Here’s our review of the UOB Preferred Visa credit card issued in Singapore. It forms part of our series of credit card reviews, which are all summarised on our dedicated Credit Cards page.

Dollar amounts refer to SGD, and ‘miles’ refer to KrisFlyer miles, except where stated. This review was updated on 22nd July 2026.

The recently-rebranded UOB Preferred Visa card, better known to most as the UOB PPV until March 2026, offers 4 mpd on up to S$1,200 of mobile contactless and online spend, though it’s become a little less simple lately due to the introduction of category spend caps.

Still, with the right spend profile you can net 57,600 miles per year with this card, transferable to KrisFlyer or Asia Miles, though achieving this requires precise spend across both bonus categories.

Let’s take a look.

Pros	Cons
4 mpd on up to $1,200 of monthly spend Mobile contactless and selected online transactions qualify First year fee waiver UNI$ pool with other UOB cards Bonus points credit immediately	Rigid S$600 category sub-caps reduce flexibility for high spenders Two year points expiry S$5 earning blocks Only two decent FFP transfer partners

• Minimum Age: 21
• Minimum Income (age 21-55): $30,000/yr
• Minimum Income (age 56+): $15,000/yr
• Minimum Income (non-Singaporean/non-PR): $40,000/yr

The UOB Preferred Visa card is an entry-level option in terms of income requirements in Singapore, with most of our readers only needing to earn S$30,000 per year to qualify.

If you do not meet the minimum annual income requirement for this card, you can still be considered with a minimum fixed deposit of S$10,000, maintained with the bank until account closure.

You’ll need to visit a UOB branch for more information on these secured card applications.

• Annual Fee (principal): $196.20 (first year free)
• Annual Fee (supplementary): First card free, second onwards $98.10 (first year free)

This card has an annual fee of $196.20. That’s waived in year one, and subsequently fee waivers are widely reported for this card.

Here’s a quirk unique to UOB among Singapore banks, and one that catches out plenty of first-time cardholders.

When your annual fee falls due at each card anniversary, UOB doesn’t simply bill it to your account. If you have a sufficient UNI$ balance, the bank instead automatically deducts UNI$ from your rewards balance in lieu of the fee, without so much as a notification.

For the UOB Preferred Visa, that’s a deduction of UNI$6,500 – equivalent to 13,000 miles – for a ‘full waiver’ of the S$196.20 fee.

If your balance covers only half that, UOB deducts UNI$3,250 and bills the remaining half of the fee in cash, and only if you can’t cover even a half waiver is the full fee charged in cash, like at any other bank.

Since UNI$ pool across all your UOB cards, the deduction comes out of your combined balance, and it lands on the first day of the month after your fee falls due.

Thankfully, all is not lost.

Once the deduction shows as posted (not pending) in your account, you can request an annual fee waiver via the UOB TMRW app (Accounts > select your card > Settings > Waive Fees), and as mentioned above, waivers are widely reported for this card.

If granted, the deducted UNI$ are refunded, with a silver lining that they return with a fresh two-year expiry, however close to expiring the original points were. If the in-app request fails, a call to UOB customer service (with a polite mention of cancellation) usually does the trick.

The golden rule: diarise your card anniversary and check your statement, because 13,000 miles is far too painful a sum to lose to inattention.

The UOB Preferred Visa card earns:

• 0.4 mpd for physical card spend, both in SGD and in FCY
• 0.4 mpd when tapping the physical card, both in SGD and in FCY

These are clearly not attractive earn rates, so the golden rule with this one is never to actually use the physical card, even for a contactless transaction. The big draw for this card is its bonus earn rate, outlined below.

The UOB Preferred Visa card earns:

• 4 mpd for mobile contactless spend (local or overseas) and SimplyGo spend (local)
• 4 mpd for selected online transactions (local or overseas)

Back in October 2025, the card’s 4 mpd bonus structure shifted from a flexible shared monthly spend cap of S$1,110 to rigid category-specific limits, as shown below.

