Last night, I shared an offer I received from ANA that I thought was a pretty bad deal. I have no idea who signs up for that offer, but they are putting it out there for potential customers anyway – and US customers at that! I mean, don’t they realize the amount of great offers we already get? By the way, the issuer is a branch of First National Bank of Omaha, not the biggest of bonus offer banks, but they did use to let me make my own custom card with photos! 🙂
How does a card that you can get over $3,000 in cash back a year sound? If only we could get it!
A GREAT Credit Card
I thought to balance it out and show that not all foreign credit card offers were bad, I would show the card that I had seen in Dubai in January. Seriously, why can’t they offer this card in the US? We promise we would play nice with those bonus categories! 🙂
10% Cash back!
Standard Chartered Titanium card
The card even sports a fancy sign-up bonus – the equivalent of $200 as a travel voucher or the equivalent of $136 cash back. Not the biggest bonus, but not bad!
The card is issued by Standard Chartered bank and is issued solely in the UAE. It is called the Titanium card and has been voted as the #1 card in the Middle East. If you are curious to see the card and information, here is the link (or course, I do not receive a referral for this!)
Cash back Bonus
The real strength of this card is in its bonus. It offers 10% cash back on purchases made at supermarkets, utility fees, and school fees. It does cap the total amount that can be earned in any one month (across all categories) to roughly $272.
It is an interesting tiered spending/bonus as well – to max out the bonus, you would need to spend the (minimum) equivalent of $2,722 per month across all of your spending. Doing so allows you to earn the maximum of 10% on all supermarket spending up to $109. The same is true for school fees and half of that for utilities, making for a total of $272 per month in cash back.
That works out to being a total of over $3,200 in cash back per year if you meet the minimum spending per month. That is really not bad – especially if they sold gift cards in their supermarkets. 🙂
Summary
Not all foreign credit cards are bad offers, and of course such a strong offer would come from the UAE where they really go for everything big!
