OCBC Voyage Card

Suleyman

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Nothing on their website for now, except for press release (http://ocbc.com.sg/assets/pdf/Media/2015/March/Media Release - Voyage_Final.pdf)

So far looks like
- three versions, normal (min income $120k), 'Premier Banking' (for Premier Banking customers, $200k AUM) & 'Bank of Singapore' (Bank of Singapore customers, $1M AUM)
- all three versions are Visa Infinite
- earns 'Voyage Miles', which are then directly redeemed from OCBC for air tickets (not transferred to FFP), so no surcharges & transfer fees
- 1 VM per $ for local spend, 2.3 VM per $ for dining or foreign transactions
- No expiry of VM
- Can redeem on any airline, including budget airlines
- Cards made from Duralumin, an aluminum alloy

Whether this card is worthwhile will depend on the 'exchange' rate of VM to tickets. Guess we just have to standby till the info is released
 

lcpteck

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Earn rate seems low, but you're right, we'll have to see what is the redemption rate.
 

xtra13

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It's indicated in the PDF (as an example) that $48,000 spend in a year ($4,000 a month) can redeem for 2 full service air tickets to Hong Kong (or 4 budget flights to Bali)?
 

Allen_C_Sharp

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It's indicated in the PDF (as an example) that $48,000 spend in a year ($4,000 a month) can redeem for 2 full service air tickets to Hong Kong (or 4 budget flights to Bali)?

Looks the rate is no better than normal miles?
At a glance the normal version and US$2M card looks the same.
Intereted to know the Redemption rate for budget airline, good thing is no blackout date and conversion fee, n never expire...
 

eightyhertz

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Copy of the Chase Sapphire Preferred

This card is pretty much a copy of the Chase Sapphire Preferred VISA that's offered in the United States.

2 points for travel and dining
1 point per USD for anything else

1:1 point to mile conversion to many airlines, and online flight booking via point redemption.

creditcards.chase.com/credit-cards/sapphire-preferred-card.aspx

The Sapphire card is made out of metal.

Everything OCBC has offered so far in terms of card products are a watered down facsimile of the US card offerings.
 

invisible999

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This card is pretty much a copy of the Chase Sapphire Preferred VISA that's offered in the United States.

How about Purchase Protection, trip interruption and lost baggage insurance, CDW for rental cars? That's standard package for CSP.
 

epigram

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They need to publish their voyage miles redemption table for any meaningful comparison to be made with other cards
 

Inix

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HSBC Visa Infinite already can do what they want and more. You can redeem for full fare tickets via AsiaTravel and you can redeem for AM / KF via Mileage. Nothing new here. But the card looks nice though
 

Suleyman

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This card is pretty much a copy of the Chase Sapphire Preferred VISA that's offered in the United States.

2 points for travel and dining
1 point per USD for anything else

1:1 point to mile conversion to many airlines, and online flight booking via point redemption.

creditcards.chase.com/credit-cards/sapphire-preferred-card.aspx

The Sapphire card is made out of metal.

Everything OCBC has offered so far in terms of card products are a watered down facsimile of the US card offerings.

Even if it is, so what? We are not in the US. If a US card give you 10 miles per $ and a free business class ticket every year, it will still be irrelevant to the majority of us.

HSBC Visa Infinite already can do what they want and more. You can redeem for full fare tickets via AsiaTravel and you can redeem for AM / KF via Mileage. Nothing new here. But the card looks nice though

But redemption on HSBC VI via AsiaTravel uses a terrible conversion rate, 3,500 points (equivalent to 1,400 miles) to $20. To put into perspective, a return ticket to Hong Kong on Singapore Airlines costs about $700 (using the Flexi price, which I am assuming is the ticket you get with OCBC card, since we are talking about no blackout dates, restrictions, etc). That means you need 122,500 points (or 49,000 miles) to redeem the ticket fully. From the example in the press release, we know that two return tickets to Hong Kong will cost less than 75,000 VM, so each ticket should be less than 37,500.

The way I look at it, this card offers something different in terms of redemptions. If the redemption table is decent, it is a very useful supplementary card, because redemptions through this will allow you to get past a number of restrictions, like capacity control, and route availability, that we live with in the miles game.

While in theory, other miles-earning card can do this (redemption at Standard rates, rather than Saver, redemption on Star Alliance or OneWorld carriers, rather than SQ or CX), this usually also cost more miles.
 

turboo

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It's indicated in the PDF (as an example) that $48,000 spend in a year ($4,000 a month) can redeem for 2 full service air tickets to Hong Kong (or 4 budget flights to Bali)?

seems like they have a better conversion rate compared to other miles cards. would be keen to know if there are other hidden surcharges when getting the tickets.. :s22::s22::s22:
 

chesterchen

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I thought that this was quite good?

In addition, the value of the air ticket redeemed with the Voyage miles will continue to earn air miles on his or her frequent flyer accounts with that airline.
 
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Awesom Andy

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About the only thing interesting about this card is the metal. Or if you're a seriously busy "high net worth individual" who doesn't want to hassle of transferring to FF accounts than redeeming.
 

hclee01

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Website has been updated:
OCBC Voyage Cards - The first metal cards to let you redeem miles for flights on all airlines, on any day | OCBC Bank

- 15K Bonus Voyage Miles upon sign up
- 1 Limousine transfer service complimentary with a min. S$5,000 spent each month
- 2 Plaza premium lounge complimentary visits a year to over 120 airport VIP lounges

The annual subscription fee for
*Principal card : S$488 (with GST)
*Supplementary card: S$188 (with GST), first year waived
- Up to S$1 million travel protection insurance coverage
 
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Suleyman

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Still no details on the exchange rate of VM to tickets. However, here are some other details found in the T&Cs.

- VM can be transferred to a KF account, on a 1:1 basis (1 Voyage Mile to 1 Krisflyer Mile). There is a $25 admin fee, minimum of 1,000 miles, but can be any amount.
- VM can also be converted to OCBC$, but conversion rate not stated
- If you redeem 100,000 VM for a trip, you will get two more complimentary visits to the Plaza Premium Lounge, but usable only during that trip.
- Even if you don't meet the $5k spend requirement, you can still use the limo service by paying a service charge of $45. You can use the limo service as many times as you want, but can only get it free once a month, no matter how much you spend.
- You don't have to spend $5k before using the limo service. As long as you hit $5k before the end of the month (based on posting date, NOT transaction date), one time will be free.

First impression is that if the annual fee is not waivable, then the card will be a hard sell. Second is that unless the Voyage Mile to air ticket redemption chart is something amazing, as a miles earning card, this pales in comparison to what is in the market already.
 

epigram

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Not so fantastic after all. Will wait for the voyage$ redemption table
 
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