UOB Preferred Visa
Bonus Earning Structure

• Mobile Contactless / SimplyGo: Capped at S$600 per calendar month
• Online Transactions: Capped at S$600 per calendar month
• Total possible bonus-eligible spend: S$1,200 (up from S$1,110)
• Catch: S$1,200 spend must be split between categories, not concentrated in one

UOB Preferred Visa Bonus Miles Earning
Spend Category	Bonus Earn Rate	Monthly Spend Cap
SimplyGo	4 mpd	Up to S$600
Mobile Contactless	4 mpd
Selected Online	4 mpd	Up to S$600

That was bad news for many of our readers, who were high-contactless spenders with the card, taking advantage of the ability to put S$1,110 into contactless payments each month – very useful for everyday dining, shopping, and transport.

This new structure was therefore a loss in this case, since the contactless cap was slashed by 46% to S$600 per calendar month. To maximise the monthly S$1,200 bonus, it’s now necessary to also spend S$600 in selected online spend.

An added annoyance is that UOB gives you no way to monitor your progress against either S$600 sub-cap.

Nothing in the UOB TMRW app shows a category breakdown, so unless you keep your own records of which transaction belongs where, you may only discover you’ve blown through a cap when the bonus points stop arriving.

The UOB Preferred Visa card earns 4 mpd on up to S$600 per calendar month of mobile contactless spend, but what does that mean exactly?

It’s important to know, because it’s easy to get caught out here.

The crucial point is that you’ll only get the bonus 4 mpd earn rate by waving your mobile device against the Visa payWave reader when making your purchase.

Tapping the physical card itself, making magnetic stripe transactions, or inserting the card into a chip machine will not be eligible.

You will therefore need a mobile device (smartphone or smartwatch) with near field communication (NFC) capability to earn the bonus rate in this category, though almost all mobile phones these days have this function.

Most of us have probably already switched to mobile wallets like Apple Pay, Google Pay or Samsung Pay for contactless payments with cards like the UOB Preferred Visa, so this isn’t a big issue.

Pro Tip: Once the UOB PV is stored in your mobile wallet, leave the physical card at home. That way you won’t mistakenly tap it, and given that it’s only good for selected online and mobile contactless transactions there should be no need to physically carry it in your wallet anyway.

Mobile contactless transactions made overseas with your UOB Preferred Visa card in foreign currency are also included in the same bonus category.

It’s worth appreciating just how broad this category is. Unlike the online category, which is restricted to a specific list of eligible MCCs as you’ll see below, mobile contactless works on a ‘blacklist’ basis – anything not on the exclusion list (covered later in this review) earns 4 mpd.

That gives this card one of the widest 4 mpd nets in Singapore, sweeping up everyday spend that often never makes it onto other cards’ bonus lists – dry cleaners, opticians, pet shops, even taxi fares paid by tapping your phone.

The other category earning the enhanced rate of 4 mpd using the UOB Preferred Visa card, on a separate cap of S$600 per calendar month, is “selected online transactions”.

These are defined by Merchant Category Code (MCC), and can be either in Singapore or overseas, with payment made in SGD or FCY.

Department Stores Department stores and vouchers
Eligible MCCs				Example Merchants
5311				HeyMax Vouchers Marks & Spencer Shopback Takashimaya TANGS
Retail Stores Marketplaces, duty free stores, clothing stores, shoe stores, computer stores, music stores, pharmacies, book stores, games stores, camera stores, florists
Eligible MCCs				Example Merchants
4816 5310 5621 5661 5733 5942 5947 5966 5970	5262 5331 5631 5691 5734 5944 5948 5967 5992	5306 5399 5641 5699 5735 5945 5949 5968 5999	5309 5611 5651 5732 5912 5946 5964 5969	ALDO Challenger Courts Daiso Don Don Donki Guardian H&M Harvey Norman MUJI Uniqlo Watsons Zara
Supermarkets Supermarkets, grocery stores, food hypermarkets
Eligible MCCs				Example Merchants
5333 9751		5411		Cold Storage FairPrice Jasons Sainsbury’s (UK)
Dining & Food Delivery Caterers, restaurants, fast food, confectionary stores, bakeries, convenience stores
Eligible MCCs				Example Merchants
5441 5812	5462 5814	5499 8012	5811	7-11 Bengawan Solo Brewerkz Deliveroo Dunkin Donuts foodpanda GrabFood Hai Di Lao KFC Paris Baguette
Entertainment & Ticketing Cinemas, shopping clubs, video rental, theatres, tourist attractions, theme parks, recreation
Eligible MCCs				Example Merchants
7278 7991	7832 7996	7841 7998	7922 7999	Cathay Cineplex Golden Village Legoland SEA Aquarium Shaw Theatres Singapore Zoo Sistic Ticketmaster

Overseas online spend in foreign currency is included, within the correct MCC categories. For example, a department store in Sydney or London is on the eligible list.

