Guide: Completing the POSB Cashback Bonus Requirements

POSB Cashback Bonus is a really interesting thing that lives up to its name by giving you bonus cashback on accomplishing certain tasks. It appears to be yet another bank account that requires you to do things like credit salary or make credit card spend, but the compelling thing about it is that it does not require a bank balance. Another compelling thing is that there are ways to easily complete the requirements for the cashback.

What is POSB Cashback Bonus?

While it seems to be a bank account, it’s more accurately a rewards programme for DBS savings accounts. When you achieve certain requirements with DBS, the programme awards you with cashback each month depending on the requirements achieved.

The great thing about POSB Cashback Bonus is that you can earn cashback from this, and place your bank savings elsewhere instead to earn interest. Moreover, there are easy ways to clock a few of the requirements which we will discuss later in the article.

To enroll in POSB Cashback Bonus, you need to opt of DBS Multiplier if you are an existing Multiplier customer. Switching does not work; according to user reports, you have to opt out of your Multiplier then opt in POSB Cashback Bonus. You can do so in iBanking (on a desktop browser).

The categories

There are a total of 5 different categories to earn cashback on:

Category	Cashback Rate	Maximum Cashback	Ideal Transaction Size
Salary Credit ★	0.3%	S$20	S$6,667
Credit Card Spend ★	0.3%	S$20	S$6,667
Investments ★	3%	S$30	S$1,000
Home Loan Instalments ☆	3%	S$30	S$1,000
Insurance	3%	S$30	S$1,000

The not-so-easy categories

Home Loan Instalments get a ☆ for either being the easiest category you can fulfil if you have a mortgage with DBS, or something you can ignore altogether if you don’t have one. You get 3% cashback on the amount of mortgage you have with DBS subject to a cap of S$30 cashback per month, or up to S$1,000 of mortgage.

Insurance should also be ignored since it is a difficult requirement to fulfil. Not only do you need to buy a policy after you have set up your POSB Cashback Bonus, the policy’s premiums would only get cashback for the first 12 months. You should only get this if you really need a policy from the bank, but it is likely you can find better coverage outside of a bank’s limited product range when it comes to insurance.

The easy categories

Salary crediting is perhaps one of the easier requirements to fulfil and you need at least S$2,500 of salary credited to your account via GIRO with transaction reference codes of SAL or PAY and reflected as GIRO SALARY or SALARY in your account statement.

This category awards 0.3% cashback with a cashback cap of S$20, which means you need S$6,667 of salary credited to max out this category.

Hack #1: an easy workaround would be to use another bank account to make a GIRO (i.e. non-FAST) transfer to your DBS/POSB account with the payment purpose set to Salary. Among the major banks, UOB allows you to do such a transfer. You have to first add your DBS bank account as a payee, then perform a bank transfer. Remember to uncheck the FAST checkbox.

Credit card spend is another easy category to achieve as there is no minimum spend required. You get 0.3% cashback with a cashback cap of S$20, meaning you max out this category with S$6,667 of spend.

This 0.3% cashback is on top of any card rewards that you may get from your DBS Woman’s World Mastercard or DBS LiveFresh.

Hack #2: as promised from my YouTube video, an easy way to get the spend amount would be that just about anything you spend on gets this 0.3% cashback. This includes commonly excluded transactions such as AXS, which means you can pay for a variety of bills on AXS with your DBS/POSB credit card and still get this 0.3% cashback.

Do you want an even easier way to complete credit card spend? Tap here

Investment is the final category that is easy to achieve, and one can do so by subscribing to a fund under POSB Invest-Saver or buying a unit trust after joining POSB Cashback Bonus.

There are investment fees associated, and I’m not going to be giving investment advice here, so do your own due diligence.

Hack #3: if you are not intending to invest, you may want to pick the ABF Singapore Bond Index Fund which not only has the lowest 0.5% transaction fee (buy or sell), but should be relatively less volatile than its equity counterparts. This makes it an ideal fund to sell off shortly after the transaction is recognised for the investment category of POSB Cashback

The 3% cashback this category offers should more than cover such fees and still leave you with a net positive. With 3% given on up to S$1,000 of investment per month, the maximum cashback one can get from this is S$30 per month.

Total haul

Category	Task	Cashback
Salary Credit	Credit S$6,667 of salary (or non-FAST transfer with SAL payment purpose)	S$20
Credit Card Spend	Spend S$6,667 (even paying bills on AXS to earn cashback on things like insurance, income tax etc.)	S$20
Investment	Buy S$1,000 of funds/unit trusts; some fees apply (you can sell after if you do not want to hold the investment)	S$30
Home Loan Instalments	Optional: have a mortgage of at least S$1,000 per month with DBS	S$30
		Total S$70 (S$100 with mortgage)

With salary, spend, and investment categories fully utilised, you can get S$70 per month from POSB Cashback Bonus without needing to maintain a high bank deposit. Your savings can thus be channeled to other high-earn accounts like UOB One or t-bills etc. to generate interest.

If you have a mortgage with DBS, you can get up to S$30 extra, bringing your total haul possible to S$100 per month by completing relatively easy tasks.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a tracker for POSB Cashback categories?

Log in to iBanking on a desktop browser and find it in My Accounts → Bank & Earn Summary

The tracker isn’t moving!!

The tracker only updates itself when at least 3 categories are met. It also takes a couple of working days to update.

When do I get my cashback?

Cashback is credited by the 7th working day of the following month.

Keep up to date on the best cashback/mile cards, financial products, attractive deals, and more tips to maximise your financial wellbeing by subscribing to my Telegram channel.

Subscribe to the channel, then join the group chat. You would often benefit from the tips shared exclusively in the group chat!

Disclaimer: I may receive an affiliate/referral fee when you sign up for services/products on this site, and such fees keep the site running. I would only recommend services/products I would personally use or recommend to my own friends and family, but I do not provide any warranty or guarantee for the quality of these services/products. Thank you for supporting my site!

Please exercise due diligence when signing up for any service/product as I will not be liable for any personal loss, financial or otherwise. Content published here are my sole views and personal opnion, and none of the information here constitutes personal financial advice nor represents the views of my employer(s).