Singapore Credit Card 2

After waiting for 1 month, my application for Singapore Maybank's eCard Platinum got rejected...wow...If you are thinking that you are a Malaysian, Maybank should have no problem approving your credit card...you are wrong...in Singapore, rule is rule.

I really supprised that Maybank turned me down. With my record of transactions and dealing with them in Malaysia, I thought should be no problem.

I have to ask my colleague to purchase ticket back to Malaysia, very troublesome.

My thought is that my annual income does not meet their requirement. But they didn't give me any reason in their postage letter to me or when I gave a call to the call center.I gave up in applying Maybank's credit card as they require their foreigner card holder to have a minimum SGD80,000 of annual income.

CIMB Platinum MasterCard, POSB Everday Card and UOB One Card

After comparison within the other credit cards offerred, I have selected CIMB Platinum MasterCard POSB Everyday Card and UOB One Card as my suitable choice.

I have made some comparison as below:

Credit Cards' Offers Comparison

As shown, CIMB offers the best benefits and requirement combination. The free for life fee waiver is one of their best features. The only disadvantage is they have limited branch and cannot pay via Internet banking by linking to the CIMB bank account.

But with the previous experience getting rejected by Maybank, I applied for both CIMB and POSB. I omitted UOB because I still not openned an UOB bank saving account. 

At last I managed to get both CIMB and POSB cards...

Singapore Bank Application 2

After having a banking account for your monthly salary deposit, with limited amount of cash or saving in hand, there is very limited investment tools for you to choose in Singapore.

You still need to send back some money to Malaysia for your family, your house instalments, your insurance, your unit trust top up, etc. Thus, in your initial month in Singapore, you have left with limited amount of net cash for investment. Nevertheless, we still need to have saving ourselves. By the way, there is no CPF, EPF for non-Singaporean, for us when we started work without PR. We must have discipline ourselves to save for our golden age.

With this limited amount of net cash flow, I choose to go back to basic...Saving in Bank. In Singapore, there are bank with special deposit scheme where you can earn higher interest rate by making monthly regular deposit. I have made comparison as below:



As a result, I choose to deposit in CIMB StarSaver. I noticed that banks originated from Malaysia are normally giving a higher interest rate. Just that the number of branch in Singapore is not many. For example, CIMB bank just has two branch in Singapore. But I felt that this type of saving is for long term and no withdrawal, so I made a deposit in CIMB Raffles Place branch.

And by using GIRO interbank fund transfer, I can transfer extra deposit of SGD500 per month to enjoy the 0.8% pa or if I am short for that month I still can enjoy 0.5% pa interest. I think this is the best rate I found in Singapore so far.

Remitting Money via Western Union

One of the fastest and reliable ways to remit your money to another country is via Western Union. It does not require any deposit account at the country that you plan to send the money to.

There is a lot of Western Union agents located at various locations in Singapore. I just remitted some money to Germany last week… It is quite simple, I went to the Singpost branch initially but the server down…...thus, at the end I approached the Western Union service at Maybank.

Not all the Maybank counter staff knows how to perform the transaction, hence I waited for about fifteen minutes for the relevant people. You need to fill in a form on the place that you plan to transfer, who is the receiver and how much money…then, they shall calculate the exchange rate and administrative fee…The exchange rate is relatively high…same as the bank published rate (usually worse than money changer rate).

I received a receipt. There was a MTCN number, you need to let your receiver know and your receiver shall be able to withdraw the cash with local currency at any local Western Union agent by showing the MTCN number and his Identification Card. The money is ready for withdrawal in less than one hour time. You can track your money online with the MTCN number as well.

I transferred Euro300 to Germany for a fee of SGD60. What I can conclude was that the fee is very high, more than 10%. Hence, if possible, uses other alternative, i.e. credit card advance cash withdrawal, ATM card (with MEPS or Cirrus), remit to account…all this are cheaper, if I am not wrong…(each has its pros and cons, though…)

Singapore Bank Application

Before I have started work, we need to open an account for banking in our salary. Most of the local company here is using the service of POSB or DBS bank. They have more than 80 branches around the island. It is like our Maybank or CIMB in Malaysia. It is wise to open one even if your company does not bank in your salary in them, easy to access the ATM for money withdrawal.

One thing I find good in Singapore companred to Malaysia is that they do not charge on interbank fund transfer (Most of the bank in Malaysia charges RM2 per transaction and transfer limit is RM5,000). And the transfer limit is up to SGD20,000, which most of the time shall not reach for normal employee like us. The limit in Malaysia is easily reach and troublesome to split our transfer into several days.

Nonetheless, Singapore's bank always required foreigner (not PR) like us to maintain at least SGD500 in our bank account in order not to be charge SGD2 per month. This shall make us think and survey properly to a suitable bank to put our money and focus on just one or two accounts. One more thing is the savings account normally has very low interest rate, keeping too many account and holding a lot of minimum saving amount is not a good practice in letting your money work hard for you.

Hence, to open a bank account, for Malaysia, remember to bring:
1) Your Malaysian IC and Passport
2) Your Singapore working pass (EP, S-Pass, Q-Pass, etc)
3) SGD500++ for your initial deposit
4) Handphone (for registering to Internet banking)

I have open my first Singapore bank account in POSB as the requirement of my company. But the interest rate really, really too little...You though in Malaysia the interest rate of 2.75% pa for FD (monthly) is very little, wait until I tell you how much is it for POSB bank.....For POSB Passbook saving account is 0.125% pa for the first SGD50,000. And by the way, it is even more less for monthly FD interest rate in Singapore for POSB, 0.1% pa for any amount!!! Can you imagine....I shall find one more bank in Singapore with a better interest rate to keep my saving in months to come (when I have more SGD cash, for minimum deposit)...(@-@)...

SGD

I have openned a bank account in POSB, as my company shall bank in my salary, $$$ to it monthly.