UOB Preferred Visa Card Review: Is It Worth It?

Here’s The MileLion’s review of the UOB Preferred Visa, which you might know better by its former name: the UOB Preferred Platinum Visa.

Thankfully, the recent rebrand wasn’t a Trojan Horse for a nerf. In fact, it was actually a net positive, adding a new travel insurance benefit (though you’ll probably never use it) and an upgrade to the Visa Signature tier (though you probably have a Visa Signature already).

Long story short, this card remains the ideal choice for friends or family members who tune out every time you start lecturing them on what card to use where.

All you need to do is shove this into their hands (or, more accurately, add it to their mobile wallet) and send them on their way, because it’s one of the most idiot-proof cards in the miles game, and an easy way to earn 4 mpd everywhere.

Unfortunately, UOB’s introduction of sub-caps on 1 October 2025 means that mobile contactless payments alone will only unlock half the card’s value. The other half requires online spending on groceries, dining, entertainment and shopping.

It’s not quite a deal-breaker, but also not quite the no-brainer it used to be either.

UOB Preferred Visa
🦁 MileLion Verdict
☑ Take It ☐ Take It Or Leave It ☐ Leave It
What do these ratings mean?
The UOB Preferred Visa remains essential for its 4 mpd on mobile contactless spend, but you’ll need to tap its lesser-known online spending bonus to realise its full potential.
👍 The good	👎 The bad
One of the easiest ways to earn 4 mpd almost everywhere No minimum spend required Bonuses for both in-store spend and selected online transactions	Bonus cap is split into two separate S$600 sub-caps which are harder to optimise Limited transfer partners S$5 earning blocks lead to lost points, especially on smaller transactions
💳 Full List of Credit Card Reviews

Overview: UOB Preferred Visa

Let’s start this review by looking at the key features of the UOB Preferred Visa.

Apply
Income Req.	S$30,000 p.a.	Points Validity	2 years
Annual Fee	S$196.20 (First Year Free)	Min. Transfer	5,000 UNI$ (10,000 miles)
FCY Fee	3.25%	Transfer Fee	S$27
Local Earn	0.4 mpd	Points Pool?	Yes
FCY Earn	0.4 mpd	Lounge Access?	No
Special Earn	4 mpd on mobile contactless and selected online transactions	Airport Limo?	No
Cardholder Terms and Conditions

How much must I earn to qualify for a UOB Preferred Visa?

The UOB Preferred Visa is an entry-level card available to anyone who earns the MAS-mandated minimum of S$30,000 for a year

If you do not meet the minimum income requirement, it may be possible to place a S$10,000 fixed deposit with UOB to get a secured version. Contact your nearest UOB branch for more details.

How much is the UOB Preferred Visa’s annual fee?

The UOB Preferred Visa has an annual fee of S$196.20which is waived for the first year. The fee for the first supplementary card is waived in perpetuity, with the second card onwards charged at S$98.10 per year.

Waivers are fairly easy to get in my experience, though be warned that UOB’s default behaviour is to automatically deduct your UNI$ to cover the annual fee.

How do UOB’s automatic UNI$ deductions for annual fees work?

When the time comes for renewal, you will be charged either:

1. 6,500 UNI$ for a full waiver
2. 3,250 UNI$ + S$98.10 for a half waiver

• If you have at least 6,500 UNI$ in your account, you will be charged (i)
• If you have less than 6,500 UNI$ but more than 3,250 UNI$, you will be charged (ii)
• If you don’t have at least 3,250 UNI$, you’ll be charged the S$196.20 annual fee in cash

It’s up to you to monitor your statement and request a waiver when this happens. Look at the expiry date on your credit card; the month corresponds to the month your annual fee will be charged.

For what it’s worth, if UOB subsequently grants you a fee waiver, the reinstated UNI$ will have a fresh 2-year validity.

How many miles do I earn?

SGD/FCY Spending

When paying with the physical cardthe UOB Preferred Visa earns 1 UNI$ per S$5 spent (0.4 mpd)whether in Singapore Dollars or foreign currency (FCY).

In other words, don’t ever use the physical card for payment! Digitise it to your mobile wallet, and take it out only when you’re making an online transaction (see below).

