DBS Altitude offering up to 2.8 mpd on local shopping & dining

DBS has an enhanced miles earning offer for its Altitude cardholders this month, with up to 2.8 miles per dollar spent on both physical and online local shopping and dining transactions. The deal runs from 1st October 2020 to 31st January 2021 but requires registration and is open to the first 12,000 cardholders to successfully sign up.

Before you get too excited about the promotion, a large minimum monthly spend is required and a relatively low monthly cap for bonus miles is then enforced, so for most of our readers it simply won’t be worth the effort!

The offer

To participate you’ll have to be among the first 12,000 DBS Altitude Visa or American Express cardholders to register for the offer using your online banking details at the following link:

  go.dbs.com/sg-altitudecard

Once successfully registered you can then earn bonus miles for online or offline spend in the local shopping and dining category as follows:

• Earn an additional 1.2 miles per S$1 when you spend a min. of S$3,500 per month during the Promotion Period (i.e. 2.4 mpd total); or
• Earn an additional 1.6 miles per S$1 when you spend a min. of S$7,000 per month during the Promotion Period (i.e. 2.8 mpd total)

The four spend periods for this promotion are:

• 1st – 31st October 2020
• 1st – 30th November 2020
• 1st – 31st December 2020
• 1st – 31st January 2021

Qualifying spend

For the S$3,500 or S$7,000 in monthly charges to the card to qualify for the applicable enhanced earn rate, the following typical DBS exclusions apply:

• bill payments and all transactions via AXS, SAM, NETs, eNETS;
• payments to educational institutions;
• payments to financial institutions (including banks, online trading platforms and brokerages);
• payments to government institutions and services (court cases, fines, bail and bonds, tax payment, postal services, parking lots and garages, intra-government purchases and any other government services not classified here);
• payments to hospitals;
• payments to insurance companies (sales, underwriting, and premiums);
• payments to non-profit organisations, charities and donations;
• payments to utility bill companies;
• any top-ups or payment of funds to any payment service providers, prepaid cards, any prepaid accounts or purchase of prepaid cards/credits (including but not limited to EZLink, GrabPay, NETs FlashPay and Singtel Dash) and merchants who are categorised as “payment service providers” and/or “online payment gateway”, e.g. MoneySend, Skrill.com, Matchmove.com, SmoovPay, CardUp, iPaymy, Youtrip;
• any betting (including but not limited to levy payments to local casinos, lottery tickets, casino gaming chips, off-track betting, and wagers at race tracks) through any channel;
• any transactions related to crypto currencies;
• payments to professional service providers (including but not limited to accounting, auditing, bookkeeping services, advertising services, funeral service and legal services and attorneys);
• payments made via telephone or mail order;
• instalment payment plan purchases, preferred payment plans, balance transfer, fund transfer, cash withdrawal, cash advances, annual fees, interest, late payment charges, bill payments via internet banking and all fees charged by DBS, miscellaneous charges imposed by DBS (unless otherwise stated in writing by DBS); and
• Any other transactions determined by DBS from time to time

Importantly, note that you can’t use CardUp or ipaymy transactions to meet the minimum monthly spend threshold.

Eligible spend

Eligible spend must be charged in local currency (i.e SGD). It excludes retail transactions made overseas in SGD.

The following Merchant Category Codes (MCCs) are valid for the bonus miles under this offer, whether transacting online or making a physical purchase:

  Shopping

  Dining

Note that food delivery services (e.g. Deliveroo, foodpanda, Grab Food) are not included in the dining category. Also be careful when dining at restaurants inside hotels, which typically code under a hotel MCC, not a dining one.

While 2.4 mpd or 2.8 mpd is double or 133% of the usual miles earning you’ll achieve at these merchants using your DBS Altitude card, do note that you can get 4 mpd with many other bonus miles credit cards in Singapore for transactions like online spend and clothes shopping (e.g. Citi Rewards) and contactless payments (e.g. UOB PPV or HSBC Revolution).

Monthly cap

Here’s the major drawback with this offer – you can’t actually earn that many bonus miles each month.

Even if you’re a big spender pushing S$7k+ through your Altitude card each calendar month, the maximum bonus miles you can be awarded is 1,920 (S$1,200 spend x 1.6 bonus miles), which comes to 7,680 miles if you participate in all four months of the promotion.

Here’s how it works:

Bonus miles will be awarded within 60 days from the end of each calendar month, so for example if you participate in November 2020 the applicable bonus miles will reflect in your DBS Points balance by late January 2021.

Terms and conditions

Full terms and conditions for this bonus miles offer are available at the DBS website:

 DBS Shop & Dine Spend Promo

Summary

This offer is probably only of interest if you’re hitting at least S$3,500 or S$7,000 monthly general spend on your DBS Altitude credit card anyway.

If so there’s no harm in signing up and earning some extra miles, though with a maximum upper cap of S$1,200 eligible spend in each calendar month you’ll actually only net up to 7,680 bonus miles across the four-month promotion period – not all that exciting.

That’s even more true if you hold one or more cards giving you 4 mpd anyway at a number of these retailers, or for online / contactless payments.

For those reasons we doubt most of our readers will want to bother with this one, however if you do want to take part remember to register since the deal is capped at the first 12,000 participants.

For full details of the DBS Altitude cards, which currently boast a 10,000 miles (or up to S$200 cashback) sign-up bonus, see our comprehensive up-to-date review.

DBS Altitude
	First year free	1.3 mpd local	2.2 mpd FCY
READ OUR REVIEW

DBS Altitude
First year free	1.3 mpd local	2.2 mpd FCY
READ OUR REVIEW

(Cover Photo: Harry Cunningham)