Once the best general spend card on the market, then devalued into near-irrelevance, the BOC Elite Miles card has now clawed its way back to the top of the earn-rate table, but does the rest of the package stack up?

Here is our completely refreshed review of the BOC Elite Miles World Mastercard 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 August 2026.

The BOC Elite Miles card’s headline strength is its earn rates – 1.4 mpd on local spend and 2.8 mpd on foreign currency spend. Both are uncapped, with points awarded on every whole dollar rather than in the S$5 blocks used elsewhere, so it offers the best general-spend earn rates of any card at its modest S$30,000 income requirement, and it also pairs that with a below-market 3% foreign transaction fee.

The catch is everything around the earning. There’s now just one transfer partner (KrisFlyer), points expire in as little as a year, and you’ll need to bank 50,000 of them before you can convert anything at all. Once you do, it’s still a paper form and a three-week wait, and while BOC has quietly modernised much of its banking, its rewards redemption still runs on paperwork and patience.

While it’s a rewarding card to earn with, it’s a frustrating one to operate.

Pros	Cons
Uncapped 1.4 mpd local / 2.8 mpd FCY earn rates Earn miles for transactions from S$1.00 Below-market 3% FCY fee Occasional bonus promotions (up to 8.8 mpd) First-year annual fee waiver	Only one miles transfer partner Points expire in as little as 12 months Slow, paper-based transfers Max 100,000 miles per transfer, then pay the fee again No miles for CardUp or ipaymy No lounge access or travel perks

To understand where the BOC Elite Miles card sits today, it helps to look back on how it got here.

When it launched in mid-2018 it was Bank of China’s first foray onto the frequent flyer scene in Singapore, and it arrived with a bang – a promotional 2 mpd locally and 5 mpd on foreign currency spend until the end of that year, uncapped, with almost no exclusion categories.

Even after those launch rates rolled back to a “permanent” 1.5 mpd / 3 mpd, it was comfortably one of the best general-spend cards on the market, and at the time it even threw in four complimentary Plaza Premium lounge visits a year (a benefit withdrawn in mid-2019).

The card was then chipped away at. In March 2019 BOC tightened its definition of overseas spend, raised the foreign transaction fee to 3%, and capped conversions at ten ‘blocks’ per transfer.

The real damage came in June 2020, when BOC effectively slashed earn rates to 1 mpd / 2 mpd. What made the move especially unpopular was how it was done, by worsening the points-to-miles conversion ratio rather than the earning rate itself, which devalued points cardholders had already banked. Unsurprisingly, the card fell out of contention and largely disappeared from miles collectors’ wallets.

Then came the comeback. From 1st July 2025, BOC hiked earn rates up to the current 1.4 mpd / 2.8 mpd, restoring the card to the top of the general-spend pile, though at the same time it dropped Asia Miles as a transfer option and added CardUp and ipaymy transactions to its exclusion list.

An incredible up to 8.8 mpd promotion followed in late 2025, and there’s an uncapped 4 mpd offer on selected overseas spend running right now, until 6th September 2026.

So here we are in 2026 with a card that’s once again worth a serious look, provided you go in with your eyes open.

• Minimum age (principal): 21
• Minimum age (supplementary): 18
• Minimum income (Singaporean / PR): S$30,000/yr
• Minimum income (foreigner): S$60,000/yr

For Singapore citizens and permanent residents, the card sits at the entry-level S$30,000 income requirement, making it widely accessible. Foreigners face a higher S$60,000 threshold.

• Annual fee (principal): S$207.10 (first year free)
• Annual fee (supplementary): S$103.55 (first year free)
• Fee waiver: not automatic in year two onwards

The annual fee is waived for the first year so there’s no upfront cost to holding the card.

From the second year there’s no automatic waiver, though you’re free to call and request one. Here’s where the BOC quirks begin, though, since rather than simply declining or granting a cash waiver, the bank has historically offered to deduct BOC Bonus Points in lieu of the fee.

That was most recently around 30,000 points (worth 6,000 miles at today’s rates), so do the maths carefully as you may well be better off paying the cash fee and keeping the points, or simply not renewing.

Treat that figure as indicative rather than fixed, since the current terms and conditions make no mention of fee waivers at all. Ask what’s actually on the table before you agree to anything, and be explicit that you’re asking for a fee waiver, not a points deduction.

Other published fees and rates for the card:

• EIR: 28.9%
• Foreign transaction fee: 3%

There is currently a welcome offer running, though it comes with an unusual sting in the tail.

