OCBC FRANK Credit Card: What Are The Changes in July 2020?

After OCBC revised their interest rates for their OCBC 360 Savings Account, guess what else are they tweaking?

That’s right.

Their OCBC FRANK Credit Card benefits.

So, is it for the better?

Or will it be more cui (Hokkien: lousy)?

Let’s find out!

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TL;DR: Changes to OCBC FRANK Credit Card from 1 July 2020

Revision of OCBC Frank Credit Card Benefits from 1 July 2020

Overall, an OCBC Frank Credit Cardholder will see an increase in the minimum monthly qualifying spend from $400 to $600.

However, both online and in-store purchases are now eligible as compared to the previous in-store (or offline) spend only.

While monthly rebates used to be capped at $60.

The revised monthly cashback cap will be increased to $75.

With all 3 bonus cashback sub-categories each having a $25 monthly cashback cap.

The 6% online bonus cashback is will be available for two other types of spending: in-store mobile contactless payments AND foreign currency transactions made in-store.

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Is it Still Worth Using the OCBC FRANK Credit Card After 1 July 2020?

So, is it still worth using the OCBC FRANK Credit Card?

Let’s see…

A Higher Minimum Monthly Qualifying Spend

Even though the minimum monthly qualifying spend has been increased from $400 to $600.

This amount should be easier to hit come 1 July 2020 as both online and offline spend are counted.

This definitely makes it easier for you to track and hit this quota — especially if you do a lot of online shopping.

Speaking of online shopping.

There’re always alternative credit cards to consider especially if you’re looking for the best credit card to use for online shopping.

Monthly Rebate Revision and Sub Category Caps

While the monthly rebates for the FRANK Credit Card used to be capped at $60.

The overall monthly cashback will now be capped at $75 instead.

Even though it sounds like you can potentially get more, I wouldn’t celebrate just yet…

The bonus cashback categories will be re-categorised into:

• Online spend (6%)
• In-store mobile contactless payments and/or foreign currency transactions made in-store (6%)
• All other eligible spend (0.3%)

And all 3 sub-categories have a $25 monthly cashback cap each.

This means that while you could enjoy a $60 cashback for spending $1,000 online from before.

Spending the same amount online after 1 July 2020 will only net you a $25 cashback.

Meaning once you spend about $417 online, you should switch to another card if you want to clock more rewards or cashback on your online purchases for the rest of the month.

Alternatively, you could spread out your online purchases to the next month too.

Getting that Bonus Cashback

The newly introduced bonus cashback for in-store mobile contactless payments and/or foreign currency transactions made in-store might also be a little tricky.

Especially during this COVID-19 period.

While you can link it to Simply Go and use your smartphone or watch to pay for your train and bus fares via Apply Pay, Fitbit Pay, Garmin Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, and etc.

It’s unlikely that you would incur that much in transportation given that most of us are still working from home right now.

Also, retail malls are either closed or are gradually opening.

And international travel is still being limited during COVID-19.

So where’re you EVER going to spend your money in-store, whether it’s via contactless spend or in a foreign currency?

This means that the only way you can realistically clock this is to skip the food delivery and grocery delivery once you’ve met your online spend category.

And head down physically to the restaurant to order takeaway or the cafe nearby to get coffee.

Or the supermarket to buy your groceries in order to pay in-store.

Side note: okay, this is totally #firstworldproblems.

But once all of this is over, the mobile contactless payment caveat means that you can use this as your general spend cashback credit card.

Most places already accept mobile contactless payment and this whole COVID-19 situation will just accelerate the adoption process.

Just link your card to your smartphone.

So wherever you go — unless you frequent the neighbourhood kopitiam or hawker centre — you’ll be able to clock the bonus cashback for in-store mobile contactless payments easily.

New Updated Look

If you care about what your cards look like.

The OCBC FRANK Credit Card is getting a new, minimalist look too.

By the way, this is not just for illustration.

The front of the card ACTUALLY looks like that.

Yeah… the numbers are at the back.

Pretty neat huh?

This is the first OCBC card to feature back-of-card printing.

The accompanying OCBC mobile banking app will also allow you to:

• detect duplicate transaction
• categorise your spending automatically
• lock or unlock your card remotely (just in case you lose it or it gets stolen)
• request for a replacement

It’s all very young people, millennial-type, who live on their phones perpetually oriented.

Overall Verdict: Still Decent

Overall, the OCBC FRANK Credit Card is still a pretty decent cashback credit card to get.

Especially if your entire life revolves around your phone and being online (read: most of us today).

Meaning, you:

• Use mobile payment for food outlets, coffee places, or when getting groceries and necessities
• Use online checkout for food delivery, grocery delivery, shopping or online gaming
• use mobile payment (for eg. Paywave) for everything else

Although one of my biggest gripes is the $80 annual fee.

Note: it’s free for the first 2 years tho

The only way to waive this annual fee is to spend a minimum of $10,000 annually.

(Or probably have all kinds of insurance and investment products with OCBC…)

And that works out to be about $834 a month.

Coincidentally (I think not…), if you want to avoid paying the annual fee that is, you’d have to clock:

• Online spend ($417)
• In-store mobile contactless payments and/or foreign currency transactions made in-store ($417)

If your expenditure is already that much on a monthly basis, then great.

If not, you’ll have to cough up the 80 bucks every year.

Although, you could try calling the customer service hotline and hint that you’d rather cancel your card than pay the annual fee…

Don’t say, I say, one.