One important catch is that transactions made under a recurring payment arrangement are excluded from the selected online category, even when the merchant falls within an eligible MCC. A one-off foodpanda order earns 4 mpd, for example, but a monthly pandapro subscription charged to the card does not.

Many retailers and service providers now support in-app payments, which are then typically processed using Apple Pay / Google Pay.

It’s logical therefore to consider these as mobile contactless payments, but actually they fall into the online payments category.

You’ll therefore need the merchant to be included in the MCC list above when making in-app payments using your UOB Preferred Visa card, and these will then be counted towards your online payments monthly S$600 spend cap, not the mobile contactless one.

In-app payments coding as online also applies to Kris+ payments made using this card. Once again, you’ll need to ensure the merchant is on the MCC list above in order for these to qualify for 4 mpd – just using Apple Pay / Google Pay is not enough.

Here’s a table summarising which spend falls where in the UOB Preferred Visa’s spend categories.

UOB Preferred Visa Spend Allocation
Transaction Type	Bonus Category
Mobile contactless payments	Mobile Contactless
SimplyGo
Selected online merchants*	Online
In-app payment (within online MCC list)
In-app payment (outside online MCC list)	Neither (0.4 mpd)
Physical card swipe / insert

* Selected Online category includes specific MCCs as listed above

Longtime holders of this card will remember the old UOB$ (formerly SMART$) merchants, where spend earned cashback instead of UNI$ (i.e. miles), at far poorer value.

That made these outlets ones to actively avoid with this card.

Happily, that’s now history. Since November 2024, transactions at UOB$ merchants earn UNI$ and UOB$ cashback together, so there’s no longer any need to reach for a different card at these outlets.

So far we’ve talked about spend earning either the bonus 4 mpd rate or the (unattractive) base rate of 0.4 mpd, but as always there’s a third tier to be aware of – transactions that earn nothing whatsoever on the UOB Preferred Visa card.

UOB maintains a lengthy exclusion list, and it’s important to know what’s on it, because a payment in these categories doesn’t even collect the consolation 0.4 mpd, it’s simply dead spend from a miles perspective, better shifted to another card that does earn miles, where possible.

Here’s a summary of the main exclusions.

• Petrol
  Any payment at SPC and Shell service stations (yes, these two are specifically named!)
• Bills & top-ups
  AXS payments, EZ-Link and FlashPay top-ups, top-ups to prepaid accounts and payment service providers, SINGPOST-SAM, iPaymy, RazerPay
• Utilities
  Electricity, gas and water payments
• Insurance
  Premiums of all kinds, including direct marketing insurance
• Financial
  Wire transfers and remittances, securities brokerages, forex trading platforms, cryptocurrency and other quasi-cash
• Property
  Rent paid via real estate agents, property management services
• Medical & education
  Hospitals, schools, colleges, universities, vocational and correspondence courses
• Government
  Tax payments, fines, court costs, bail, government postal and other government services
• Organisations
  Charitable, religious, political and membership organisations, professional services
• Other
  Parking lots and garages, gambling and lottery, cigar stores, AMAZE transactions

On top of these MCC-based exclusions, the usual suspects apply, including 0% instalment plans, SmartPay, NETS transactions, balance transfers, cash advances, annual fees, interest and other bank charges.

This list is broadly in line with UOB’s other rewards cards, and indeed most exclusions here (insurance, utilities, education, government payments) are standard fare across Singapore miles cards these days.

The one to particularly watch is the transit top-up exclusion. Remember it’s SimplyGo fares charged directly to the card that earn 4 mpd; topping up an EZ-Link card earns you nothing.