• 10,000 bonus miles (credited as 50,000 BOC Bonus Points) for new-to-bank applicants

To qualify you’ll need to:

• Apply and be approved between 1st April and 31st December 2026
• Enter promo code WELCOME26 during application
• Spend a minimum of S$50 within 60 days of approval
• Pay the first year’s S$207.10 annual fee

That final condition is the catch. The card’s standard first-year fee waiver is removed for this offer, so you’re effectively handing over S$207.10 for 10,000 miles, a cost of 2.07 cents per mile. That’s above what we would be willing to pay for KrisFlyer miles, so on a pure value basis it simply doesn’t stack up.

“New-to-bank” here means you don’t currently hold a principal BOC credit card, and haven’t cancelled one in the past six months. Unusually for BOC, supplementary cardholders are eligible this time.

The bonus miles are credited within 60 days of the end of the promotion period, i.e. potentially not until around 1st March 2027. BOC’s own social posts suggest crediting within 60 days of meeting the spend condition, which would be far quicker, so this may simply be sloppy drafting – par for the course with this bank.

Unless you specifically want this card and are happy to pay for the privilege, you’re better off applying without the bonus to keep your first-year fee waiver. If a no-fee, lower-cost sign-up bonus is your goal, cards like the Citi PremierMiles and DBS Altitude offer 10,000 miles on payment of a similar (or lower) annual fee, and come with more transfer partners and far less friction.

This is where the BOC Elite Miles card earns its place.

• 7 BOC Bonus Points per S$1 local spend, equivalent to 1.4 mpd
• 14 BOC Bonus Points per S$1 FCY spend, equivalent to 2.8 mpd

Both rates are uncapped, with no minimum monthly spend to unlock them. Here’s how that compares with other general-spend cards at a similar income requirement.

Earn rates (general spend cards)
(Best to worst, August 2026)

Card	Local Spend	FCY Spend
BOC EM	1.4 mpd	2.8 mpd
UOB PRVI Miles	1.4 mpd	2.4 mpd
DBS Altitude	1.3 mpd	2.2 mpd
OCBC 90oN	1.3 mpd	2.1 mpd
HSBC T1	1.2 mpd	2.4 mpd
Citi PM	1.2 mpd	2.2 mpd
Journey Card	1.2 mpd	2 mpd
KF Ascend	1.2 mpd	1.2 mpd
KrisFlyer UOB	1.2 mpd	1.2 mpd
KF Blue	1.1 mpd	1.1 mpd

As you can see, the BOC Elite Miles card now tops the table on both local and foreign currency earning, the only card in its category to do so. For straightforward, uncapped miles earning on everyday spend from the first dollar to the last, nothing at this income level beats it on the headline numbers.

Until 6th September 2026, BOC is running an SG61 Travel Special that lifts the earn rate to 4 mpd on overseas travel, dining and shopping spend charged in foreign currency, whether online or in person.

What makes this one unusually palatable by BOC’s standards is the lack of restrictions. There’s no minimum spend, no cap on how many bonus miles you can earn, no limit on how many cardholders can take part, and nothing to register for.

Bonus points are credited within 60 calendar days of the promotion ending, so expect them by early November 2026.

Two words of caution. First, BOC has a well-established habit of pulling these offers before their advertised end date, so don’t leave your spending until the final week. Second, there’s a lock-in clause if you cancel the card. Read our dedicated article on this promotion for full details.

When we first reviewed this card back in 2018, we praised BOC for a rounding policy that counted every cent, with no S$5 blocks and no minimum transaction size. That’s no longer how it works.

The bank never announced a change, but clause 2.7 of the current terms and conditions outline the latest calculation. Points are awarded on “the posted amount of each eligible transaction rounded down to the nearest whole number and then aggregated”.

It’s the transaction amount that’s being rounded down here, not the points total. In other words:

• Local spend: round the transaction down to the nearest S$1, then multiply by 7
• FCY spend: round the transaction down to the nearest S$1, then multiply by 14

Here’s what that means for local spend.

How Local Spend Earns BOC Bonus Points
Local charge	BOC Bonus Points	Miles equivalent	Effective rate
S$0.99	0	0	0 mpd
S$1.00	7	1.4	1.4 mpd
S$1.90	7	1.4	0.74 mpd
S$9.99	63	12.6	1.26 mpd
S$10.00	70	14	1.4 mpd
S$68.45	476	95.2	1.39 mpd

The key point is that rounding happens per transaction, not on your monthly total. What costs you points at the edge is therefore the number of transactions you make, not how much you spend.

