Standard disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with ANZ bank and what follows is purely my personal opinion.
Finally received the bill from ANZ. This is the very first time the 5% rebate of the Optimum World credit card came into effect, since this is the start of the April – June quarter and they only announced the arrival of this new card in January. I was eager to find out if the 5% rebate really worked, especially for overseas spend. It did.
A quick summary of how this card works: you have to choose a category of spending for which you’ll get 5% rebate, out of the 4 categories comprising of dining & leisure, travel, shopping and groceries. I chose the dining category, because few other cards offer a rebate for dining expenses (furthermore you earn 5% regardless of whether it’s weekdays or weekends).
From the start of April, i spent a total of S$171.49 on food related expenses, including a meal in a restaurant in Malaysia and snacks from a shop selling traditional foodstuff in Malacca. I’m surprised that even the expenditure on the snacks was included for the rebate. These earned me, with rounding factored in, 8 Optimum$ (equivalent to S$8).
The rest of the spending (including that from a supplementary card) came up to a total of S$3078.39. These earned, with rounding factored in, 30 Optimum$ (equivalent to $30). So i got a total of S$38 in rebates, not bad. Though, on hindsight, it would have been better to spend using the Manhattan credit card, which gives 3% of rebates for spending above S$3000, which means i would have gotten S$97.50 of rebates. Alas, it’s difficult to coordinate and anticipate the spending from 2 cards (main and supplementary).
All in all, i’m very satisfied with the cash rebates for this card. I’m going to use it for all my dining expenses on my upcoming trip. At 5%, the rebates will significantly offset the extra fees and unfavourable exchange rates when swiping a credit card overseas.
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