Cathay Pacific has launched a card-linked dining programme in Singapore, and while it’s far from extensive and not particularly generous – it could be a simple solution to extending your expiring Asia Miles – though you’ll need to accept a significant opportunity cost to use it, and plan well in advance.

By linking your Visa or Mastercard credit card to your Cathay account, you’ll earn 1 Asia Mile per S$1 spent at The Fullerton Hotel and Fullerton Bay Hotel restaurants and bars in Singapore.

While the earn rate is modest, the real purpose here is a validity extension tool, not a serious miles earning opportunity.

Participating restaurants and bars

The new programme covers all dining outlets across The Fullerton Hotel Singapore and Fullerton Bay Hotel, as shown in the following table.

Hotel / Restaurant	Asia Miles Earn Rate	Kris+ Earn Rate
The Fullerton Hotel Singapore
Cake Boutique	1 mpd	n/a
Jade		6 mpd
Town		4 mpd
The Courtyard
Fullerton Bay Hotel
La Brasserie	1 mpd	4 mpd
The Landing Point
Lantern

The Kris+ problem

Before we get into how this works, let’s address the elephant in the room.

With the exception of Cake Boutique, every single restaurant and bar participating in this Asia Miles programme is also available on Kris+, with dramatically superior earn rates.

The table above makes the opportunity cost clear – you’re sacrificing 3 to 5 KrisFlyer miles per dollar to earn Asia Miles instead.

These Kris+ rates credit instantly into KrisPay miles, which can then be transferred directly into your KrisFlyer account, and stack on top of your credit card points for the same spend.

You cannot combine Kris+ and Asia Miles earning. You must choose one programme per transaction.

For the vast majority of our readers who use KrisFlyer as their primary frequent flyer programme, deliberately forgoing 4 to 6 mpd in KrisFlyer miles to earn just 1 mpd in Asia Miles makes absolutely no sense from a pure earning perspective.

So why would you ever choose Asia Miles?

The answer is simple: expiry management.

Unlike KrisFlyer’s fixed three-year expiry from the month of earning, Asia Miles operates on an activity-based expiry system where any earning or redemption activity – no matter how small – resets your entire balance for another 18 months.

If you have no activity on your account for 18 months – you lose the lot.

This card-linked dining option therefore only makes sense in two specific scenarios:

Scenario 1: Your Asia Miles balance is about to expire

You have a significant Asia Miles balance expiring in the next few weeks or months, and you need to clock an earning activity to trigger the 18-month extension.

A simple dinner or drinks at any Fullerton venue using your linked card solves this problem – even just a cocktail or a beer at Lantern!

Scenario 2: You’re just short of a redemption threshold

You’re sitting at, say, 62,500 Asia Miles and need 63,000 for a Finnair Business Class award from Bangkok to Helsinki you’ve been eyeing. Rather than transferring bank points or waiting for other earning opportunities, you can bridge the 500-mile gap with S$500 of dining spend at these venues over time.

Outside these two situations, you should almost certainly be crediting to KrisFlyer via Kris+ instead.

Alternative validity extension methods

We recently covered that it’s remarkably easy to instantly extend your Asia Miles by 18 months via a carbon offset donation requiring just 100 miles – a method that feels almost too simple to be true.

However, that approach does actually cost you those 100 miles. If you’re holding exactly the number of miles needed for a planned redemption, you might not want to spend any at all, just to keep the rest alive, since you then won’t have enough.

Card-linked dining provides an alternative that actually adds miles to your balance while extending validity, though at the opportunity cost of forgoing superior Kris+ earning at these same venues.

Crediting timeline: painfully slow

Asia Miles earned through card-linked transactions take six to eight weeks to credit to your account after the transaction is validated.

If you’re using this programme specifically to extend miles expiring in the next few weeks, this delay is a critical problem – your transaction today won’t register as qualifying activity for perhaps another two months, by which time your existing balance may have already expired.

That means you’ll need to plan ahead if you are using this strategy to extend miles validity – for example if your Asia Miles balance is expiring on 31st March 2026, be sure to complete at least one card-linked dining transaction by the end of January 2026 to ensure it credits in time.