On average you’ll lose half a dollar of earning per transaction, which is 3.5 points locally or 7 points in foreign currency. Make 50 card transactions in a month and you’re forfeiting around 175 points, or roughly 420 miles over a year. For most people that’s nothing to worry about.

Where it stings is at the bottom end. A S$1.90 kopi earns you 7 points, an effective 0.74 mpd, barely half the headline rate. Anything under S$1.00 earns you nothing.

That said, keep it in perspective. Rounding to the nearest dollar is still considerably better than the S$5 earning blocks used by UOB, Maybank and others. That same S$9.99 transaction earns 12.6 miles worth on the BOC card, against just 6 miles on a S$5-block card earning 1.2 mpd.

BOC has lost its best-in-class rounding, but it hasn’t become one of the bad ones.

BOC Bonus Points credit promptly too, posting to your account along with the transaction itself, typically within one to three working days.

As with any miles card in Singapore, some transactions earn nothing. BOC’s exclusion list grew considerably with the July 2025 changes, and now broadly mirrors the rest of the market.

The most important additions to note were CardUp and ipaymy, both excluded since 1st July 2025. Previously, these payment facilities made the card a strong choice for routing expenses like rent and tax payments at the local earn rate, but that angle was closed off with the latest rate hike to 1.4 mpd.

Broadly, you won’t earn BOC Bonus Points on:

• Government and tax payments (IRAS, CPF, HDB, LTA, ICA, MOM, town councils, etc.)
• Insurance premiums
• Utilities
• Education (ITE, NTU, NUS, SMU, and the like)
• Hospitals and medical services
• Financial institutions and brokerages (including Revolut, Saxo, IG and similar)
• Money transfer and remittance (Wise, Western Union, MoneyGram, etc.)
• Real estate agents and MCSTs
• Prepaid and stored-value card top-ups (EZ-Link, YouTrip, Grab and ShopeePay wallet top-ups, AXS, NETS FlashPay)
• Gambling, charitable donations and parking
• CardUp and ipaymy

As always, the bank does not assign the payment category. Instead, the merchant’s acquiring bank determines the MCC, so categorisation can occasionally surprise you. The full and current list lives in the card’s Terms and Conditions (clause 2.2), which also gives example merchants for each category.

The uncapped 2.8 mpd FCY rate is arguably this card’s best feature, and it’s made slightly better by BOC’s foreign transaction fee, which at 3% undercuts the 3.25% charged by most Visa and Mastercard issuers in Singapore.

Combine the two and using the BOC Elite Miles card overseas means effectively “buying” KrisFlyer miles at roughly 1.14 cents each (including a small spread over money-changer rates). That’s one of the most attractive uncapped FCY propositions available on any card at the S$30,000 income level.

Cost per mile on overseas transactions (general spend cards)
(Best to worst, August 2026)

Card	Fee	Mpd	Cost per mile
BOC EM	3%	2.8	1.14¢
Maybank HVS	3.25%	2.8*	1.22¢*
SCVI	3.5%	3.0**	1.22¢**
HSBC T1	3.25%	2.4	1.43¢
UOB PRVI Miles	3.25%	2.4	1.43¢
Citi PM	3.25%	2.2	1.56¢
DBS Altitude	3.25%	2.2	1.56¢
OCBC Voyage	3.25%	2.2	1.56¢
OCBC 90oN	3.25%	2.1	1.63¢
HSBC VI	3.25%	2.0	1.71¢
SC Journey	3.5%	2.0	1.83¢
KrisFlyer UOB	3.25%	1.2	2.86¢

* 2.8 mpd earn rate for the Maybank HVS subject to a min. spend of S$800 (any currency) in the same calendar month.
** 3 mpd earn rate for the SCVI card is subject to a min. spend of S$2,000 (any currency) in the same statement cycle.

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.

One thing to watch though is that BOC defines overseas spend by where the merchant’s payment gateway sits, not simply the transaction currency.

Spend physically made abroad in a foreign currency should always earn the FCY rate, but an online purchase in foreign currency only qualifies if the payment is also processed outside Singapore. It’s worth checking the gateway location before assuming you’ll earn 2.8 mpd.

And a friendly reminder as ever, when paying in person overseas always choose to be charged in the local (FCY) currency rather than falling for the dynamic currency conversion scam, which not only gives you a dreadful exchange ratio but also drops you to the local 1.4 mpd earn rate.