Mobile Contactless & Selected Online Transactions

Up until 30 September 2025the UOB Preferred Visa earned 10 UNI$ per S$5 spent (4 mpd) on mobile contactless and selected online transactions, subject to a monthly cap of S$1,110.

The cap could be freely allocated between either bonus category, so for instance, a cardholder could spend S$1,110 entirely on mobile contactless transactions, earning 4,440 miles each month.

However, from 1 October 2025, the UOB Preferred Visa splits its bonus cap into two sub-caps: one for mobile contactless, and one for selected online transactions.

The cap for each category is S$600 per calendar monthand caps are strictly separate. For example, spending S$1,110 entirely on mobile contactless transactions would now earn 2,604 miles (S$600 @ 4 mpd + S$510 @ 0.4 mpd), a 40% reduction from before.

In theory, you can now earn more miles from this card, because S$600 x 2 @ 4 mpd > S$1,110 @ 4 mpd. In practice, however, it’s going to be very difficult to precisely optimise both categories— which I believe is the point.

Either way, no minimum spend is required, and any spending in excess of the bonus cap earns just 0.4 mpd.

How is mobile contactless defined?

UOB defines mobile contactless as in-store payments using the following methods:

This flexibility makes the UOB Preferred Visa the Swiss Army knife of the miles & points game. So long as the transaction isn’t part of  UOB’s general exclusion list (e.g. education, government services, utilities), you’ll earn 4 mpd. Dentist appointment? Hairdresser? Stationery shop? Mini-mart? Car repairs? If there’s a contactless payment terminal, 4 mpd is yours.

A few important points to note:

• The bonus is applicable for both SGD and FCY transactions
• SimplyGo transactions (i.e. bus/MRT rides) are eligible to earn 4 mpd, with effect from 28 August 2025
• In-app payments with Apple Pay or Google Pay will not trigger the mobile contactless bonus (though you may still earn 4 mpd if the MCC falls under the whitelist for selected online transactions)
• Tapping the physical UOB Preferred Visa card at a contactless terminal will only earn 0.4 mpd instead of 4 mpd, ever since May 2020

For more details on how UOB defines a contactless payment, refer to the post below.

What counts as a contactless payment?

How are selected online transactions defined?

The UOB Preferred Visa Card defines selected online transactions as SGD or FCY spend on the following MCCs:

This includes online or in-app transactions at:

• Department and Retail Stores: Amazon, Courts, Harvey Norman, Lazada, Shopee, and Taobao
• Supermarkets, Dining and Food Delivery: NTUC FairPrice, Foodpanda, GrabFood, WhyQ, or any restaurant that uses QR code ordering and payment
• Entertainment and Ticketing: Golden Village, SISTIC, Ticketmaster

If in doubt about a given transaction’s MCC, you can check it yourself with these three methods.

A simple way of maxing out the online spending bonus category would be to buy HeyMax vouchers, which code as MCC 5311.

Get 200 Max Miles when you open an account and complete your first transaction
Sign up here
7-Eleven % Arabica Airalo Amazon Best Denki Courts Foodpanda Giant Golden Village Grab IKEA Imperial Treasure Klook Lacing	Natureland NTUC FairPrice In the sea Pupsik Ryde Shein Shell Sheng Siong Sephora THEN TANGS TungLok ZALORA Zig

Dealing with the sub-caps

Obviously, the sub-caps can be a huge frustration.

UOB does not keep a running tally of how much cap you have left for each bonus category, nor does it categorise your spending. The only way to know how much cap remains for each bonus category is to go line by line and tally up the spend— which transactions belong to category 1, which transactions belong to category 2?

Fortunately, HeyMax offers a simple solution. The HeyMax Card Maximize tracks your spending across each of the two bonus categories in real-time, showing you how much bonus cap remains for each.

All it takes is a one-time setup, after which transactions will be tracked automatically. For more on this feature, refer to the post below.

Awesome: HeyMax Card Maximiser now supports UOB Preferred Platinum Visa & UOB Visa Signature

What is the FCY fee?

All foreign currency transactions are subject to a 3.25% fee, which is on par with the rest of the market.

The UOB$ problem is no more!

Once upon a time, you had to take special precautions when using the UOB Preferred Visa at UOB$ merchants. That’s because these transactions would earn UOB$ cashback instead of UNI$ points, and usually at a miserly rate.

