Maybank Family & Friends Card: All you need to know

The family-friendly Maybank Family & Friends Card is available for Singapore citizens, PRs, Malaysian citizens and other nationalities residing in Singapore. It offers attractive cash rebates on spending for normal family expenses like groceries, dining out, transportation and petrol and entertainment.

But let’s take a closer look at the Maybank Family & Friends Card to see if those cash rebates really do help put more money in your wallet, or if the high fees and minimum-spend make it not worth it.

How does the Maybank Family & Friends Card work?

The Maybank Family & Friends Card is a credit card that also allows you to get cash rebates on day to day spending. Once you are approved for the card, you are given a card and credit line from Maybank. You can use the card online and offline for daily to large occasional purchases wherever Mastercard is accepted around the world.

After every statement cycle, you will receive a bill for the amount that you have spent. You can pay it back in full, or at least the minimum amount due. Any remaining balance gets carried over to the next statement cycle but with interest. If you don’t pay at least the minimum amount by the date stated on the bill, you will be hit with a late payment charge. And that charge is quite high.

To make it easier to understand, here is a quick table outlining all the major fees, charges and the interest rate for the Maybank Friends and Family Card. See how it compares to the Wise multi-currency borderless card, which has much lower fees and lets you shop globally and spend locally from a single account.

Fees and charges

Who is eligible for the Maybank Family & Friends Card?

Adults above the age of 21 who meet the minimum income requirements are eligible for the Maybank Family & Friends Card. The income requirements differ depending on citizenship.

For Singapore citizens or PRs, the minimum income required to apply is S$30,000. For Malaysian citizens, it is S$ 45,0000, and for other nationalities, it is S$ 60,000. For other nationalities and Malaysians, it is required that you have been employed in Singapore for at least one year.²

In all cases, you will need to submit a copy of your NRIC or valid passport, employment proof as well as address proof. You can apply online through the Maybank website or at a local branch near you.

What can I do with the Maybank Family & Friends Card?

You can do all your normal spending with the Maybank Family and Friends Card anywhere Mastercard is accepted. The card, however, is set up to have extra cash rebates on qualifying purchases too. But let’s dig a little deeper to see the strings attached to the cash rebates.

Maybank Family & Friends Card cash rebates

The Maybank Family & Friends Card offers a cash rebate of .3% on all purchases made using the card. But the more you spend using the card in total, the higher your cash rebate is for selected categories. It works like this:

Only if you hit the monthly minimum spending of S$ 800 will you receive the bonus cash rebates of 8%, otherwise, it’s 5% for a minimum spend of S$ 500, or .3% on any spend amounts $499.99 or below. Plus, there is a max cap of S$ 80 per month on the cash rebates. So if you aren’t planning to spend enough to get the larger cash rebates, this may not be the best option for you.³

Maybank Family & Friends Card 3X interest on savings

If you already have a Maybank Family Plus account, you can get 3x interest on your child’s savings account by being a cardholder.⁴

Overseas spend with the Maybank Family & Friends Card

The Maybank Family & Friends Card is available for Malaysian citizens and foreigners but the card sure makes it expensive to spend outside of Singapore. For any overseas spending you do on the card, including in Malaysia, you are going to be charged a hefty foreign transaction fee of 2.75% on all purchases.

On top of that, you are getting an exchange rate that is set by Mastercard itself. Mastercard gives you an exchange rate that is lower than the mid-market exchange rate, the one you see on Google, to take a slice off of every conversion. And that is then combined with a policy that makes any non-Singapore dollar transaction first be converted into US dollars, and then from US dollars to Singapore dollars before posting to your account.

So now you are getting hurt twice by an unfavorable exchange rate on every and any overseas transaction. But spending in your neighboring country or overseas doesn’t have to be expensive with the Wise borderless card.

Get your Wise borderless card - a multi-currency account that is on average 7 times cheaper than banks

Leave the fees and minimum spending behind and get the Wise multi-currency borderless card. With no annual fees, interest rate or foreign transaction fees, it gives you the freedom to spend and shop while keeping more money in your wallet.

The multi-currency borderless account is free to set up and lets you hold 40+ currencies in one account. You can spend, shop and travel with one card, and have free cash withdrawals around the world up to S$ 350 per month. All you have to pay is one low conversion fee between .35-1%, and you will always get the transparent mid-market exchange rate.

Want to shop online on global sites like Alibaba & Qoo10? You get the same low fee every time. And with Wise’s award-winning app, you get magic push notifications every time you spend. So instead of spending more to wait for cash rebates, keep your money where it belongs with the Wise borderless card.

All sources checked as of 21 February, 2020