Standard Chartered Smart Card Review: Perfect for Work Commutes?

The Standard Chartered Smart Credit Card sounds great on the surface. 6% cashback with no minimum spend?

But wait – you’ll only get that 6% rate at a select few merchants.

The cashback also isn’t automatic. You’ll get them in points, which you’ll have to remember to redeem.

Then again, there are a few other things that make this card worth considering. So today, let’s dig into the SC Smart Credit Card’s:

• Eligibility requirements
• Annual fees and charges
• Cashback, rewards, discounts, etc.
• Downsides
• StanChart Smart Credit Card vs the competition
• Whom this card is best for

Eligibility Requirements

Fees and Charges

Here’s the first appealing aspect of the StanChart Smart Card: you won’t need to pay an annual fee. But credit cards with no annual fees usually make up for it by offering lesser benefits, so we’ll have to see if that’s the case here.

There’s also no fee for cash advances, which can come in handy if you’re in a pinch (i.e. when you don’t have your bank ATM card with you and you desperately need cash). As a general rule though, we don’t recommend using cash advances unless it’s an emergency: just look at that eye-watering 29.9% p.a. interest.

Cashback, Rewards, and Other Perks

Up to $331 as Welcome Bonus

Ordinarily, we wouldn’t recommend spending more just to qualify for a card’s sign-up promos. But if you do plan to spend a good chunk on this card in the near future (KFC party, anyone?), consider the limited-time promotion.

With S$500 spend within the first 30 days of card approval, you get your choice of:

• An Apple Bundle [Airpods Gen 3 + MagSafe Charger] worth S$331.06
• A Xiaomi TV A2 HDC 32″ worth S$329, or
• S$270 Cash via PayNow

Cashback…or No, Wait – Reward Points at a Few Merchants

Clearly, this card was designed for someone who takes public transport to work, and only with SimplyGo. You don’t get anything if you top up your EZ-LINK with this card. And if you tend to take your breakfast outside instead of making your eggs and toast at home, you’ll earn reward points.

Oddly, StanChart gives you these reward points even if you don’t make the transactions in Singapore dollars – but there’s not much upside to that since most of the merchants are local. (Unless you happen to have a Netflix subscription under a different country.)

Travel Insurance…With No Other Travel Perks

If you’re a working adult on a budget, the S$500,000 trip insurance coverage can seem like a good way to save a few bucks – but don’t do it. You’ll get max benefits only from the list of preferred merchants, so charging your travel fare to the card won’t earn you bonus points.

If you want travel freebies, you’re much better off with a travel-focused card instead.

SC EasyBill

Like Citibank, Standard Chartered gives you the ability to earn when you pay your IRAS taxes, school fees, insurance premiumms, and rental bills.

Downsides

1. Short List of Preferred Merchants

…and using this card with anything but the preferred merchants will only net you the equivalent of 0.5% cashback. Ouch!

2. Cashback Isn’t Automatic

As a reward rather than a cashback card, you won’t get that 6% cashback automatically. Instead, you’ll have to remember to redeem them for cashback every so often.

Read also: 9 Best Cashback Credit Cards for Singapore

3. Low Reward Points Cap

Transactions with the preferred merchants will get you reward points split up as 360° Reward Points and Additional 360° Reward Points. There’s a cap on the latter, which works out to be around S$818 in monthly spending – a low spending cap.

Other no-fee rewards cards like the HSBC Revolution cap spending at S$1,000 monthly, and they don’t have such a restrictive list of merchants.

4. Reward Points Expire

With the StanChart Smart Card, 360° Reward Points have an expiry period of three years from the date of the credit card account opening. That means if you’ve had the card for 2.75 years, you’d better redeem those points before they’re all gone.

If you keep the card past the initial three years, you’ll start all over again with points that are valid for another three years.

How Does The SC Smart Credit Card Compare? 

To get a feel for where the SC Smart Credit Card stands, it might be helpful to compare it with other no-fee credit cards (or one that offers an easy automatic fee waiver). We’ve chosen the HSBC Revolution Card and the UOB EVOL Card for this purpose:

Suffice to say that you could use the HSBC Revolution or UOB EVOL Card for just about anything, since mobile contactless and online payments span almost the entirety of what you’d use a credit card for. That makes the Standard Chartered Smart Card the least flexible.

Standard Chartered makes up for it somewhat by offering a slightly higher cashback rate, but then detracts from its offering again by instituting a lower spending cap.

If you only want a card for those few merchants and everything else will go on a higher-yield card, then the SC Smart Credit Card makes perfect sense.

But if you’re spending S$700 – S$800 on fast food, breakfast, digital subscriptions, and your work commutes…you’re probably better off with a straight cashback card anyway. Being able to hit a minimum spend of at least S$600 will already grant you access to great cashback cards.

Who This Card is Best For 

• Early morning commuters who also dine at places like Ya Kun, Fun Toast, KFC, and McDonald’s…or have a digital subscription
• Those who want a no-fee, no-minimum-spend card and are content to only use this card at the preferred merchants