Best Credit Cards For Travel & Overseas Spending 2025
Before you go on your vacations or business trips, there are some things youâll probably have in mind to bring along, and your go-to travel credit cards are definitely one of the best things that youâll need.
If youâre just starting to look around for better travel credit cards, you may find MoneySmart's credit card page helpful for you to compare different credit cards in terms of free flights, hotel stays, dining rewards, cashback, lowest fees, frequent flyer programme benefits, and more. This guide includes the best travel credit cards you can get in Singapore, plus some useful tips on how to maximise them so you can pick a suitable card for your travel needs.
How To Maximise Your Travel Credit Cards
Tip #1: Get cards that offer travel perks fast
Depending on your spending habits, if youâre one who prefers air miles or rewards points for you to convert to air miles or other travel-related discount vouchers, picking an air miles card that offers you a generous amount of air miles for signing up is the fastest way to get the best benefits out of your card.
Travel credit cards which offer higher bonus air miles include Citi PremierMiles, DBS Altitude Card, and Amex KrisFlyer Ascend which gives you up to 45,000 miles, 38,000 miles and 21,000 miles respectively, each with a different minimum spend requirement.
Tip #2: Use a combination of credit cards for different travel benefits
Different cards offer different advantages, i.e. some will offer you bonus air miles upon your annual fee payment like Standard Chartered Visa Infinite X Card (30,000 miles upon annual fee payment), while others offer attractive cashback that is great for cruise vacations and family spending overseas or reward points to redeem shopping vouchers.
In order to maximise your credit card rewards, cashback or air miles, tap on multiple credit cards with each card specialising in a particular spending type or card feature that best suits your travel needs.
Tip #3: Picking cards with flexible rewards
Flexible rewards points programs give you a wider range of options such as redeeming points for a variety of gift cards, cash back and even airfares, hotels, cruises and car rentals.
Depending on the type of rewards points program and credit card you get, this can be a reasonable option to get more rewards from your credit cards. Usually these flexible rewards points programs are more beneficial for those who fly often for business trips and value the international business class cabins on flights or stay in budget and/or luxury hotel suites overseas.
3 Need-To-Knows About Cards For Overseas Spending:
Using your air miles credit card or cashback credit card or rewards points credit card to convert your points to air miles also means that youâll have to pay for certain fees in exchange for all these benefits. Here are a few things to consider as you leverage on the rewards from your travel credit card for overseas spending.
- Choose flexible rewards whenever possible
Flexible rewards points like those offered by Standard Chartered Rewards+ Credit Card, OCBC 90°N Card and UOB PRVI Miles American Express Card are transferable to a variety of different airline and hotel loyalty programs while others which are more brand-specific like American Express Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer Ascend Credit Card and KrisFlyer UOB Credit Card only gives you the option to redeem them for a specific airline, which is Singapore Airlines in this case.
- Waiver of annual fees or foreign transaction fees or other conversion fees
Itâs good to know which cards offer what types of fee waivers so that itâs more worthwhile to use it to gain cashback and other perks. Cards like UOB PRVI VISA Miles Card and DBS Altitude Visa Signature Card offer 1 year of fee waiver, while cards like Maybank World Mastercard will have your conversion fee waived for each conversion of points to frequent flyer miles. Others like American Express Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer Ascend Credit Card do not offer any annual fee waivers.
- Split spending over multiple cards
By using platforms like CardUp to split your overseas spending, it can actually help you to maximise your benefits so that you can gain reward points, cash rebates and air miles at the same time while using all of your cards.
Don't forget travel insurance!
3 Need-To-Knows About Cards For Air Miles:
With so many types of credit cards out there offering air miles, you may wonder which card suits you the most. To get started, youâll need to know a few things about air miles credit cards before getting one.
- Avoid air miles cards with high fees
Paying off the balance of your account every month can get rather expensive for some air miles credit cards, because the high interest charges will cost more than the value of any miles you could earn.
- Go for cards with lower foreign transaction fees
For those who plan to pay in SGD instead of overseas currencies, itâll be better to use credit cards offered by banks like CIMB and Standard Chartered that charge some of the lowest foreign transaction fees in Singapore.
- Compare miles earn rates & bonus air miles
Highest mile per dollar spend ratio, most bonus air miles and air miles with no expiry are some of the factors to look out for when choosing your air miles cards. Some cards offer higher miles per dollar spend ratio so you donât have to spend as much to get more air miles, while some banks offer generous welcome bonus air miles upon signing up for certain air miles credit cards which gives you a lot of air miles in a short amount of time without having you to spend a minimum amount over time to get more air miles. Other cards offer earned miles that donât expire, which comes in handy in uncertain situations like the COVID-19 pandemic that made travel plans a challenge at times.
Best Air Miles Credit Cards
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