For immediate validity extension, you have faster options:

• Transfer credit card points to Asia Miles (typically a few days from Singapore banks, though this usually involves a minimum transfer amount, and often a conversion fee)
• Make a 100-mile carbon offset donation (instant, as we covered earlier)

What about LinkPoints?

NTUC LinkPoints to Asia Miles transfers would normally provide another straightforward local validity extension option, but these have been suspended since 22nd April 2025 – now eight months ago at the time of writing.

While the LinkPoints team initially assured us this transfer route would return, the extended suspension makes it look increasingly uncertain. With that option unavailable, card-linked dining represents one of the few remaining local earning opportunities for Singapore-based Asia Miles members facing expiry.

How the card-linked offer works

If you’ve decided this earning option suits your specific validity extension needs, here’s how to set it up.

• Link up to five of your Visa or Mastercard credit cards to your Asia Miles account via the Cathay Pacific website
• Dine at any participating Fullerton restaurant or bar
• Pay with your linked card
• Earn 1 Asia Mile per S$1 spent
• Miles post automatically to your account

Full terms and conditions for this programme are available here, with FAQs here.

Recommended cards for maximum earning

If you’ve determined that Asia Miles earning makes sense for your specific validity extension needs, these high-earning cards in Singapore will maximise your total return for hotel dining spend, with both Visa and Mastercard options accepted.

Bonus cards for hotel dining

Card	Earn Rate	Notes
HSBC Revolution (see our review)	4 mpd	On on up to S$1,500 of dining or hotel spend per calendar month, until 28th February 2026.
Maybank XL Rewards (see our review)	4 mpd	For hotel spend capped at S$1,000 per calendar month, subject to min. S$500 total card spend the same month.
UOB Lady’s UOB Lady’s Solitaire	4 mpd	Capped at S$1,000 per month (Lady’s) or S$750 per month (Lady’s Solitaire). Subject to your specified quarterly bonus category being Travel (not Dining)
UOB VS (see our review)	4 mpd	On contactless payments, min. S$1,000, max. S$1,200 per statement month
UOB PPV (see our review)	4 mpd	On mobile contactless payments, max. S$1.1K per calendar month

In addition to 1 mpd direct Asia Miles accrual, this means effective total earning of 5 mpd, though of course pairing with Kris+ is even better with some other cards – like the DBS WWMC.

Other details

Aside from the very long crediting time, there are some other aspects of the new Asia Miles card-linked earning programme to be aware of.

Card linking delay

After linking a card to your account, it may take up to 24 hours before the linking process completes. Transactions made before completion won’t earn miles.

Payment restrictions

You must pay 100% with your linked card to earn miles. Any transaction paid partly with cash, gift cards, or store credit earns zero Asia Miles – even on the portion paid by card.

Digital wallet compatibility

Asia Miles card-linked earn works with Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay. However, it does not work with Alipay, WeChat Pay, or PayPal.

A better card-linked option: Qatar Avios

If you’re specifically looking for card-linked dining rewards in Singapore and don’t need Asia Miles for expiry management, there’s a far superior alternative available.

Qatar Airways Privilege Club offers card-linked dining at several premium Singapore hotels including Conrad, Capella, Grand Hyatt, and Raffles properties, with a significantly better earn rate of 5 Avios per US$1 (equivalent to 3.9 Avios per S$1).

Combined with credit card rewards, you can achieve up to 7.9 mpd total through the Qatar programme – versus just 5 mpd maximum with this Asia Miles option.

The Qatar programme also shares the same 18-month activity-based expiry system as Asia Miles, making it equally effective for validity extension purposes if you hold Avios points but haven’t earned or redeemed any for some time.

Cathay Pacific’s card-linked dining programme with the Fullerton hotels provides Singapore-based Asia Miles members with a local earning option, but let’s be honest – it’s a validity extension tool with a significant opportunity cost attached.

At 1 mpd versus 4 to 6 mpd available via Kris+ at the same venues, you’re deliberately sacrificing value to solve a specific Asia Miles problem. The six to eight week crediting delay also means you’ll need to plan well ahead if expiry is looming, and this is your preferred solution.

For most readers, Kris+ delivers far better value. Use this Asia Miles option only when you have a specific Asia Miles validity or balance issue to solve, and you’re not in a hurry to solve it.

(Cover Photo: MainlyMiles)