But ever since 1 November 2024, UOB cardholders have been able to double dip on UNI$ and UOB$ cashback at UOB$ merchants. This means that UOB$ are no longer something to be avoided, but rather embraced— if you can earn miles and cashback on a transaction, why not?

Transaction date or posting date?

The bonus cap on the UOB Preferred Visa is enforced based on posting datenot transaction date.

For example, if you made a transaction on 30 September 2025 and it posts on 2 October 2025, that amount will count towards October 2025’s bonus cap.

Therefore, you should exercise caution when spending towards the end of the calendar month, in case transactions “leak” into the following period.

Mind you, that might also be a good thing. If you’ve already fully utilised September 2025’s bonus cap, you might be able to start tapping the October 2025’s cap towards the last few days of the month (it’s a bit of a gamble of course, because transactions with some merchants do post on the same day).

Which cards track spending by transaction date vs posting date?

When are UNI$ credited?

Both base and bonus UNI$ are credited when the transaction posts, usually within 1-3 working days.

However, SimplyGo works differently. Your fares will be charged daily, but UNI$ will be calculated based on the accumulated spend on SimplyGo Transactions per calendar month, and awarded to Cardmembers on the 7th calendar day of the following month.

You will see a separate line item for this on the UOB TMRW app.

Therefore, you don’t have to worry about the S$5 minimum spend to earn points. Unless you spend

Here’s how you can work out the UNI$ earned on your UOB Preferred Visa:

Again, special treatment applies to SimplyGo. You will need to sum up all SimplyGo transactions posted in that particular calendar month, round down to the nearest S$5, then award points based on the formula above.

Do note that UOB rounds your transactions down to the nearest S$5 before awarding points, which means a S$9.99 transaction earns the same as a S$5 one, and a S$4.99 transaction earns no points at all.

To illustrate the effect of rounding, consider the following:

S$5	20 miles	20 miles
S$9.99	20 miles	36 miles
S$15	60 miles	60 miles
S$19.99	60 miles	76 miles
S$25	100 miles	100 miles
S$29.99	100 miles	116 miles

The impact of rounding gets less severe as your transaction size increases, though you’ll definitely want to take care with smaller transactions.

If you’re an Excel geek, here’s the formulas you need to calculate your points:

UOB makes it very easy to check your points breakdown via the TMRW app, which shows transaction-level points for the UOB Preferred Visa.

UOB TMRW: Get transaction-level credit card rewards points breakdowns

For the full list of formulas that banks use to calculate credit card points, do refer to these articles:

What transactions aren’t eligible for UNI$?

A full list of transactions that do not earn UNI$ can be found in the T&Cs.

I’ve highlighted a few noteworthy categories below:

• Charitable Donations
• Education
• Government Services
• Insurance
• Prepaid account top-ups (e.g. GrabPay, YouTrip)
• Real Estate Agents & Managers
• Utilities

UNI$ will be awarded for CardUp, but not ipaymy. However, the UOB Preferred Visa will only earn 0.4 mpd on such transactions, so you’re much better off using the UOB PRVI Miles or another general spending card instead.

What do I need to know about UNI$?

Expiry

UNI$ expire 2 years from the last day of each periodic quarter in which the UNI$ was earned.

For example, any UNI$ earned in January 2024 will expire on 31 March 2026. This means that the validity could technically be up to 2 years 3 months in some cases.

Pooling

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.

It also means that you don’t need to transfer your UNI$ out before cancelling the UOB Preferred Visa, assuming it’s not your last UNI$-earning card.

Transfer Partners & Fees

UNI$ transfer to frequent flyer programmes at a 1:2 ratio, with a minimum transfer block of 5,000 UNI$.

There are effectively only two partners available however (converting points to Air Asia is like throwing them away), which is somewhat limited compared to competitors like Citi, HSBC and OCBC.

Frequent Flyer Programme	Conversion Ratio (UNI$ : Partner)
	5,000 : 10,000
	5,000 : 10,000
	2,500 : 4,500

Transfers cost S$27 per conversion, regardless of how many points are transferred.

UOB also has an auto-conversion option for KrisFlyer, which costs S$50 per year. UNI$ will be automatically converted on the last day of the calendar month, in blocks of UNI$2,500 (half the regular conversion block).