This is one area where the card has gone backwards. Until 30th June 2025, BOC Bonus Points could be converted into either Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer or Cathay Pacific Asia Miles.

Since 1st July 2025, only KrisFlyer transfers are supported. That makes BOC the only bank in Singapore not to offer Asia Miles as an option, and it leaves your points entirely exposed to a single programme.

Given KrisFlyer award rates can change at relatively short notice, and BOC’s transfers are famously slow (more on that below), that lack of flexibility is a real drawback for anyone who likes to keep their options open.

• Conversion ratio: 50,000 BOC Bonus Points = 10,000 KrisFlyer miles
• Conversion fee: S$30.56 (including GST) per transfer
• Minimum transfer: 10,000 miles (50,000 points), then in blocks of 10,000 miles
• Maximum transfer: 10 blocks (100,000 miles) per request

The 100,000-mile cap per transfer is another irritation unique to BOC.

If you’ve accrued more than that and want it all moved across, you’ll need to submit a second request, and that means paying the S$30.56 fee all over again.

Since one fee covers up to ten blocks, the fee dilutes steadily up to 100,000 miles and then resets. Convert 110,000 miles and you pay S$61.12, not S$30.56.

Transfer cost per KrisFlyer mile
Transfer blocks*	KrisFlyer miles	Conversion fee	Transfer cost per mile
1	10,000	S$30.56	0.31 cents
2	20,000	S$30.56	0.15 cents
5	50,000	S$30.56	0.06 cents
10 (sweet spot)	100,000	S$30.56	0.03 cents
11	110,000	S$61.12	0.06 cents

* One block = 50,000 BOC Bonus Points = 10,000 KrisFlyer miles.

Here’s where the card really shows its age – there is still no online rewards portal. To convert points to KrisFlyer miles you need to download a PDF form, fill it in, and email or post it back to the bank.

It’s about as old-school as Singapore credit cards get.

BOC quotes 14 to 21 working days for transfers to complete, and unlike most banks (whose conservative estimates usually translate to a day or two in practice), BOC actually means it.

In effect you can be waiting most of a month for miles to land in your KrisFlyer account.

This is not a points balance to rely on if you’ve spotted an award seat you need to grab quickly. Build in a comfortable buffer, or keep a faster-transferring card for time-sensitive redemptions.

Yes, and the policy here is less generous than most, with validity ranging from as little as 12 months to as much as 24 months, depending on when a transaction is made.

Points expire on 30th June each year. Everything earned between 1st July two years prior and 30th June of the previous year drops off on that date.

BOC Bonus Points Expiry
BOC Bonus Points earned between	Expire on
1 Jul 2024 – 30 Jun 2025	30 Jun 2026
1 Jul 2025 – 30 Jun 2026	30 Jun 2027
1 Jul 2026 – 30 Jun 2027	30 Jun 2028

In the worst case, points from a transaction made on 30th June expire just one year later. Make that same transaction a day later on 1st July, and the points last almost two years. As the earning year progresses, the validity of each new transaction’s points steadily ticks down from nearly two years towards one, before resetting again the following July.

Remember that once you transfer points across, KrisFlyer miles carry their own three-year expiry, so a new clock effectively restarts on transfer.

Another important point is that you can’t convert anything until you’ve banked 50,000 BOC Bonus Points. At the local earn rate that’s at least S$7,143 of spend, or S$3,572 if it’s all in foreign currency.

Spending on the BOC Elite Miles card counts towards bonus interest on the linked BOC SmartSaver savings account.

• Spend S$750 to S$2,499.99 per month: 0.60% p.a. bonus interest
• Spend S$2,500+ per month: 0.90% p.a. bonus interest

Both were trimmed from 0.75% and 1.25% respectively with effect from 1st November 2025. The bonus applies to the first S$100,000 of your balance only, so the top tier is worth up to S$900 a year, and you’ll need to maintain a minimum monthly average balance of S$1,500 to qualify for any bonus interest at all.

For SmartSaver holders that’s a useful bit of double-dipping – miles on the card and a bump to your savings rate. The trade-off, of course, is opportunity cost. Every dollar you route here to hit the spend threshold is potentially a dollar not earning 4 mpd on a bonus category card elsewhere.

Whether it’s worth it depends entirely on your wider banking setup and how you value the miles against the interest earned.

The BOC Elite Miles card previously offered four complimentary Plaza Premium lounge visits, but these were withdrawn back in mid-2019, and nothing has replaced them. There’s no airport limo benefit or other travel perks to speak of either.

