UOB PRVI Miles offering up to 35,000 miles sign-up bonus

Back in July UOB offered a rare sign-up bonus for its PRVI Miles credit cards that didn’t have the usual upper applicant cap string attached, instead offering everyone who wanted to apply 12,000 miles for spending S$1,500 in the first 30 days – no questions asked.

Well this month the bank is back with a new offer, and is adopting more of a halfway position, with everyone getting a 20,000 miles bonus (for annual fee payment) and then the first 400 applicants to net S$4,000 of spend in 60 days getting a further 15,000 miles bonus, for a total of 35,000 miles.

You don’t need to participate in both elements of the promotion if you don’t want to, so this is a nice way to net 20,000 miles right off the bat for S$257 (1.28 cents each).

Here’s how the deal is structured.

Annual fee bonus (for all)

Provided you’re a new UOB credit card holder, apply and be approved between 1st October 2022 and 21st November 2022 and you’ll get a 20,000 miles bonus, provided you simply:

• make payment for the card’s annual fee of S$256.80, and
• send an SMS to 77862 using your mobile number which is (or will be) registered with UOB, in the following format:

PMAF [space] Last 4 alphanumeric digits of your NRIC or Passport Number Example: If your NRIC is S1234567A, you will need to send “PMAF 567A” to 77862

All cardholders are eligible for this promotion, with no upper participant cap.

The UOB PRVI Miles cards come with first year annual fee waiver, so here you’re being asked to instead pay the first year fee, in return for these bonus miles.

You must register via SMS as outlined above by 10th December 2022. This is to indicate to UOB that you will voluntarily pay the first year annual fee (given that it is usually waived), in order to receive these 20,000 bonus miles.

The annual fee of S$256.80 will then be posted to your card account by 15th December 2022, and the 20,000 bonus miles will be credited to your account by 31st December 2022.

This is a rare annual fee bonus for the UOB PRVI Miles cards, and is the equivalent of buying KrisFlyer miles or Asia Miles for a very competitive 1.28 cents each.

Usually, payment of the annual fee for this card in Year 2 onwards comes with no miles bonus, except for PRVI Miles Amex cardholders who get a 20,000 miles bonus each year only if they met a S$50,000+ spend in the previous membership year.

Spend bonus (gamble)

There’s an additional 15,000 miles bonus available to new PRVI Miles cardholders who spend at least S$4,000 in eligible transactions within the first 60 days of their card approval date, for cards approved between 1st October 2022 and 21st November 2022.

This is where UOB’s typical ‘cap’ comes in – only the first 400 participants to meet the spend criteria are eligible for the bonus.

That’s right – at the end of the two-month period having pushed over S$4,000 of spending through the card you may well be told that you simply didn’t qualify, and therefore receive no bonus at all. It’s effectively gambling and is quite typical of UOB promotions.

If you do choose to participate in this element of the sign-up offer, and you are in the first 400 to meet the spend requirement (lucky you!), you’ll receive the 15,000 bonus miles by 28th February 2023.

Do note that UOB advertises this sign-up offer as “over 44,000 miles”, because it includes the 9,600 miles you would earn by making all of your S$4,000 spend on overseas transactions (at 2.4 mpd), plus the bonus you’ll only get by being in the first 400 spenders, plus the annual fee bonus of 20,000 miles (outlined above).

That’s very much a best-case scenario and includes miles you would almost certainly earn with other cards if you made the same spend on those instead!

Qualifying spend

For the spend bonus, your S$4,000 will have to comprise retail transactions made online or in person in either SGD or foreign currency.

There are some exclusion categories to be aware of though, including:

• Charitable donations
• Education payments
• Gambling transactions (interesting given that’s exactly what UOB is asking you to do by participating in the spend element of the bonus!)
• GrabPay top-ups
• Hospital payments
• Insurance payments
• UOB Payment Facility transactions
• Utilities payments

Spending on any supplementary cards is counted towards the minimum spend.

Terms and Conditions

Full terms and conditions for the sign-up offer are available here.

This includes the full list of excluded transactions, when considering the S$4,000 minimum spend to trigger the bonus miles.

Our review

The UOB PRVI Miles card isn’t a bad one to hold, earning 1.4 mpd on local spend and 2.4 mpd overseas.

There are even some bonus rates like 6 mpd on Agoda and Expedia and regular bonus offers throughout the year.

Right now the bank has a promotion for UOB PRVI Miles Mastercard customers, allowing them to earn 4.4 mpd on overseas spend and 8 mpd on travel bookings, capped at S$4,000 total spend by 31st October 2022.

Check out our full review to help you decide whether this card is worthy of a place in your wallet.

A major factor to note with these cards is that you’ll only earn UNI$ (which convert at a 1:2 ratio into KrisFlyer miles or Asia Miles) for S$5+ spending blocks. Spend S$4.99 and you will walk away empty-handed!

When choosing between the cards, you may wish to note that the PRVI Miles Amex version also boasts 20,000 bonus miles for a S$50k+ annual spend, as we mentioned above.

UOB has returned to its old ways with a “first xxx applicants to meet the spend criteria” type of sign-up bonus, offering 15,000 miles for gambling to be in the inaugural group to make a (not insignificant) minimum spend of S$4,000 in the first 60 days.

What’s good about this promotion is that there’s also 20,000 miles for all new applicants, simply for voluntarily paying the first year annual fee of S$256.80, the equivalent of “buying” miles at a very competitive 1.28 cents each.

There’s no obligation to then participate in the spend bonus element if you don’t want to, but if you do so you could be in line for an additional 15,000 bonus miles, for a total stash of 35,000 miles.

I ditched my last UOB credit card a couple of years ago, but I think I’ll now be tempted to apply for this one simply to accrue 20,000 miles for paying the first-year annual fee.

(Cover Photo: Shutterstock)