UOB Absolute Cashback Card review: A straightforward cashback card

Who doesn’t love a straightforward cashback card that doesn’t require complicated math? You, me, your mom, my mom, your ah ma and mine!

The UOB Absolute Cashback Card is one of several unlimited cashback cards on the market. These just give you a flat cashback rate on all spending — without minimum spending requirements, cashback caps and all that rot.

Among the unlimited cashback options, the UOB Absolute Cashback Card has the highest flat rate of 1.7 per cent.

Should we all abandon our former allegiances for this new contender for the throne? Let’s find out.

UOB Absolute Cashback Card terms and conditions

UOB Absolute Cashback Card
Annual fee & waiver	$192.60 (first year waiver)
Supplementary annual fee	$96.30 (waived for first card)
Interest free period	21 days
Annual interest rate	26.9 per cent
Late payment fee	$100
Minimum monthly repayment	3 per cent or $50, whichever is higher
Foreign currency transaction fee	3.25 per cent
Cash advance transaction fee	8 per cent or $15, whichever is higher
Overlimit fee	$40
Minimum income	$30,000
Card association	American Express
Wireless payment	Eligible except mobile wireless payments

How the UOB Absolute Cashback Card works

The UOB Absolute Cashback Card is an unlimited cashback card that lets you earn a cool 1.7 per cent cashback on all your spending, with no minimum spend and no cap. That’s it!

With this type of credit card, you really need just one — the credit card offering with the highest rebate.

• Back in the day, the Standard Chartered Unlimited Cashback Card and American Express True Cashback Card started the trend by offering a 1.5 per cent unlimited cashback.
• Then Citi Cash Back+ entered the scene, offering 1.6 per cent. The game is afoot.
• And now, UOB Absolute Cashback Card has now surpassed its competitors by offering 1.7 per cent unlimited cashback. Now this is war.

Seriously though, this type of credit card is so simple that a kindergartener could figure it out. There isn’t anything complicated to figure out.

The UOB Absolute Cashback Card would be perfect if not for the fact that… it’s an American Express card. Nooo! Why?!

Don’t get me wrong, Amex is pretty widely accepted, but there are still a lot of merchants that only accept Visa or Mastercard, especially smaller businesses.

READ ALSO: Should you get a cashback credit card to curb inflation in Singapore?

Aren’t there better cashback cards out there?

You bet. In a world of cashback cards dangling generous rebates like eight per cent or six per cent, 1.7 per cent can seem rather miserly in comparison.

But in my experience, those high cashback rates don’t always last. Here’s a cautionary tale:

When I first started earning enough to qualify for credit cards, I signed up for 7 credit cards and created a spreadsheet of all the benefits and minimum spending requirements. At times, I’d find myself stuck at the cashier counter trying to pull up the spreadsheet on my phone so I’d know which card to use.

Within a year, the banks started to change the credit cards’ terms and conditions, and all my research went down the drain.

So if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t like the hassle of tracking your expenses — or switching credit card strategy when the banks inevitably change their T&Cs — earning 1.7 per cent on everything seems like a perfectly reasonable trade-off.

Who should use the UOB Absolute Cashback Card?

As the UOB Absolute Cashback Card offers cashback on everything, it’s a good multi-purpose card to use for all types of spending.

Let’s say you once relied on Citi Cash Back Card for their petrol and dining cashback. But due to staying home more, you haven’t been able to hit the $800 minimum monthly spending requirement.

Rather than forgoing your bonus cashback (or worse, being forced to overspend), you can switch your expenses to the UOB Absolute Cashback Card and at least 1.7 per cent cashback without having to hit a minimum.

Unlike most credit cards, UOB Absolute Cashback Card has virtually no spending exclusions. So, you can earn 1.7 per cent on your insurance premiums, school fees, e-wallet top-ups, utilities bills and even rental payments.

As there is no minimum monthly spending requirement, this card is suitable for anyone as a backup card for those days when no other card is useful.

UOB Absolute Cashback promotions

UOB is offering a welcome promotion of $100 cash credit to the first 100 new UOB customers who spend at least $1,500 within 30 days from card approval date.

FYI, most of the other unlimited cashback credit cards also offer their own promotions, and we’ve compiled them here:

Unlimited cashback credit card	Welcome promo	Regular cashback rate
Citi Cash Back+ Mastercard	4.5 per cent in first 3 months (capped at $225)	1.6 per cent
Standard Chartered Unlimited Cashback Credit Card	$220 cashback when you spend $200 and 6 months of Disney+ subscription	1.5 per cent
American Express True Cashback Card	3per cent cashback on up to $5,000 in first 6 months (capped at $150)	1.5 per cent
UOB Absolute Cashback Card	$100 cash credit when you spend $1,500 in first month	1.7 per cent

Some of the other unlimited cashback cards do have better introductory offers — most notably the Citi Cash Back+ Card, at a generous 4.5 per cent in the first three months.

Go ahead and sign up for one of the other cards if you anticipate a big ticket purchase and want to max out the welcome gift of bonus cashback. But for the long haul, you’ll probably earn more cashback with UOB Absolute Cashback than the others.

So is the UOB Absolute Cashback worth getting?

You can see from the above table that the UOB Absolute Cashback card isn’t necessarily the best in terms of their welcome promotion.

But welcome bonuses aside, we think this is a great credit card to have on standby. Its main advantage is offering cashback on almost all transactions — whereas most other cards have exceptions.

For example, the StanChart Unlimited card excludes stored value top-ups, school fees, tax payment and parking charges, while the Citi Cash Back+ excludes any bill payments, school fees, insurance premiums and transport-related transactions, amongst others.

READ ALSO: Best credit cards for paying insurance premiums in Singapore 2022

The Amex True Cashback Card is as lax as the UOB Absolute Cashback Card, but then it offers 0.2 per cent less cashback.

As mentioned earlier, the card’s main drawback is that it’s an Amex card, which means it might not be as widely accepted. But despite this disadvantage, the UOB Absolute Cashback Card is still a very solid card for everyday use.

This article was first published in MoneySmart.