4 High Earn Credit Cards for Huge Expenses!
Got big expenses to pay? Don’t use unlimited cards that give you only 1.5% cashback or 1.2 miles per dollar! Here are 4 cards that are worth your while.
Card 1: Citi SMRT Card – 5% cashback with $12,000 annual cap
The Citi SMRT Card, unlike many cashback and miles cards, come with no monthly cap. Instead, it has a S$12,000 annual cap which should be good enough for many big ticket items.
Only online transactions qualify, and you are required to have a monthly minimum spend of S$500 before you get the 5% cashback rate on your spend within that month. This is easy to get, although travel related transactions are unfortunately excluded.
Also, Citi SMRT card follows a peculiar redemption and expiry system, so do take note of that and redeem your cashback as soon as they are available to avoid losing your hard-earned rebates.
Citi SMRT
One of the few high-earn cards with no monthly cap! Gives 5% cashback on online transactions with annual spend cap of S$12,000. Read the review here.
🎁 Citi Promo
New cardholders can get welcome miles, points, or cashback with Citibank welcome offers:
| Card | Welcome Reward |
|---|---|
| Citi SMRT | S$300 cashback |
| Citi Cash Back Citi M1 | S$300 cashback |
| Citi PremierMiles | Up to 30,000 bonus miles |
| Citi Rewards | 40,000 ThankYou Points |
| Citi Cash Back+ | 8% cashback |
| Citi Prestige | Up to 162,500 Citi ThankYou Points |
See terms and conditions on landing page after tapping Citi Promo button. Not stackable with any other promos.
⚡️ SingSaver Promo
Apply as a new Citi cardholder by 31st August 2026 and fill up the SingSaver Rewards Redemption form with your choice of gift:
Not stackable with Citi Promo. Don’t like the gifts? You can choose to top up to get more gift options. Tap Promo 2 button and see landing page for more details.
⚠️ Important Notes
For SingSaver promo:
- Make sure to fill up the SingSaver Rewards Redemption Form or no gift will be given.
- Min. spend of S$500 required.
For reference only; refer to exact details in terms and conditions
Card 2: UOB Absolute + GrabPay Mastercard
Update: GrabPay has been nerfed and no longer gives points for most types of spending
Update: UOB Absolute has been nerfed and now only gives 0.3% cashback for Grab top ups.
Our perennial solution to tricky transactions, UOB Absolute paired with GrabPay Mastercard can help you to settle up to $5,000 of transactions, and get you a pretty decent earn rate.
Topping up your Grab wallet gets you 1.7% cashback on your UOB Absolute card, and you can use your GrabPay Mastercard thereafter for up to 1.2% of rebate in the form of Grab points, assuming you are a Platinum member. That is pretty easily achieved with just a few hundred dollars of spending with GrabPay.
Coupled with Grab Power Up Challengers, your earn rate can also be further enhanced, and this combo should be good enough to deal with most large transactions you’d face, as long as they are under $5,000 each. There is also a monthly limit of $10,000 and an annual limit of $30,000 to observe, so do take note of that.
Card 3: OCBC Titanium Rewards – 4 mpd for electronics, furniture, fashion etc
Update: Note that card will not be suitable from 1st November 2023.
OCBC Titanium Rewards has been my go to card for large electronics purchases, but it also works for things like fashion and furniture. It gives 10X OCBC$ per dollar spent for eligible categories, and that is good for 4 miles.
You could easily buy an iPhone, a MacBook, an Apple Watch, and an iPad and still fit comfortably within OCBC Titanium Rewards’ annual capacity of $13,335 for 10X points. If you find this insufficient, OCBC allows you to sign up for both blue and pink variants of this card, effectively doubling your capacity since both cards come with their own maximum limit.
Card 4: UOB KrisFlyer gives unlimited 3 mpd
The last but certainly not least of these cards is the UOB KrisFlyer card which gives a seemingly lousy rate of 1.2 miles per dollar on its spend, but gets boosted to 3 miles per dollar when you spend at least $500 on Singapore Airline Group transactions within the membership year. These include Singapore Airlines, SilkAir, Scoot and KrisShop.
Within the year where the $500 spend requirement is met, your dining, online shopping, online travel, and transport card transactions get an additional 1.8 miles per dollar, making a total earn rate of 3 miles per dollar. There is no specified limit to this, and the rather wide range of MCCs listed for the online shopping category means that most things you buy online would get you the 3 miles per dollar rate.
Do note that the additional 1.8 miles come in two months after the end of your membership year, although I’ve personally gotten it a month or two earlier. This means that you could miss out on earning enough for a trip you are going for soon, though on the flipside it means that your expiry on these points will be later if you have no immediate use for them.
Conclusion
With these cards around, there really isn’t a reason to resort to 1.2 miles per dollar or 1.5% cashback cards, but do check out the terms and conditions of each card before committing to your transaction. Do a bit of homework first, particularly since it’s going to be a big transaction.
Seth Wee was a licensed financial adviser representative from 2009 to 2025, with over 16 years of experience in Singapore’s financial advisory industry.
He started Sethisfy.com in 2019 to share practical insights on credit cards, banking products, and miles strategies, helping readers identify financial products that deliver the best value. Seth has been featured in CNA, Channel 8, Today, and a host of other publications. In 2025, he was also part of a panel at CPF’s Ready For Life festival.
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