How To Earn Credit Card Points Faster By Paying Car Loans, Housing Loans, And Other Non-Card Expenses

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More and more Malaysians use their credit cards to pay for their daily expenses. In 2022 alone, the transaction value of credit cards in Malaysia amounted to more than RM177 billion. This is an RM39 billion increase from the previous year.

As a cardholder, you’re probably earning reward points or cashback when you use your credit card for everyday expenses like grocery shopping or refuelling your car on selected days. You can easily convert those accumulated points into valuable air miles for your next flight or redeem exclusive merchandise.

The problem is that it would take a long time to earn those points or air miles through everyday expenses.

But what if you could add your bigger monthly expenses to your credit card to earn even more points?

That’s where CardUp comes in allowing you to pay for your large expenses using your credit card and get you rewarded for it.

How CardUp works to earn you rewards

CardUp is a payment platform that lets you use your credit card to pay for large expenses that are traditionally only paid through cash, cheque, or bank transfer. Examples of large expenses include rent, insurance premiums, housing loans, car loans and many more.

To use CardUp, you just have to follow a few simple steps:

• Step 1: Sign up for an account and add your credit card information.
• Step 2: Tell CardUp who you want to pay and the amount.
• Step 3: Schedule your payment, either as a one-time or a recurring payment.
• Step 4: Your credit card will be charged with the amount plus a processing fee* per transaction
• Step 5: CardUp will pay your recipient by bank transfer and you’ll earn card rewards

And that’s it! You can now earn points or air miles that you otherwise would not have received.

The best part is that you can use any of your preferred credit cards, whether it’s a Visa, Mastercard, or UnionPay and your end recipient (be it your landlord or your vendors) will get your payment as normal via bank transfer (they don’t need to be a CardUp user).

*CardUp charges a processing fee per transaction to enable card payments in areas where cards are not accepted so you can rack up more rewards. Want to get a free payment? Scroll to the bottom to learn more!

CardUp gives you more rewards

Compared to other traditional payment methods, CardUp gives you more benefits and flexibility to make your large monthly payments.

How CardUp compares to other traditional payments
	CardUp	Bank Transfers	Cheques	Manual/Cash Deposits
Online Payment (i.e. able to pay via internet or smart devices)
Automate Recurring Transfers (i.e. able to schedule advance payments automatically)
Digital Trail (i.e. have a digital copy of your transactions)
Improve Cash Flow (i.e. lets you keep more cash on hand with deferred cash out flow)
Earn Rewards (i.e. lets you earn credit card air miles/reward points)

How exactly do you earn more points? Well, let’s take a look at an example of a household’s monthly spending.

The monthly cost of a household
Groceries	RM1,000	Everyday expenses that already accept credit cards
Petrol	RM600
Entertainment	RM500
Mortgage	RM4,000	Large expenses that you’re missing out on earning card rewards
Car	RM1,000
Insurance	RM500
Season Parking	RM300
Education Loan	RM1,500
Home Renovation	RM3,000
Total	RM12,400

Without CardUp, the only expenses that you can earn reward points from are groceries, petrol, and entertainment.

If you were to add your large expenses (mortgage, car loan, education fees, etc.) you could earn over 67,000 air miles points in total. That’s enough to redeem two return Business Class plane tickets to Bali worth RM7,824.

Below is how you can calculate your rewards and savings using the Alliance Bank Visa Platinum Card as an example.

• Your annual spend: RM123,600
• CardUp fee at promotional rate of 1.3%: RM1,607¹
• Total spent: RM125,207
• Miles earned: 67,612 air miles²
• Flights redeemed: 2 business class flights to Bali, worth RM7,824 or 58,800 air miles
• Total savings: Flight tickets value (RM7,824) – CardUp fee (RM1,607) = RM6,217³
• Miles remaining after flight redemption: 8,812

By accruing points that you otherwise would have missed out on, you would be able to redeem 2 business class flights to Bali, enjoying savings of RM6,217 with an additional 8,812 miles left to be used towards your next travel.

Ready to find out how much you could be saving? Check out CardUp’s rewards calculator.

¹See CardUp’s ongoing promotions here and at the Maximise your credit card rewards with CardUp section in this article.
²If your card offers 0.54 miles per every RM1 spent.
³Flight ticket value is based on the average Malaysian Airlines flight ticket price across a year and CardUp’s fee calculated here is the exact amount needed to earn the 58,800 air miles.

Real-life success stories of CardUp customer

Through CardUp, over a billion air miles have been earned by their customers regionally when their large expenses are shifted onto credit cards.

Of course, don’t just take our word for it, here is a success story from Justin, a CardUp user who managed to redeem the points earned from CardUp transactions for multiple family holiday trips!

 

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Maximise your credit card rewards with CardUp

Having a credit card is a big responsibility but if used wisely, you can get rewarded for using it on your necessary expenses.

But if you want to fully maximise the rewards and air miles that your credit card has to offer, using a platform such as CardUp will not only earn you more rewards but could also pay for your next dream vacation.

For iMoney readers, CardUp is offering a promotion where you can enjoy a 0% fee on your first payment. Just use the code ‘IMONEYFREE’ when making your first payment or head over here to create an account today.