Paying your monthly rent to a private landlord in Singapore using your credit card has never been easier, with at least three providers on the scene allowing you to accrue thousands of frequent flyer miles each month on this often major transaction, for a nominal processing fee.
That fee is important of course, because depending on the rate at which your card accrues miles it determines your cost per mile when you accrue this way.
With RentHero already offering our readers a competitive 1.85% fee for the rest of 2019, both ipaymy and CardUp have only slightly more expensive offers, but on a wider range of credit card types, at 1.89% and 1.9% respectively for Visa and Mastercard payments.
Cost per mile for rental payments
Currently the cheapest way to pay your rent in Singapore using your Visa or Mastercard credit card is either:
- Our 1.85% promo code ‘MAINLYMILES185’ with RentHero (specific cards)
- ipaymy’s 1.89% promo rate
- CardUp’s 1.9% promo rate
For your American Express card it’s:
- Our 2.59% promo code ‘MAINLYAMEX’ with ipaymy (one-time)
- CardUp’s 2.6% standard rate (American Express)
Here’s the cost per mile for some popular miles-earning credit cards in Singapore, with the cheapest option in each case highlighted in green.
Cents per mile analysis for rental payments by card
(until 31st December 2019)
| Card | RentHero | ipaymy | CardUp |
 AMEX KF |
n/a | 2.30¢ | 2.30¢ |
 AMEX KF Ascend |
n/a | 2.10¢ | 2.11¢ |
 BOC EM |
1.21¢ | 1.24¢ | 1.24¢ |
 Citi PM Visa |
n/a | 1.55¢ | 1.55¢ |
 Citi Prestige |
n/a | 1.43¢ | 1.43¢ |
 Citi PM Amex |
n/a | 1.94¢ | 1.95¢ |
 Citi ULTIMA |
n/a | 1.16¢ | 1.17¢ |
 DBS Alt Visa |
1.51¢ | 1.55¢ | 1.55¢ |
 DBS Alt Amex |
n/a | 2.10¢ | 2.11¢ |
 HSBC VI |
1.45¢ | 1.48¢ | 1.49¢ |
 KF UOB |
1.51¢ | 1.55¢ | 1.55¢ |
 OCBC Voyage |
n/a | 1.55¢ | 1.55¢ |
 SCVI |
1.30¢ | 1.32¢ | 1.33¢ |
 UOB PRVI |
1.30¢ | 1.32¢ | 1.33¢ |
 UOB Reserve |
1.14¢ | 1.16¢ | 1.17¢ |
Remember since June 2019 we now set our personal upper limit to buy KrisFlyer miles at 1.9 cents each, and we don’t recommend speculatively accruing by paying more than this rate.
You’ll notice that all of the American Express options listed involve paying more than this, so you should be really trying to pay your rent with a Visa or Mastercard to unlock the more competitive fee.
Note that the 0.01% fee difference between ipaymy and CardUp makes the former marginally cheaper, however this sometimes shows as the same cost per mile due to rounding (effectively, the cost can be considered identical between the two providers).
RentHero
To get your 1.85% fee for rental payments using RentHero for the rest of 2019, you’ll simply need to enter our promo code ‘MAINLYMILES185’ at the review stage. This works for one-off and recurring payments until the end of December 2019.
If you want to schedule rental payments using your credit card in 2020 using RentHero, you can use our standard code ‘MAINLYMILES’ for a 1.9% fee, good through June 2020. Note that neither ipaymy nor CardUp are currently offering any promotions rates for next year at this stage.
For full details, see the article about our RentHero promotion here.
Successful payments using RentHero with our promotion codes pay MainlyMiles an affiliate commission.
ipaymy
ipaymy’s current rental payment promotion is available to all personal customers (you can sign up for a personal account here).
No special code is required, rental payments are all processed at the 1.89% discounted fee for the rest of 2019 automatically.
This rate is applicable for Singapore-issued Visa or Mastercard payments.
If you have any other payment types to process this month, we still have an ongoing offer with ipaymy using the following promotion codes for a one-time discounted fee. This would include income tax payment, rental payment using an American Express card or other invoices such as home improvements or tuition fees.
MAINLY199  Any payment type using a Singapore-issued Visa card. |
1.99% | |
MAINLYAMEX  Any payment type using a Singapore-issued American Express card. |
2.59% | |
This is a one-time promo code, so to be clear you’ll be able to use just one of the above codes a single time. Our advice is therefore to use it for something big like your income tax bill, to get the most value.
Full details of this offer can be found here.
CardUp
CardUp’s current offer for rentals is a 1.9% fee for payments made for the rest of 2019 with your Visa or Mastercard, while you’ll continue to get the standard rate of 2.6% for using American Express cards.
In both cases that’s only fractionally more than the ipaymy offer for Visa and Mastercard payments, and our Amex promo code (though the latter only is for a one-off payment this month).
Apply promo code ‘SAVERENT19′ during the ‘schedule payment’ process to get the discounted rate. Full details of the CardUp 1.9% rental offer are available here (disregard references to the 1.75% offer, which expired last month).
CardUp also has a one-time 1.99% income tax offer running for payments scheduled until 24th July 2019 using your Singapore-issued Visa or Mastercard. Apply promo code ‘TAX199’ during the ‘schedule payment’ process to get the discounted rate. Full terms and conditions can be found here.
If you still don’t have a CardUp account, you can get S$20 off your first payment (any type) of S$1,000 or more using a Visa or Mastercard with our referral code ‘MAINLYMILES’ when signing up.
Successful referrals to CardUp with our promotion code pay MainlyMiles an affiliate commission.
What about Citi PayAll?
All of these options are currently superior to Citi PayAll, now offering a flat 2% fee for rental and other payment types to all users.
For example if you set up a rental payment now through the service using your Citi PremierMiles Visa card, the 2% fee means an effective cost per mile of 1.67 cents (vs. 1.55 cents with ipaymy or CardUp).
Note that the maths is slightly different for cost per mile using Citi PayAll, because unlike payments made through the other providers the service fee itself does not accrue miles with Citi. For Example, PayAll would have to be offering a fee of 1.86% to match the same cost per mile as ipaymy or CardUp does at 1.89%/1.9%.
If you were lucky, you may have been targeted for a 1.5% fee in the early days of PayAll. It was then possible to set up a recurring payment at this rate (e.g. rental), so if you managed it at the time it’s definitely worth sticking to as that hasn’t changed.
Our understanding is that any new payments are unfortunately set at at 2% fee for all users (Eddie was targeted at a 1.5% fee initially, but now new PayAll transactions are at 2% for both of us).
Summary
Another raft of good offers on the rental front, with others still valid for income tax payments too if you’ve just received your IRAS Notice of Assessment or are expecting it any day.
Our 1.99% fee using a Visa card for any payment type with ipaymy is also running until the end of July, in case you’ve got another big invoice to pay like a home improvement bill, insurance or tuition fees.
On the rental side if you have an eligible card, you’ll be best to use our RentHero code for a 1.85% rate. Otherwise both ipaymy and CardUp are close to level pegging on the rate front for the rest of the year, with a negligible cost per mile difference between the two.
As always we’ll keep an eye out for future offers in the card payments space, as this can be a very useful boost to your annual miles accrual at a reasonable cost.
(Cover Photo: Christopher Jolly)