CapitaStar Vs ShopFarEast Vs Frasers Experience Vs Lendlease Plus, Which Loyalty Programme Is The Best?

Who doesn’t want to maximise their spending to earn some form of rebates?

(I’ll be surprised if someone raises their hand…)

Don’t be shy, I know you guys are the best in pairing your credit cards with different types of spending.

I’m sure you are also already optimising mobile applications like ShopBack, Chope, and Eatigo and more to get the best deals.

What about shopping malls’ loyalty programmes though?

Will you queue at the concierge to redeem vouchers?

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TL;DR: Which Shopping Mall Loyalty Programme Is The Best?

If you were to disregard the location and accessibility of the malls and focus solely on the rewards available, then, by all means, stick to one loyalty programme!

For the best value when redeeming mall vouchers, maximise your dollar when you spend at malls under Far East Organisations using the ShopFarEast app.

Otherwise, get free parking easily when you spend $50 (in maximum 5 transactions) when you shop at selected malls under Frasers Property. 

But, if you’re looking for more dining and shopping deals, I’ll probably be seeing you in CapitaLand malls since they have more than 50 rewards!

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Which Are The Biggest Shopping Mall Loyalty Programmes?

We probably have way too many shopping malls in Singapore, but who’s complaining.

Some malls have yet to catch up with the bigger players and still require you to queue up at the concierge to redeem vouchers or participate in lucky draws.

There are also some malls that have their own mobile applications, but I have decided not to include that since it means that you’re stuck to one particular mall for accumulation and redemption. Not that ideal, eh?

So, we’ve looked at the ones with the most number of malls around the island, namely, CapitaLand, Far East Organisation, Frasers Property and Lendlease Corporation.

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How Many Points Can I Accumulate?

If you’ve used at least two of the loyalty programmes before, you’ll know that the points allocation is not the same.

I know what you’re thinking, why can’t they standardise everything, right? Well, at least there’s some sort of trend in their numbers…

It’s pretty easy to accumulate the points since the minimum spend per receipt is either $10 or $20, and you can simply scan the receipts using their official mobile applications.

Easy peasy!

Supermarket transactions are typically awarded 20% of the regular point allocations, probably because we are likely to spend more frequently.

With the exception of ShopFarEast, which gives you the most points for the same amount spent on your grocery shopping.

And if you’re planning to make big purchases, just take note that the maximum amount you can accumulate points on is $1,000 per day. Of course, that’s assuming you’re on the regular membership tier and there was no supermarket spending that day.

If you are fervent about collecting mall loyalty points, you might want to plan ahead if you’re making big purchases.

Assuming that you’re on the regular membership tier and you’re accumulating all your points on retail purchases, the maximum spending you can accumulate points on is $1,000 per day.

CapitaStar

With 19 participating malls under their arm, you’re very likely to wind up using the CapitaStar programme.

Good news for you, if you’re an American Express Credit Card cardholder or a user of NETSPay!

If you’ve linked your AMEX card to CapitaStar through StarPay, the minimum spending to accumulate points is $1.

The minimum spending required to accumulate points is reduced to $1 if you are paying with your AMEX card through StarPay, or NETSPay through the CapitaStar app.

Erm… the not-so-good news?

It’s currently only applicable for Raffles City so you’re kinda restricted.

Who knows if it’ll be available to the remaining malls under CapitaLand though.

Are The Mall Vouchers Worth Redeeming?

Now, simply comparing the points allocation doesn’t really help much, it’s the value of redemption that we’re interested in, right?

Okay, I know mall vouchers ain’t for everyone, but it’s the most common feature across all malls so it helps with making a fair comparison.

To be honest, I haven’t really been redeeming my points since I’m the kind who likes to accumulate a lot of points to give myself more options.

But wow, you’re gonna need to accumulate quite a fair bit of points to redeem mall vouchers.

Accumulating $1,000 worth of points only gives you a $5 voucher?!

Interestingly, the best value for redeeming mall vouchers is ShopFarEast, since you can redeem a $5 voucher once you’ve accumulated $500 worth of points.

Are The Parking Vouchers Worth Redeeming?

For those of you who drive, I’m sure parking vouchers are not new to you.

But have you compared between the different malls to see if redeeming car park vouchers are worth your hard-earned points?

Well, from my own experience, I almost wanted to redeem my Lendlease Plus$ for the parking voucher but I decided that I’d rather spend the points on the mall vouchers instead. More on this later…

But well, after doing the calculation here, the return is actually the same as the mall vouchers, where $200 worth of points gives you a $1 voucher.

Likewise for malls under CapitaLand. meh… 

But well, even if the rates are the same, I think I’ll still spend the points on other rewards instead.

CapitaLand seems to love American Express cardholders, if you spent a minimum of $1,200 in a month, you’ll get to enjoy your first 3 hours of parking free!

For ShopFarEast on the other hand, it really depends on which mall you go to since the redemption is free parking for 2 hours. If you redeemed this at Orchard Central, then yay, good for you, since the parking rates are the highest there.

It seems like malls under Frasers have the best parking deal since you don’t need to redeem any points to get free parking!

People, just go to malls under Frasers if you don’t want to pay for parking okay?

You just need to spend $10 or $50, depending on the mall, to enjoy free parking!

Which Mall Loyalty Programme Has The Best Rewards?

This category is one of the hardest to compare since the rewards are all different and some are mall-specific or merchant-specific.

But we tried our best!

Just to be clear, we’ve excluded the vouchers that we’ve compared above and compared how many points you would need to redeem a $5 or $10 voucher off your purchase.

Unfortunately, Lendlease Plus doesn’t really have a lot of rewards at the moment, and we’re not sure if more will be released in the future.

Now you get why I’d only be redeeming mall vouchers for Lendlease Plus?

While it seems like Frasers Experience has better returns for their rewards, I’m not the biggest fan as there were no rewards under the dining category.

(Sorry… food’s pretty important to me.)

Based on our comparison above, the next best goes to ShopFarEast, since you get more returns on dining rewards.

However, I would like to highlight that our comparison is not very fair for CapitaStar, as they had so many other types of rewards that were not available the other three programmes, which means I couldn’t compare them.

Thing is, some of these rewards can be redeemed with as little as 100 STAR$!

I suppose if you’ve read till this point, you’ll be doing your own conversion to see which ones are more worthwhile, so I’ll leave it up to you!

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Guess you’ll have one more factor to consider when choosing which shopping mall to visit and hopefully, the mall with the loyalty programme that works best for you is near you!

Don’t worry about malls that don’t have mobile loyalty programmes though, drop by the concierge to see if you’re eligible for any rewards!