By MoneyBees
Track your spend against your bank's published condition for waiving a credit card annual fee, with the fees and waiver rules eight cards publish on their own pages.
Most of the cards we checked charge S$196.20 a year for the principal card, which is S$180 plus 9% GST. American Express True Cashback charges S$174.40, and HSBC Revolution charges no annual fee.
Check what your bank publishes. Some cards waive the fee automatically above a yearly spend, such as S$10,000 for OCBC 365 and S$12,000 for Maybank Family & Friends. UOB waives on request for customers with one UOB card. Many cards publish no condition after the first year.
No bank publishes the odds, so no calculator can give them honestly. Where a bank publishes a spend condition, this tracker shows whether your spending reaches it. Where none is published, any waiver is the bank's own decision.
For seven of the eight cards we checked, the first year is waived or there is no fee. OCBC 365 waives the first two years and Maybank Family & Friends the first three. Citi PremierMiles lets you choose between a first-year waiver and more bonus miles.
On some cards. Citi says that if you ask for the PremierMiles annual fee to be waived, the 10,000 renewal bonus miles credited for paying it are taken back.
UOB's page says customers with only one UOB credit card can ask through its self-service channels and it will waive the fee. With more cards, you need S$5,500 on the card, S$22,000 across UOB cards or S$3,000 overseas within 11 months of the card anniversary, subject to approval.
Only with spending you would make anyway. Spending S$1,000 extra to save a S$196.20 fee leaves you S$803.80 worse off unless you needed what you bought.
It depends on the card. DBS Live Fresh charges S$98.10 for each supplementary card; American Express True Cashback waives the first two permanently, and Maybank Family & Friends supplementary cards are free.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).