If Singaporeans had a national hobby, it would have to be eating. A foodie paradise, Singapore is chock-full of restaurants, cafes, buffets, coffee shops, and hawker centres to fill our tummies with yummies.

While dining out and dabao-ing have always been popular, ordering food delivery has also become a staple for many Singaporeans ever since Covid-19 struck our shores. And based on the food delivery riders still swarming our roads every day, it looks like online food delivery is here to stay.

Whether you prefer dining out or ordering in, you might as well make the most of your daily food expenditure. With the right credit card, you can score cashback, reward points, and even one-for-one deals for dining and delivery. Read on for our top credit card picks for dining and online food delivery in 2023.

1. At a glance: Best dining and food delivery credit cards in Singapore

2. American Express Platinum Credit Card

The AMEX Platinum Credit Card is well-known among foodies for its extra exclusive perks under the Love Dining programme.

Under this exclusive dining programme, you get sweet one-for-one deals and discounts at prestigious restaurants in town. On top of that, you’ll get the VIP treatment when you use the AMEX Platinum Concierge to help you make your restaurant reservations.

At all dining partners, you get 50% off your bill if you are dining in a group of two, 35% off in groups of three, 25% in groups of four, and 20% for bigger groups.

Here are some of the 22 hotel restaurants and 19 restaurants that you will be able to access:

• Anti:dote (Fairmont Singapore)
• Wan Hao Chinese Restaurant (Marriott Tang Plaza)
• Crossroads Bar (Paradox Singapore—Merchant Court at Clarke Quay)
• SKAI Restaurant (Swissotel The Stamford)
• Brasserie Les Saveurs (St. Regis)
• SKIRT (W Singapore—Sentosa Cove)
• Peach Garden at OCBC Centre
• Sen of Japan
• Si Chuan Dou Hua Restaurant
• The Kongsee
• Verdandah @ Rael’s
• Xin Cuisine Chinese Restaurant
• Sky 22
• Lawry’s The Prime Rib
• Wooloomooloo Steakhouse
• La Nonna
• Alegria
• Napoleon Food & Wine Bar

The Love Dining dining programme is very similar to Entertainer with HSBC, a dining programme that gives you one-for-one and percentage-based discount offers on food.

One key difference is that Entertainer with HSBC is a mobile app open to all HSBC credit card holders, but with full access to all of their merchants only for HSBC Visa Infinite and HSBC Premier Mastercard credit card holders.

Comparatively, the AMEX’s Love Dining programme is only for the AMEX Platinum Credit Card, and there’s no mobile app — just book via their concierge service and pay using the Platinum card to enjoy the discount.

3. Citi Cashback Card

Once one of the most generous cards in town, the Citi Cash Back Card's cashback programme has since been “revised” and made more conservative. But before you slip it into the slot in your wallet reserved for receipts, it’s still a pretty good dining card.

The Citi Cash Back card gives you 6% cashback when you dine at restaurants, cafes and fast food outlets. There are two main catches.

First, the minimum spending requirement is $800, which might be hard to hit if you have only one mouth to feed and don’t drive. The total cashback you can earn per month is $80, which covers about $1,000 to $1,333 worth of spending. If you don’t hit this minimum spend, the base cashback rate is only 0.25%.

Secondly, you don’t qualify for this cashback when you pay through food delivery services like Deliveroo and Foodpanda. Eligible merchants include caterers, restaurants and fast food outlets. If you want to be super sure the eatery you’re eyeing is eligible for the cashback, here are the eligible dining merchant category codes (MCC) for you to check:

• MCC 5811 Caterers
• MCC 5812 Eating Places, Restaurants
• MCC 5814 Fast Food Restaurants

Citi Cash Back cardholders also get exclusive dining vouchers that Citi switches up every year. Here are the Citi Cash Back dining offers for 2023, all valid until Dec 31, 2023:

• Elfuego: S$10 off every S$120 spend
• Yonehachi: S$5 return voucher with any spend
• Beauty In The Pot: S$10 return voucher with any spend

4. Citi Rewards Card

If you prefer the online lifestyle, there’s another Citibank credit card that’s better suited for you. The Citi Rewards Card is a generous card for online spend, giving you 10X reward points for online food delivery.

To complete your sedentary couch potato lifestyle, online groceries, online shopping, Grab, and Gojek etc. are all part of the bonus reward points programme.

On top of the reward points, the Citi Rewards Card also comes with Citi World Privileges, a good handful of which are dining deals and discounts.

The Citi Rewards Card website boasts 10X reward points on online groceries and shopping. But when you look into the Citi Rewards Card 10X Reward Points terms and conditions, you actually can’t find any eligible online food delivery MCC code in the list.

Weird.

While there isn’t a minimum spend per month, you can only get up to 10,000 reward points (under the bonus 10X reward points programme) per month.

