Singapore is rewards-points crazy. Sure, in the United States there are airline, credit and store card loyalty points, and a few stores have membership clubs. But here everything including the Singapore Zoo, our daughter’s pre-school, and even buying pork buns at the mall food-court can be had with a discount if you are carrying the correct loyalty card. It seems a bit random, but if you buy enough pre-paid mobile phone cards at 7-Eleven, you get a free cup of mashed potatoes.
We applied for a bank credit card partly to get some of the discounts and also to stop paying the one- to three-percent foreign transaction charges on our U.S. cards. Over three years those charges can really add up! But despite meeting the income requirement for foreigners, we received this cryptic letter from the bank:
The Bank has thoroughly assessed the application based on our credit evaluation criteria and wish to inform you that it is unsuccessful. We apologise that we are unable to disclose the reason(s) for the unsuccessful application as the criterion is confidential to the Bank.
They won’t tell us, but we think we submitted the income information in the wrong format. Once again, do anything slightly differently here and the process is derailed.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I have had really good luck with American Express – if you have one of their cards they (used to at least) issue you a card in a new country based on your home Amex card. When I did this, they even backdated the entry in my credit report in the new country back to the date I got my original American Express card. I’ve also heard that HSBC is excellent when relocating overseas (and I’ve had good luck with them here in the US, even though they are scarce outside of NY). Apparently they have expatriate specialists in most countries that walk you through the process of getting a bank account and credit card set up.
A word of caution – if you end up getting a bank account overseas to pay off the card there is a Department of Treasury form (TD F 90-22.1) that almost always has to get filled out every year if your account balances go over US$10000.