UOB also reserves the right to exclude further transactions at any time without notice, so the full list in the T&Cs document – see Section 2(f) – is always the final word.

Whenever you make a transaction on your UOB Preferred Visa card, it typically takes one to three days before the amount is actually posted to your account.

That’s important because it is the posting date that determines which calendar month your transaction falls into for the bonus spend calculation.

For example, a purchase made on 31st July 2026 which then posts to your account on 3rd August 2026 will count towards your August 2026 bonus spend cap.

Yes, your UNI$ expire two years after you earn them, by quarterly period.

For example, UNI$ earned in January 2027 will expire on 31st March 2029 (the last day of the same quarter, two years later).

This is a downside to the UOB cards because many other banks have less strict expiry rules for their loyalty points, or no expiry at all.

Remember your points will have a further three years validity once transferred to KrisFlyer miles, and will never expire if transferred to Asia Miles, provided you earn or redeem at least 1 mile every 18 months.

If you have more than one UOB credit card, the UNI$ earned on all your cards will be aggregated for purposes of redemption of rewards, including miles transfers.

For example, if you have accumulated 20,000 UNI$ on your UOB Preferred Visa card, but you also have 30,000 UNI$ on your UOB PRVI Miles card, you’ll be able to redeem 50,000 UNI$ (e.g. to 100,000 KrisFlyer miles) in a single conversion, with only one transfer fee payable.

UNI$ pool across cards. If you have 10,000 UNI$ on the UOB Lady’s Card, and 5,000 UNI$ on the UOB Preferred Visa, you can redeem 15,000 UNI$ at one shot and pay a single conversion fee.

If you cancel your Preferred Visa card, any UNI$ accrued but not redeemed will be retained in your UOB Rewards account, provided you still hold at least one other UOB card that earns UNI$.

UOB allows UNI$ transfers to three frequent flyer programmes.

Frequent Flyer Programme	Transfer Blocks (UNI$ Miles)
Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer	5,000 10,000
Cathay Pacific Asia Miles	5,000 10,000
Air Asia Points	2,500 4,500

Our advice? Avoid Air Asia Points, which are only worth about $0.0034 each (0.34 cents), or about a fifth of the value we put on KrisFlyer miles or Asia Miles.

UOB’s partner set is relatively weak in comparison to the likes of Amex, Citi and HSBC, as you can see in our comprehensive guide.

It costs $27.00 (including GST) each time you transfer UNI$ to KrisFlyer miles or Asia Miles.

However, transfers are free across all pooled UNI$ held if you also hold a UOB Visa Infinite, Visa Infinite Metal, or Reserve card.

In case you were looking for it, UOB’s KrisFlyer Auto-Conversion Programme, which automatically converted UNI$ to KrisFlyer miles each month for a S$50 annual fee, was discontinued in May 2026.

The minimum volume of miles you can transfer into KrisFlyer or Asia Miles is 10,000 (i.e. 5,000 UNI$), and they must then be in blocks of 10,000 miles thereafter.

UOB states that you should allow “up to 5 working days” for a transfer of UNI$ to KrisFlyer miles and “up to 14 working days” for a transfer to Asia Miles.

Luckily our actual experience and that of our regular readers is that transfers to KrisFlyer tend to be completed after around 24-48 hours, though Asia Miles transfers do actually take a while – up to three weeks (i.e. the full quoted 14 working days) in some cases, though more typically within 10-12 days.

That’s certainly a bit on the long side for Asia Miles, if you’re chasing a currently available redemption ticket, or booking a short-term award.

Since September 2020, it’s been possible to link your UOB Rewards and Kris+ accounts and instantly transfer as little as UNI$1,000 Points into KrisPay miles via the Kris+ app.

The transfer ratio is 1:1.7 (e.g. UNI$1,000 = 1,700 KrisPay miles).

You won’t want to be using the converted KrisPay miles against Kris+ merchant purchases, due to the poor value of 1 cent per mile, but you can immediately transfer them 1:1 into your KrisFlyer account as KrisFlyer miles.

As you’ll notice the ratio means taking a 15% ‘hit’ on the usual 5,000:10,000 UNI$ to KrisFlyer miles transfer ratio, so it’s only of interest if you need a small amount to meet a specific redemption threshold, or have a small balance ‘stuck’ in UNI$ (less than 5,000), which you aren’t going to be adding to in future.