5. Standard Chartered Simply Cash Credit Card

The main selling point of the Standard Chartered Simply Cash Credit Card is that — true to its name — it’s simple. The card gives you a flat 1.5% cashback on all eligible purchases, including dining, food delivery, and online shopping. What’s ineligible for the cashback then? The usual culprits, such as bills, payments to educational, financial, and governmental institutions, and GrabPay top-ups.

On the dining front, the Standard Chartered Simply Cash Credit Card comes with an additional perk. It gives you access to dining discount privileges at with Standard Chartered’s The Good Life benefits programme. This programme applies to all Standard Chartered VISA and Mastercard cards, and offers in Singapore include:

• 15% off total food bill at Crossroads, Singapore Marriott Tang Plaza Hotel (valid until Dec 31, 2023)
• 15% off total food bill at Wan Hao Chinese Restaurant, Singapore Marriott Tang Plaza Hotel (valid until Dec 31, 2023)
• 15% off total food bill at Singapore Marriott Tang Plaza Hotel, Lobby Lounge (valid until Dec 31, 2023)

6. Standard Chartered Smart Credit Card

Some of us like to dine out at fancy restaurants, and some of us just like to eat rubbish. If fast food is your life, you should check out the Standard Chartered Smart Credit Card. This credit card’s dining privileges are pretty niche:

• 6% Cashback from fast food joints: Burger King, KFC, Mcdonald’s, Subway
• 6% Cashback from coffee and toast joints: Fun toast, Toast Box, Ya Kun Kaya Toast

The best part is that there’s no minimum spend required, so you don’t need to spend copiously on something else just to get 6% cashback on your next Big Mac.

On top of the 6% fast food cashback unique to the Standard Chartered Smart Credit Card, you’ll also gain access to offers in dining, lifestyle and more under Standard Chartered’s The Good Life programme — what we mentioned earlier for the Standard Chartered Simply Cash Credit Card too.

7. CIMB World Mastercard

The CIMB World Mastercard gives you 2% cashback on dining and online food delivery. While you’ll have to clock a minimum spend of $1,000 per month on the card to get this rate, there’s no cap to the amount of cashback you’ll get.

Eligible online food delivery platforms include:

• Deliveroo
• Foodpanda
• GrabFood
• WhyQ
• AirAsia Food

CIMB World Mastercard’s cashback rate of 2% is a far cry from Citi Cashback Card’s 6% cashback. However, you can earn as much cashback as you’d like with CIMB, and can only earn $80 in cashback with Citi.

This naturally makes CIMB the cashback card to go if you spend a lot on dining — be it hosting big groups of dinner parties and business partners, or just treating yourself.

8. DBS Vantage Visa Infinite Card

Up till last year, the DBS Vantage Visa Infinite Card was giving its cardholders 4% cashback on dining spend, capped at $2,000 per month. However, as of 2023, this has been lowered to 1.5 miles or 1.5% cashback for every S$1 local spend.

The good news is that the DBS Vantage Card comes with a bunch of dining offers at selected restaurants to make up for the lower cashback. These include:

• 20% off à la carte food menu at Alegria
• 15% off à la carte food menu at Shima Restaurant
• 15% off for à la carte menu from Mon-Wed at L’Entrecôte The Steak and Fries Bistro
• 15% discount on food, and a free welcome prosecco at MONTI
• 15% off on buffet at Oscar’s Restaurant, Conrad Centennial Singapore

Another plus is that there is no minimum spend per month for the DBS Vantage card. However, like the HSBC Visa Infinite, the DBS Vantage Visa Infinite is an elite card requiring $120,000 annual income.

9. POSB Everyday Card

The POSB Everyday Card rewards you amply for staying home by offering a whopping 10% cash rebate on online food delivery.

Eligible online food delivery platforms include:

• Foodpanda
• Deliveroo
• WhyQ

In addition, you get 3% cash rebates on other dining spending, such as caterers, eating places and restaurants, bars, cocktail lounges (excluding fast food spend).

To qualify for the rebates, you need to spend at least $800 in a calendar month. You’re entitled to up to $15 rebates per month for dining and food delivery.

At the 10% rebate rate for online food delivery, that’s a max of $150 worth of spending. If you only use the card for dining-in rather than food delivery, you can get the 3% cashback rate on up to $500 of spending.

Cooking your own meals at home? The POSB Everyday Card also gets you 5% cash rebate at Sheng Siong (capped at S$600 monthly spend) and 8% cash rebate at RedMart. While the RedMart rebate is still subject to the $800 minimum spend each month, you can get the 5% cash rebate at Sheng Siong with no minimum card spend.

10. OCBC 365 Credit Card

The OCBC 365 Credit Card gives you 6% cashback on restaurants, cafes, caterers, fast food, and online food delivery (dining). And if you’re cooking at home, the OCBC 365 Credit Card will get you 3% in cashback on groceries.

