Hopefully, by now, you have already signed up for a Trust Credit Card or a Trust Debit Card, made at least one transaction and collected $42 worth of freebies.
Otherwise, what are you waiting for? Please do so by asking for a referral link from a family member or a close friend so that both of you will each receive $10 worth of FairPrice vouchers. Yes, use my referral link as a last resort!
At the start of September when Trust Bank just launched, I touched mainly on those freebies as I was rather unsure of how the 21% cashback headline really applied in reality. Especially whether the numbers illustrated on this diagram were legit.
Diagram 1: Breakdown of 21% savings/rebate of the Trust Credit Card
* FairPrice Group groceries refer to FairPrice, FairPrice Finest, FairPrice Xtra, FairPrice Xpress and Cheers (excluding Esso outlets), FairPrice online, Warehouse Club, Unity
** FPG Spend includes FairPrice Group Groceries and FPG Food (includes Kopitiam and Kopitiam top-up cards)
It took some time, but after verifying with trusted sources and two months of using Trust Credit Card as my main card, I am pleased to be writing this non-sponsored but still largely positive update.
If nothing goes wrong, in another month’s time, I will be able to claim my quarterly bonus to enjoy what is effectively a 10% cashback (in the form of LinkPoints) on all the expenditure on the card.
Call me auntie or uncle, but a 10% cashback from expenditure on what are essentially essentials is not something to be brushed off, especially in this high inflation bear market.
Precondition
The Trust Credit Card can effectively be renamed the FairPrice Credit Card. If you neither enjoy nor shop at NTUC FairPrice outlets, it is time to click ‘x’ at the top-right hand corner of your browser. The rest of this article, just like the card, would be useless to you, with the only exception being you dine or dabao at Kopitiam on a daily basis (slightly lower cashback, without base and annual rebates).
Mrs 15HWW (for what it is worth) is actually a connoisseur of supermarkets. On our dates when we were still broke students, she would suggest to visit supermarkets for window shopping. On overseas trips, we make it a point to visit supermarkets and spend hours there. In fact, as a young adult, she dreamed of being a “retail buyer”.
So it is not surprising that if we ever get to move to the South of Singapore, Vivocity’s Fairprice Xtra will be one massive perk. That place probably offers the most pleasant supermarket shopping experience in the whole of Singapore.
If you are more “uncle and auntie” than us, you might notice that for certain products, competing supermarkets like GIANT or Sheng Siong might offer lower prices. Well, there is a reason why it is called FairPrice, not LowestPrice. However, I generally do not enjoy the narrow isles in these “ultra-optimised” supermarkets and rarely visits them.
Besides that, FairPrice is the largest supermarket chain in Singapore, so you are more likely to find one near your home or workplace. And also, FairPrice housebrands help to lower the cost of living by a fair bit. Our bread, peanut butter, potato chips, rice, nuts and coconut water are all housebrand products. We buy a lot of our fruits like blueberries and papaya there as well.
For now, as residents in the North Eastern part of Singapore, our two favourite supermarket haunts are NTUC Finest at Waterway Point and NTUC FairPrice at Oasis Terraces. Personally, I prefer the outlet at Oasis Terraces for its heartland vibe and of course, its free weekday lunchtime parking.
Since we shop at FairPrice a few times on a weekly basis, here are the 3 steps we took to enjoy a 10% effective cashback on our Trust Credit Card expenditure.
Step 1: Become An NTUC Union Member
An an NTUC Union Member (UM), the potential rebates on FPG spend is increased from 15% to 21% for the Trust Credit Card. This is an extra 6%!
Accumulating LinkPoints at pace
If a household spends a conservative $3,000 on annual groceries at FairPrice, the additional LinkPoint rebates for the year will total 6% x $3,000 = $180, which is already higher than the annual NTUC UM subscription of $117.
In my humble opinion, if you are looking at it from a value-for-money point of view, Trust Credit Card benefits will likely be the main financial proposition for someone like me to sign up or renew as an NTUC UM.
There are also other noteworthy perks of being an NTUC UM. For example, signing up for insurance with MoneyOwl allows for up to 60% commission cashback. There are also additional LinkPoints for enrolment in MyFirstSkool and up to 15% off NTUC Value meals at NTUC Foodfare.
When I flash my NTUC Union card, I get to enjoy $2.50 Caifan at the NTUC Foodfare near my place!
Step 2: Hit Monthly Minimum Spend of S$350 Outside Of FPG
The second perk of being an NTUC UM is that to unlock the substantial monthly and quarterly bonus rates for FPG spend, one only needs to spend $350 instead of $450 outside of FPG.
Re-attaching this Diagram 1 again in case you are confused by the complicated rebate structure of the Trust Credit Card.
All the spend outside of FPG attracts a base rate of 0.22% cashback so for $350 of spend, there will only be <$1 worth of rebate. If you take a calculator out to compute, it is merely $0.77.
However, this step is still very important as I see it as the key to unlock the 21% bonus for expenditure on FPG groceries.
You will be informed by the app when you have met the minimum non-FPG spend for the month!
Step 3: Expenditure of ~S$350 On FPG Groceries Or FPG Spend
Friendly tip:
In case you find it difficult to spend that much, (ahem) one could always save the Trust Credit Card in the mobile wallets of family members.
Some friends have told me that it is a great way to track the expenditure patterns of their teenage children.
Otherwise, I think buying NTUC vouchers or topping up your Kopitiam card should work too.
And a warning:
In case it is not obvious, never spend for the sake of spending.
If you find yourself accumulating thousands of dollars worth of FairPrice vouchers or your Kopitiam card has hundreds of dollars of value in it, this card is not for you!
Enough digressing. Based on the rebate cap for each category (refer to Diagram 1), it would generally be quite optimal to accumulate between $312 to $647 a month on FPG spend.
$350 is a nice number to pick to do some calculations since the minimum non-FPG spend is also $350.
Based on Diagram 1, monthly rebates for $350 of FPG spend (on FairPrice groceries) will be:
If you add the 77 cents for non-SPG spend , that is about $71 of rebate for $700 of spending, which works out to around 10% LinkPoints cashback.
Conclusion
Tldr: this is how you should use the card
- Use it for non-FPG spend until you hit the minimum $350 to unlock bonus cashback for FPG spend
- Always use the card for FPG spend (unless you exceed $650 a month) since you should minimally get a 8.5% cashback on the spending.
Hopefully, you will be able to enjoy the Trust Credit Card as much as me!
Lastly, let me point out that the 21% headline rate for FPG spend is a promotional rate and is expected to be reduced to 14% in the future. If we halve this 14% based on $350 non-FPG and $350 of FPG spend, the effective cash will be lowered to 7%, which is still decent since my basis of comparison is UOB One’s 3.3% cashback.
Nonetheless, I can only hope that these promotional rates can be extended for a little longer to help loyal FairPrice customers like me to fight inflation as core inflation has risen to 5.3%, a 14-year high.
Wouldn’t it be great if this article reaches someone like MP Seah Kian Peng, who is also the CEO of NTUC FairPrice? Well, one can only dream.
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