You shouldn’t be using this as your regular UNI$ to KrisFlyer transfer method, as it effectively devalues your bonus miles earning rate from 4 mpd to 3.4 mpd.

There are important factors to be aware of, firstly you’ll have to move any points transferred from UOB Rewards to KrisPay into KrisFlyer miles within 21 days, otherwise they are stuck in KrisPay (where you definitely don’t want them).

The second is just as important, you cannot use any of the KrisPay miles you have earned from your UOB Rewards transfer for any Kris+ purchase, no matter how small, as that automatically renders the entire transfer stuck in Kris+ until expiry, six months later.

The golden rule therefore is to transfer in to KrisPay miles via Kris+, then transfer straight out to KrisFlyer. Even with that 21-day window available, our advice is don’t wait.

One big drawback of UOB credit cards is that UNI$ are awarded for every S$5 block of spending charged to your card.

When you are charging smaller amounts, that does start to have a big impact on the effective miles per dollar rate you are actually earning for the transaction, as we outline below.

To give you an idea of how the S$5 rounding has an impact on smaller transactions that fall short of a S$5 threshold, here’s how it looks against the 4 mpd Citi Rewards card, which rounds down to the next S$1.

Miles awarded (4 mpd transactions)
Charge	Citi Rewards	UOB PV
S$4.99	16 (3.2 mpd)	0 (0 mpd) (- 100%)
S$5.00	20 (4 mpd)	20 (4 mpd)
S$9.99	36 (3.6 mpd)	20 (2 mpd) (- 44%)
S$10.00	40 (4 mpd)	40 (4 mpd)
S$14.99	56 (3.7 mpd)	40 (2.7 mpd) (- 27%)
S$15.00	60 (4 mpd)	60 (4 mpd)

One cent can make all the difference here, and to truly optimise the maximum number of UNI$ earned, you should plan your spending in $5 blocks especially at the lower transaction levels (e.g. $5 / $10 / $15).

Try to avoid falling just below a $5 block if possible, or only exceed a $5 block by a small amount.

The impact becomes less important with higher amounts, for example let’s say you make a valid online transaction with your UOB Preferred Visa card under one of the MCCs listed above:

• $249.99 – 490 UNI$ awarded (980 miles / 3.92 mpd)
• $250.00 – 500 UNI$ awarded (1,000 miles / 4 mpd)

As you can see falling 1 cent short of a $5 block size in this case isn’t significantly affecting your miles per dollar rate in the same way that a $9.99 vs. $10.00 spend is.

For small transactions, this policy adversely affects the earn rate when you fall just below a S$5 spend threshold, and that’s not easy to predict when you’re spending in FCY, since the rounding is applied after conversion to SGD.

Since any amount in Singapore dollars is first rounded down to the next S$5 denomination, S$5.00 is the minimum transaction amount to earn UNI$ (and therefore miles) using the UOB Preferred Visa card.

The exception is for Bus or MRT transit spend via SimplyGo.

Here your fares charged to the card will accumulate on a daily basis, then be awarded UNI$ based on the aggregate amount spent during the calendar month.

For example if you spend S$4.00 each day on Bus fares to and from work for 23 days in July, you’ll have accumulated S$92.00 in SimplyGo spend that month. Even though each transaction was below S$5.00, you’ll earn UNI$ on S$90.00 of the spend (S$92 rounded down to the next S$5).

Bonus miles for SimplyGo transactions are credited to your account on the 7th of the subsequent month (e.g. on 7th August in this example).

One thing you won’t be wanting to do with this card is make transactions in foreign currency at the basic 0.4 mpd earn rate.

With UOB’s 3.25% foreign currency fee, that’s equivalent to ‘buying’ miles at an obscene 8.6 cents each, way more than you can ever realistically achieve in value.

At the 4 mpd bonus rate though, which would apply for example on a contactless mobile payment charged to the card at a Starbucks in Hong Kong or an online purchase from a florist in Perth (Australia or Scotland!), it’s a different matter altogether.

Here’s how that cost per mile compares to other credit cards in Singapore offering 4 mpd for at least some form of eligible transactions in foreign currency.

