UOB excludes Hospitals, Parking from UNI$ earning

UOB is updating its list of qualifying and eligible transactions for UNI$ earning from 1st February 2021, adding new spend exclusions including hospitals, automobile parking lots and garages, meaning you’ll have to switch to alternative cards to continue earning miles for spend in these categories from early next year.

UOB cards already exclude categories like education and insurance payments from miles earning, so these additional categories are unfortunate to see.

The new exclusion list

The following transactions by MCC code are not eligible for UNI$ (and therefore miles) earning, with new categories added from 1st February 2021 highlighted:

Additionally, UNI$ are not awarded for:

• AXS payments
• EZ-Link and Transit Link transactions
• Transactions at SMART$ merchants where SMART$ are issued
• Transactions at SPC Service Stations

For a full list of exclusions, see the newly updated UOB Rewards Terms and Conditions.

Hospitals

Most hospitals in Singapore code under MCC 8062, which is newly excluded for UNI$ earning from 1st February 2021.

Banks not excluding MCC 8062 in Singapore include:

• Citi
• HSBC
• Maybank
• Standard Chartered

That means you can use cards like the Citi PremierMiles, HSBC Visa Infinite and Standard Chartered X Card and still earn points or miles at hospitals.

UOB is sadly joining Bank of China and DBS in applying a blanket exclusion on hospital transactions from early next year.

Earlier this year OCBC began excluding some hospitals from points earning, though it stopped short of excluding all of MCC 8062, instead applying the restriction only to “public hospitals including non-profit hospitals, community hospitals and polyclinics”.

That kept private hospitals safe and still eligible to earn miles with cards like the OCBC Voyage.

Note that some hospitals code under MCC 9399: Government Services – Not Elsewhere Classified, a widely excluded category for points and miles earning across Singapore credit cards, with the exception of American Express (though not all hospitals will accept Amex).

Parking

MCC 7523, which applies to parking lots, parking meters and garages, is an excluded category for miles earning on quite a number of Singapore-issued credit cards, including Citi, Maybank and of course now UOB too from 1st February 2021.

You can still earn points however using the following credit cards:

• American Express
• HSBC
• Standard Chartered

In Singapore, parking.sg uses this MCC code, so assuming you’re not paying for parking overseas then you’re more likely interested in cards which will give you the most points for parking.sg transactions.

Here it’s important to consider rounding due to the often small transaction totals involved, so UOB with its S$5 minimum spend for UNI$ earning was rarely a good card to use anyway.

No major loss here.

Summary

UOB customers already have to navigate around quite a number of exclusion categories like insurance and education spend / tuition fees, not to mention avoiding those pesky SMART$ merchants like Giant, Guardian and Cold Storage.

It’s disappointing to see another popular category – Hospitals – excluded from UNI$ earning from early 2021. Transactions here can be large and you’ll definitely want to be diverting your spend to an eligible option from February 2021.

We’ve updated our comprehensive review of the UOB PRVI Miles cards, probably the most popular UOB miles-earning option among our readers, to reflect these latest exclusions, though other products like the KrisFlyer UOB Credit Card are similarly affected.

UOB PRVI Miles
	1.4 mpd local	2.4 mpd FCY	6 mpd travel
READ OUR REVIEW

UOB PRVI Miles
1.4 mpd local	2.4 mpd FCY	6 mpd travel
READ OUR REVIEW

(Cover Photo: Raffles Medical Group)