Eligible dining and grocery MCC codes include:

• MCC 5812 Restaurants and Eating Places
• MCC 5814 Fast Food Restaurants
• MCC 5811 Caterers
• MCC 5411 Grocery Stores

Unfortunately there are no clear MCC codes for online food delivery, but OCBC does state that their dining cashback applies to “Online transactions such as food delivery made via the internet and processed by the respective merchants/acquirers as an online transaction type through the Visa/MasterCard Worldwide networks.” Basically, food delivery ordered online using Visa or Mastercard.

To actually receive your cashback, you’ll need to ensure you spend at least $800 in a calendar month. Cashback is capped at $80 per month, which translates to up to $1,333 worth of dining-in and online delivery spend.

If you’ve been toying with the idea of getting Burrple Beyond, this might be your sign to go for it. From now till Dec 31, 2023, there’s also a limited-time Burpple Beyond promotion for the OCBC 365 credit card. Get a 1-year Burpple Beyond Premium membership (worth S$99) if you apply for the card online and make a minimum of 5 qualifying transactions within 30 days of your card approval.

11. Maybank Horizon Card

The Maybank Horizon Visa Signature Card is a reward points card that gives you 8X TREATS reward points per $1 for local restaurants expenditure.

You’ll need to spend a minimum of $300 per month, and can only earn up to 30,000 TREATS reward points per month.

What can you do with TREATS points? These reward points can be redeemed to get retail vouchers at selected merchants,TWG Tea sets, fancy Fullerton Hotel cakes, fancy Fullerton Hotel staycations, OSIM massagers, miles, and cinema tickets. Check out the full catalogue of Maybank’s TREATS points rewards.

Unlike the previous dining cards which allow caterers and fast food restaurants, there is only one eligible dining and restaurant MCC merchant code for Maybank Horizon’s bonus dining points programme:

•  MCC 5812 Participating Dining Merchants

12. HSBC Visa Infinite Card

Like the AMEX Platinum card, the HSBC Visa Infinite is an elite credit card with very attractive dining perks.

With the HSBC Visa Infinite credit card, you’ll get up to 50% off at selected restaurants. These include restaurants at some pretty fancy hotels, such as:

• Goodwood Park Hotel
• Fairmont Singapore
• Singapore Marriott Tang Plaza Hotel
• Swissôtel The Stamford

On top of these exclusive hotel dining privileges, you’ll also gain full access to HSBC’s dining programme, Entertainer with HSBC. Using the Entertainer with HSBC mobile app, you’ll get to enjoy one-for-one dining deals and discounts at over 200 merchants across the island.

Technically speaking, any HSBC credit card will get you “standard” access to Entertainer with HSBC, i.e. not the full version. To get “premium” access (complete access to the full range of restaurants), you need to hold the HSBC Visa Infinite credit card.

Since both the AMEX Platinum and HSBC Visa Infinite are great dining credit cards with rewarding dining discount programmes, which card should you choose?

One key consideration is the minimum income requirement. The HSBC Visa Infinite is an elite card and requires $120,000 per year. Comparatively, AMEX used to state an annual income requirement of $80,000 for their Platinum card, but seems to have relaxed this.

The AMEX Platinum Card is now “subjected to customers meeting the regulatory minimum income requirement and internal assessment” — or in other words, no hard minimum.

13. UOB One Card

The UOB One Card has one of the highest cashback rates out there, provided you hit certain minimum spends. We’re talking up to 15% rebate at Dairy Farm International (Cold Storage, CS Fresh, Giant, Guardian, 7-Eleven & more) and Grab — including GrabFood!

The catch is that the way this is calculated is kinda complicated. Read more about how it’s calculated in our review of the best cashback credit cards in Singapore.

On top of the cashback, the UOB One Card will also get you up to 50% off with UOB dining privileges. These include one-for-one buffets at the likes of Marriott Café Buffet, Orchard Café and Café Mosaic.

14. Bonus tips: How can I save more money on dining?

Other than getting the right credit card for dining, there are plenty of ways to feed yourself for a little less in 2023:

Use online platforms to order your food for self pickup — When pre-ordering food for pickup, use an online platform wherever possible so you can use your credit card to pay and in the process earn cashback, rewards or miles for online spending.

This is particularly pertinent for merchants like hawkers that may not accept credit card payment.

Order directly from merchants and use their welcome voucher — There’s absolutely nothing wrong with using food delivery services. But if the restaurant has an online welcome discount for first-time customers, you might as well order at least once directly from their website to make use of that welcome promo.

Check your bank’s website for dining promos — Credit card providers are constantly adding deals such as discounted or one-for-one meals at selected establishments. If you can’t think of anything to eat, looking through your card’s dining promotions should give you some ideas.

ALSO READ: How to cancel credit cards in Singapore: Citibank, DBS, Standard Chartered, HSBC and more

This article was first published in MoneySmart.