Key Points
- CardUp now pays Max Miles on mortgage, insurance, property tax and condo or management corporation strata title (MCST) bills paid by PayNow.
- No credit card is involved, so there are no card miles.
- FAST585 buys a Max Mile at 1.46 cents (worthwhile); STANDARD125 costs 1.79 cents.
- The promotional rate stops at 10,000 Max Miles — which works out to a S$2,500 payment on the Accelerated tier.
- Max Miles do not expire, and transfer into 24 airline and hotel programmes — though not directly to KrisFlyer.
What CardUp x HeyMax Does
CardUp is a payment platform that pays a biller who does not accept credit cards. The usual way to use it is to charge the payment to your credit card and pay a service fee on top. Your biller receives an ordinary bank transfer, and your card sees the whole amount and pays you its usual miles on it. In this case, you pay by PayNow, CardUp charges a fee, and HeyMax credits the Max Miles, so that fee is the price of your miles.
This promotion is funded from your bank account, instead of a credit card. What you get is Max Miles, HeyMax’s own points currency, credited to your HeyMax account. They don’t expire and you can transfer them at 1:1 rate to most airline or hotel programme, or spend them on a flight through HeyMax itself. If Max Miles are new to you, I wrote a complete beginner’s guide to HeyMax that explains where they come from and how you spend them.
How It Works
- You have a bill that CardUp can pay — a mortgage, an insurance premium, property tax, or condo and MCST fees.
- You set the payment up on CardUp and pay CardUp from your bank by PayNow.
- CardUp charges a fee on top of the bill, depending on the tier and promo code you choose.
- HeyMax puts Max Miles into your HeyMax account, and you turn those into flights later.
The Conditions To Take Note Of
- Only mortgages, insurance premiums, property tax, and condo and MCST fees earn Max Miles. NTUC Income premiums are excluded.
- Your CardUp account has to be a personal one, with the payment set up under Personal and “Make”. Business accounts do not earn.
- Each payment has to be set up as a one-time payment; a recurring schedule does not earn. You can still make as many separate one-time payments as you like until you reach the cap.
- The CardUp fee itself does not earn Max Miles, so you earn on the bill amount only.
The Two Earning Tiers
You can pick from two tiers for each payment. But promotional rates are definitely the better deal and they run until 31 December 2026, 6pm SGT.
| Tier | Fee with the code | You earn | Cost per Max Mile | Say your bill is S$2,500 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard code STANDARD125 | 1.25% | 0.7 Max Miles per S$1 | 1.79¢ | You pay S$31.25 and earn 1,750 Max Miles |
| Accelerated code FAST585 | 5.85% | 4 Max Miles per S$1 | ✅ 1.46¢ | You pay S$146.25 and earn 10,000 Max Miles |
Without a code the fee for the Standard tier is 1.65% and for Accelerated, it is 7.65%.
The 10,000 Max Miles caps how many of your miles get the promotional fee. It is not a limit on how many Max Miles you can earn on CardUp. So let’s say you pay a S$4,000 mortgage bill on the Accelerated tier and you still earn 16,000 Max Miles — the first 10,000 at 5.85%, the rest at 7.65%. The 10,000 cap on promotional rate is counted across both tiers but you should really only use it for the tier with the lowest cost per mile.
You can read CardUp’s own terms for this promotion in full.
What a Max Mile Costs You Here
Here’s an example on a S$2,500 mortgage payment at the Accelerated tier with the promo code FAST585:
Cost = 5.85% × S$2,500 = S$146.25 Then cost per Max Mile = S$146.25 ÷ (S$2,500 × 4) = 1.46 cents
HeyMax reimburses any flights you buy at 1.8 cents a Max Mile through its FlyAnywhere programme. This will be my benchmark. This means, you are paying 1.46 cents (through CardUp) and you get back at least 1.8 cents worth of value (through FlyAnywhere), which makes it a great deal with the Accelerated tier promo code. I have used my full 10,000 Max Miles cap already, on S$2,500 of my own mortgage. My mortgage is larger than that, and you can put through any amount up to your own bill.
Try My Cost Per Mile Calculator
Is it worth it? Miles Calculator
These platforms let you pay large, everyday expenses — income tax, rent, insurance, condo fees — by charging them to your credit card. For this convenience they charge an administrative fee. The question, as always, is whether the miles you earn are worth more than the fee you pay. Key in your numbers below and I will work that out for you.
Read it off the checkout screen before you confirm. That way it’s current, whatever promo happens to be running. Most codes have to be typed in to work.
If your offer has a rebate, a cap or a minimum spend, add it here
Some platforms discount by paying you cash back later. A rebate lowers what the miles cost you. It doesn’t change what goes on the card, so the miles you earn stay the same.
Campaigns often stop at a set number of miles.
