OCBC NTUC Plus! Visa Card

Like I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, there are only slight differences between OCBC NTUC Plus! Visa Card and Plus! Visa Card.

The primary difference is that the NTUC Plus! Visa Card will easily identify you as a NTUC member

To be an NTUC member, there is a one-time $23 fee ($3 is for entrance fee and $20 is for subscription to 20 NTUC shares) and a monthly recurring fee of $9 payable.

In terms of usage at NTUC, both enjoys the same privileges – 8% off house brands and Linkpoints for $20 spending in a single receipt. If you spend $20, 40 Linkpoints would be awarded.

If you spend $75, you’d be awarded 150 Linkpoints. This is equivalent to getting a $1 off (redeemable on your next purchase payment).

So what’s the extra benefits since there is a membership fee involved?

Again, for this post, I’ll only be concentrating on NTUC grocery related benefits.

The first benefit being, there is a 6 months extension to your Linkpoints. This is good especially if you usually do your points tallying at year end and don’t have to wait till then that you have forgotten to redeem your points or purposely remember to redeem your points at some odd dates.

This is also good as there is a 500 Linkpoints deduction every year end for being part of the Linkpoints programme. However, if you have insufficient Linkpoints for deduction, there is no need to top up the difference. By redeeming your points before the end of the year, you will effectively minimise these unnecessary points deduction and use the points somewhere else instead and get more benefit out of it. 500 Linkpoints is almost equivalent to $3.30 worth.

Also, you get to enjoy an additional 4% rebates on top of your 8% house brands discount and your Linkpoints. You can enjoy the rebates only for the first $6,000 spending at NTUC. In other words, you can potentially get back $240 rebates each financial year. 4% rebates is good plus it is an added on benefit but do take note of the maximum cap. NTUC will tally the rebates once every year after they closed their financial year and send an information letter.

Before you get too happy with the 4% rebate, do remember that this comes with the price of the monthly $9 fee. This is good if you are spending more than $2700 at NTUC yearly. Why $2700? $2700 spending will entitle you to $108 rebates base on the 4%, and $108 is equivalent to a year’s subscription fee at $9 per month. Anything less than $2700 spending a year at NTUC, the subscription fee comes out from your own pocket. But of course, if you are already willing to pay the monthly fee for the union benefits in the first place, this rebate scheme can be viewed as a means to get free membership.

I wouldn’t let the above point bother me much though. This is because if assuming an average household spends about $10 per day or $70 per week on groceries, in a month with 4 weeks, that would mean about $280 average monthly grocery spend, which would be about $3360 in a year or 12 months already.

While $2700 sounded like a lot, after breaking it down, and adding on that food prices are subjected to inflation, it really isn’t that much. And base on my example, a $10 can feed 2-3 persons? If you have a big family, then you’d start worrying that the $6,000 maximum cap is too low instead.

If you really really don’t spend a lot at NTUC, I would suggest going for the non union card in my earlier post is sufficient. Or any of the other cards I recommend in my other posts depending on which feeds your needs better.