This is a great account for you to earn cashback on your credit card bills. I do maintain a minimum balance of $2K in this account so as not to incur fall-below fee. I use this account mainly to earn extra 1% cashback on my Credit Card bill (see extra hack below).
2 Criterias to Qualify for Cashback:
- Deposit an aggregate of at least S$2,000 into an Eligible Account in a given calendar month
via salary crediting and/or inward transfers from a non-HSBC bank account
(My strategy: Schedule a monthly deposit of $2000 from another bank account into this account. Leave inside for a few days then transfer it out. DONE)
- Perform a minimum of 5 Eligible Transactions in the same calendar month. These can be 5 FAST/PayNow transactions to other bank accounts. No minimum
spend is required for these transactions.- “Eligible Transactions” refer to any of the following:
(a) Posted transactions in SGD made with a HSBC personal Credit Card;
(b) Posted transactions made with a HSBC Everyday Global Debit Card;
(c) GIRO bill payments in SGD made via an Eligible Account (excluding self-initiated GIRO payments
made from the online/mobile banking platform); and/or
(d) Fund transfers from an Eligible Account to a non-HSBC account.
For clarity, Eligible Transactions excludes funds transfers between self-named HSBC accounts.
- “Eligible Transactions” refer to any of the following:
(note: the easiest is to do 5 FAST transfers to other banks. If you take bus/mrt rides, you need 5 days of bus/mrt rides to clock 5 transactions as all bus/mrt rides within a day is considered ONE transaction)
Key Benefits:
- Extra Hack: Get 1% cashback on all eligible GIRO bill payments
my thoughts: This is the best part of this account! You can arrange for an interbank GIRO to pay off your non-HSBC credit card bills using this account and earn 1% cashback on your credit card bills.
Eg. if i have $3000 credit card bill with UOB, $500 with OCBC, $4000 with maybank, total credit card bill is $7500. So with GIRO payments, i will earn additional 1% cashback on all of that!
One-time manual work that you will have to do (Sorry!): To initiate a GIRO transfer, you must print out the Interbank GIRO form from the respective banks, fill it up and send it back to the respective banks via snail mail. (I know, it’s a bit archaic. Do not send these forms to HSBC. The banks will send it to HSBC.)
Here are some of the Credit Card interbank GIRO forms:
How to fill up the form (i’m using Citibank as example… it is similar for all the other banks)
Choose: “Full payment of the current balance”
To: Name of Bank/Finance Company: HSBC Bank
Branch: (your HSBC branch – use the first 3 digits of your HSBC account number to google “XXX HSBC Bank Branch”)
My/Our Name as in Bank/Finance Company account: Your account name with HSBC
My/Our Bank/Finance Company account no.: Your HSBC Everyday Global Account number
How long will you have to wait?
Banks may take 1-2 months to do the paper work, so you may need to pay your bills as usual for now. Then you should receive an sms from HSBC to tell you when the GIRO arrangement has been fully set up. Please make sure you have enough money in your HSBC EGA account to pay your credit bills. I did not have enough money once and the GIRO bounced, and i was charged a late finance fee of $100 and GIRO return fee of $30 for that failed GIRO payment. I did manage to request for a waiver of the late finance fee. But GIRO fee is not waivable.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a comment in any of my videos or go to my telegram channel.
Credit cards change their T&Cs every so often and it is difficult to stay updated. That’s why I created a Telegram Broadcast where you can receive timely bite-sized updates to get the most out of your spending.