However, you’ll need to keep a minimum balance of UNI$15,000 (30,000 miles) in your account at all times. This is a hefty working capital balance! Make what you will of UOB’s reason for this policy…

Cardmembers who wish to make ad-hoc conversions can still do so, subject to the payment of the usual S$27 fee per conversion, in standard blocks of 5,000 UNI$ (10,000 miles).

Here are the pros and cons of the automatic transfer scheme:

At the risk of stating the obvious, opting for the KrisFlyer auto conversion programme locks you into the scheme. You can still make ad-hoc conversions to Asia Miles if you want, but it’s likely you’ll need to terminate participation in the auto conversion programme in order to acquire a critical mass of points.

Transfer Times

UOB transfers to KrisFlyer are typically completed within 48 hours. Do note that transfers to Asia Miles can take significantly longer; it’s good to budget up to 3 weeks.

If you need your KrisFlyer miles credited instantly, you can move them via Kris+ at a rate of 1,000 UNI$ = 1,700 KrisPay miles. KrisPay miles can then be instantly converted to KrisFlyer miles at a 1:1 ratio.

S$5 for new Kris+ Users

Get S$5 (in the form of 500 KrisPay miles) when you sign-up with code W644363 and make your first transaction

However, those 1,000 UNI$ would normally have earned you 2,000 KrisFlyer miles, so you effectively take a 15% haircut. Therefore I wouldn’t recommend taking this option, unless you need a small top-up to redeem a flight, or have an orphan UNI$ balance (<5,000 points).

If you choose to do so nonetheless, do remember that it’s a two-step process:

1. Transfer UNI$ to KrisPay miles
2. Transfer KrisPay miles to KrisFlyer miles

Do not forget the second step! If you wait more than 21 days, or spend any of the converted KrisPay miles via Kris+, the entire balance will be stuck in the Kris+ app. KrisPay miles expire after six months, and can only be spent at a poor ratio of 100 miles = S$1.

Other card perks

Complimentary travel insurance

From 10 March 2026, UOB Preferred Visa cardmembers will enjoy complimentary travel insurance coverage of up to S$500,000.

The full policy wording and benefits can be found here.

To activate coverage, cardmembers must:

• Charge the corresponding travel fare to their card, and
• Opt-in via this page, before the commencement of the trip

Additional coverage is great, but here’s the thing: I see no reason to use the UOB Preferred Visa for travel fares in the first place. Air tickets and cruises are not covered under the online spending bonus, so you’ll earn just 0.4 mpd.

In theory, you could buy tickets from a brick-and-mortar travel agency and make in-person payment via mobile contactless for 4 mpd and complimentary insurance coverage. However, the S$600 monthly bonus cap will be rather restrictive.

Visa Signature

As a Visa Signature card, UOB Preferred Visa Cardholders will enjoy:

Summary Review: UOB Preferred Visa

Apply

🦁 MileLion Verdict

☑ Take It ☐ Take It Or Leave It ☐ Leave It

With contactless terminals practically everywhere these days, the UOB Preferred Visa is essentially a pass to earn 4 mpd everywhere.

Simply put, there’s no other card on the market that offers what this does — especially since domestic use of the Amaze x Citi Rewards combination now attracts a 1% fee. And because UOB pools points, you can pair this card with a UOB Lady’s Card, UOB Visa Signature and/or UOB PRVI Miles Card, creating a formidable card portfolio.

Unfortunately, however, the rules of the game have changed. From October 2025, you’ll need to spend on both mobile contactless and selected online transactions in order to fully utilise the card’s S$1,200 monthly bonus cap.

If you exclusively use the UOB Preferred Visa for mobile contactless spend, you’ll only take home 2,400 miles (S$600 @ 4 mpd) each month, down from 4,440 miles (S$1,110 @ 4 mpd) previously.

To be fair, the scope of online transactions is fairly broad, with supermarkets, food delivery, shopping and entertainment all included. Still, it’s something you’ll need to consciously remember to do each month, and I suspect many people will not.

Other downsides are the lack of transfer partner variety, and the annoying S$5 earning blocks, which lead to lost points on any transaction not in multiples of S$5. But if you’re happy sticking to Asia Miles or KrisFlyer miles, and are careful with the smaller-sized transactions, then this card remains essential to have.