Aside from a 24-hour Mastercard concierge line that comes as standard with the World Mastercard tier, this is a card built purely around earning miles, not around the travel experience itself.

If complimentary lounge access matters to you, several comparable cards include it, for example the Citi PremierMiles and DBS Altitude Visa (both two Priority Pass visits a year) or HSBC TravelOne (four DragonPass visits a year).

If there’s one reason to keep this card in your wallet even when you’re not actively using it, it’s BOC’s habit of running the occasional excellent promotion.

In March 2024 the card offered an uncapped 7 – 8 mpd across online, overseas, dining and SIA Group spend. In late 2025 came the up to 8.8 mpd offer, stacking a bonus 6 mpd on top of base rates for online, FCY, dining and SIA Group transactions (capped at 30,000 bonus miles a month on up to S$5,000 of spend).

These promotions are typically market-leading… while they last.

Both of the above were pulled well before their advertised end dates. The 2024 offer lasted barely two weeks of a month-long campaign. The 2025 offer was advertised until 31st December but was marked “fully redeemed” after around two months.

January 2026’s Spend & Earn promotion took a different approach, and arguably a worse one. On paper it offered 50,000 bonus miles for S$15,000 of spend across three consecutive months. In practice it was limited to the first 50 cardmembers – a detail you’d only find in the fine print, and one that made the offer effectively meaningless for almost everyone who saw it advertised.

The bonus crediting has also historically involved a clunky manual step, such as replying to an SMS with your KrisFlyer number within a tight five-day window each month. Miss it and you forfeit the bonus entirely. The current 4 mpd offer is a welcome exception, requiring no registration at all.

It’s worth holding this card on standby so you’re ready to move the moment a big offer drops, rather than scrambling to apply, and waiting on BOC’s processing, once it’s already live. But always read the terms before you start redirecting serious spend, because the headline rate is rarely the whole story.

It’s important to be honest about what it’s actually like to be a BOC customer, because the earn rates only tell half the story.

BOC has long had a reputation as the most painful bank in Singapore to deal with. In the card’s early years, applications were paper-only and could take months to process. Replacement cards took weeks, while registering for internet banking meant a trip to a branch, and then a second trip to link your new credit card to it once it arrived.

Credit where it’s due, though, because several of those pain points have now been fixed.

What’s improved

Applications are much faster. There’s now a proper online application platform with SingPass integration, and recent reports suggest approval within a few days and the physical card in hand inside a fortnight. A far cry from the multi-month waits of 2018.

Card linking is self-service. Once your card is activated you can link it to internet banking yourself, without a branch visit.

There’s a working mobile app. BOC was desktop-only for years, but the app now handles most of what the web platform does.

What hasn’t

The rewards side of the operation is where BOC remains stuck in the past. There’s still no online rewards portal, so converting points to miles means a PDF form and a two-to-three week wait, as mentioned above.

Cardholders have also reported a litany of administrative oddities over the years, from points-crediting discrepancies to unexpected interest charges where refunds weren’t properly offset against the outstanding balance.

Overall though, BOC in 2026 is a better bank to deal with than BOC in 2018, and the day-to-day mechanics of holding the card are no longer quite the ordeal they once were.

The full terms and conditions for the card are available below.

• BOC Elite Miles World Mastercard Programme T&Cs
• BOC Elite Miles World Mastercard product page

On earning alone, the BOC Elite Miles card is hard to beat, with the best uncapped local and foreign currency rates of any card at its income level, a market-friendly 3% FCY fee, and points awarded on every whole dollar rather than in the S$5 blocks used elsewhere.

For a high spender who simply wants to rack up KrisFlyer miles on everyday and overseas spend without juggling bonus categories, it’s become a decent option once again.

But the surrounding package asks a lot of you. Asia Miles transfers are gone, leaving a single transfer partner – KrisFlyer. Points can expire in as little as a year, and the CardUp and ipaymy exclusions close off a once-useful accrual option. While BOC has modernised much of its banking, the rewards side hasn’t moved an inch, with transfers still a paper-form, three-week affair.

If you value flexibility, speed and a polished experience, there are certainly better-rounded alternative cards to consider. However, if you’re a patient, organised miles maximiser who’ll happily tolerate some friction in exchange for table-topping earn rates, and pounce on those periodic attractive promotions, the BOC Elite Miles card has earned a place back on the list.

Just don’t pay S$207 for 10,000 sign-up miles to get started!

Our Rating

3 / 5 among general spend cards

BOC Elite Miles Card   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: Shutterstock)