amalgamate all your insurance premium payments into a centralised dashboard, allowing you to automate payments and making sure that this process is as convenient and cost-effective as possible.
CardUp also has a handy calculator to help you optimise your cashback rewards. Simply indicate your preferred rewards (in this case “Cashback”), and take a look at your net monthly savings.
From Now Till 31 December 2020, Reduced Fees Of 1.6% On Personal Payments
New Users with a CardUp Personal or Business account and have not yet scheduled a payment can enjoy 1.6% CardUp fee for their first two payments of minimum S$500 and maximum S$10,000 in a recurring series with the promo code HOLIDAY16DS. This is limited to the first 300 New Personal Users on CardUp only. T&Cs apply. Get your free account today!
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