This is your card’s miles per dollar (mpd), listed on its product page. Use the general rate rather than a bonus category rate, because bill payments rarely qualify for bonus categories. It is also worth checking that your card earns on this platform at all, since some earn nothing on bill payments and tax is excluded on many of them.
Check the platform’s terms. If the fee goes on your card in the same charge as the bill, and nothing excludes it from rewards, it earns.
Optional.
Think of one flight you are actually saving for. Look up what that seat costs in miles, and what you would realistically have paid in cash for it.
Award tickets still charge taxes and surcharges, so take those off first. Use the fare you would actually have bought, because pricing miles against a business seat you would never buy in cash makes almost any fee look worth paying.
I value a mile at 1.25 to 1.5 cents, based on business-class redemptions, so anything below that range is good value. Economy class redemptions will be a lot lower than this.
How the verdict is decided
Worth it: each mile costs less than one is worth to you. Close call: up to a fifth above that. Fine if the miles complete a redemption you’re already saving for. Not worth it: further above than that, and you’d do better paying the bill straight from your bank.
What You Can Turn Max Miles Into
Max Miles can be redeemed in three ways:
- Transfer to a partner. 24 airline, hotel and lifestyle programmes, at 1:1 unless HeyMax shows a different ratio, with a minimum of 1,000 Max Miles per transfer.
- FlyAnywhere. HeyMax reimburses a flight you booked and paid for yourself, but only in full, so you need enough Max Miles to cover a whole ticket.
- Vouchers. I would avoid this one. It is the weakest rate HeyMax gives you on Max Miles.
KrisFlyer is not one of the 24, and there is no direct route to it. Going through yuu Points takes two steps and costs you more than 1 Max Mile per KrisFlyer mile, so it is not worth doing.
Don't Have HeyMax Yet?
43774BFE
- Download the HeyMax app from the App Store or Google Play
- Enter the referral code 43774BFE when prompted during sign-up
- Complete phone verification
- Make 1 confirmed transaction via HeyMax within 180 days of account creation
- Get 200 Max Miles as your sign-up reward
Sign up with code 43774BFE and you get 200 Max Miles once you verify your phone number and make one purchase through HeyMax with any partner merchant.
How to Set It Up
1. Open a HeyMax account and confirm your email. CardUp matches your Max Miles to the email on your HeyMax account, so do this before you pay.
2. Open or log in to a CardUp personal account.
3. Add your payee under Personal, then “Make”. Pick the category that matches the bill. For property tax that is the Taxes tile.
4. Choose PayNow as the payment method, and set it as a one-time payment.
5. Enter STANDARD125 or FAST585 before you confirm. The fee on this screen still shows the undiscounted rate — on a S$2,500 payment it reads S$191.25 — and only drops to S$146.25 on the review screen. Check it there before you confirm. Only miles earned with the code applied draw down your 10,000, and a code cannot be added afterwards.
6. Pay by PayNow and your payment is set up!
What to Watch Out For
The codes do not stack with anything else. CardUp’s terms rule out using this promotion together with any other CardUp promotion, offer or fee discount, so a referral code or a category rate you already hold will not apply on top.
What counts is the date you schedule. Your payment has to be scheduled by 6:00pm Singapore time on 31 December 2026, and its due date has to fall on or before 4 January 2027.
CardUp cannot refund a PayNow payment directly. Where a payment is cancelled or refunded, CardUp adjusts, withholds or claws back the Max Miles attached to it, and the service fee does not come back either.
You cannot pay more than the bill. CardUp’s terms prohibit prepaying or overpaying beyond the amount on the supporting documents you submit. CardUp reviews payments and can ask for more documents. Paying a bigger bill to reach the cap is not an option.
FAQs
Can I pay by credit card and earn Max Miles as well? No. Max Miles are earned on PayNow payments only. To get both you can split the bill in two: a PayNow payment for the Max Miles, and a card payment at CardUp’s usual one-off fee, which runs 2.35% to 2.9% depending on your card network.
Which bills earn Max Miles on CardUp? Mortgage, insurance premiums (except NTUC Income), property tax, and condo and MCST fees. Income tax and stamp duty do not.
What happens after I hit 10,000 Max Miles? You can continue at the usual rate of 1.65% on the Standard tier and 7.65% on the Accelerated tier, which works out to 2.36 cents and 1.91 cents a Max Mile. Both cost more than the 1.8 cents HeyMax gives back.
My Take
The Accelerated tier with FAST585 is worth it, at 1.46 cents a Max Mile, on a bill you were going to pay anyway. The promotional rate for each user ends at 10,000 Max Miles, and the standard rate applies after that.
- Fees, codes and partner lists change often and are subject to CardUp’s and HeyMax’s terms. Confirm the rate in the app before you pay.*
💳 Credit cards change their T&Cs every so often and it’s difficult to stay updated. That’s why I created a Telegram Broadcast where you can receive timely bite-sized updates.