Cost per mile on overseas credit card transactions (4 mpd cards)
(Best to worst, July 2026)

Card	Fee	Mpd	Cost per mile
HSBC Revo	3.25%	4.0	0.86¢
UOB PV	3.25%	4.0	0.86¢
DBS WWMC	3.25%	4.0	0.86¢
Citi Rewards	3.25%	4.0	0.86¢
Maybank XL	3.25%	4.0	0.86¢
UOB VS	3.25%	4.0	0.86¢
OCBC Rewards	3.25%	4.0	0.86¢

Cost per mile also accounts for an additional 0.3% ‘spread’ over money changer currency rates, though this doesn’t apply to all banks and all foreign currencies, so is a worst-case scenario.

As you can see the UOB Preferred Visa card comes in at a very competitive cost of 0.86 cents per mile, like practically all 4 mpd cards do when used overseas, so you should definitely be using this card for mobile contactless and eligible online transactions in FCY, subject to the monthly caps.

UNI$ can be used to purchase gift vouchers or achieve cash rebates, though typically this values them at 1 cent each, rather than the 3.6 cents each UNI$ can be worth when transferred to KrisFlyer miles or Asia Miles, assuming you place a 1.8 cent valuation on those.

Clearly the 1 cent option is awful, representing a poorer return than you would expect to achieve from many cashback cards, and is even 40% worse than the level you’ll achieve by transferring them into KrisPay miles in the Kris+ app then spending them at a Kris+ merchant.

Conversion into frequent flyer miles, as usual, is the best deal.

The UOB Preferred Visa is thin on additional benefits, but a few were added at the same time as its March 2026 rebrand:

• Complimentary travel insurance
  Available on an opt-in basis, providing up to S$500,000 coverage when you charge a full land / sea / air travel fare to your card, either directly with the operator or via a travel agent.

The opt-in is the important restriction here. It’s per-trip and easily forgotten, and of course makes the difference between covered and not.

The UOB Preferred Visa card is also unlikely to be one you would choose to use for travel bookings, since it would be impossible to earn 4 mpd in this spend category unless you somehow managed to do so via mobile contactless payment.

Other benefits, as a Visa Signature card since March 2026, include:

• Avis President’s Circle Status
• Visa Signature Luxury Hotel Collection

Here are links to the full terms and conditions applicable to the UOB Preferred Visa card.

 UOB Preferred Visa Card T&Cs

The UOB Preferred Visa remains one of the more accessible routes to 4 mpd in Singapore, with a low income requirement, a first-year fee waiver, and a bonus structure that covers everyday essentials – mobile contactless payments almost anywhere, SimplyGo transit, and a decent spread of online merchant categories.

The October 2025 restructure, however, took much of the shine off.

What was once a simple “spend S$1,110 contactless, earn 4,440 miles” proposition is now a pair of rigid S$600 category caps, and extracting the full 4,800 miles per month (57,600 miles per year) requires deliberately balanced spend across both.

That’s something few spend profiles will achieve naturally. Add in the S$5 earning blocks, posting-date quirks, two-year points expiry, a thin transfer partner list, and UOB’s points-deduction approach to annual fees, and this is a card that rewards the attentive and quietly punishes everyone else.

If your usual monthly spend pattern lands perfectly around S$600 of mobile contactless and S$600 of eligible online purchases, the Preferred Visa definitely earns its keep, particularly for FCY spend at a competitive 0.86 cents per mile.

Higher spenders concentrated in a single category will find more flexible 4 mpd homes elsewhere, and might treat this as a complement rather than a mainstay.

Our Rating

3.5 / 5 among 4 mpd bonus cards

UOB Preferred Visa   APPLY HERE

How we rate credit cards Best in class: A must-have for the miles earner in Singapore Excellent: A leader in its category with few if any downsides Very good: Drawbacks largely outweighed by the positive aspects Good: Useful benefits despite some poor features vs. other cards Average: Worth considering but not an essential addition to your wallet Conflicted: Some benefits but much better cards exist in the same category Poor: Few benefits worth having Very poor: Almost no benefits, not recommended Awful: Not worth considering

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(Cover Photo: UOB)