UOB has announced that it will be revising the air miles redemption rates for virtually all of its credit cards, effective 23 September 2024. The revisions will also cover the recently-enhanced Visa Infinite cards.

As mentioned, the revisions will cover all UOB credit cards that earn UNIRM, but surprisingly, the Lazada UOB co-brand card isn’t included. Regardless, the revision covers the following cards:

• UOB Visa Infinite Metal
• UOB Privilege Banking Visa Infinite
• UOB Zenith
• UOB Visa Infinite
• UOB PRVI Miles Elite
• UOB PRVI Miles
• UOB Lady’s Solitaire
• UOB Lady’s Classic
• UOB Lady’s Platinum
• UOB World
• UOB Preferred

The revisions will see anywhere between 11% to 33% higher UNIRM required to redeem 1,000 air miles from the four frequent flyer programmes available: AirAsia Points, Enrich, KrisFlyer, and Asia Miles. There is an outlier, however: for the UOB Visa Infinite Metal, the AirAsia Points redemption rate is enhanced from 8,500 UNIRM to 5,000 UNIRM (though the prevailing opinion is that the other frequent flyer programmes offer considerably higher value). Here’s the full list of changes:

The revisions follow a similar pattern in recent years as more and more banks revise their credit card air mile redemption rates, with many of the best air miles credit cards in Malaysia from CIMB, Maybank, and Alliance Bank seeing similar revisions in the past. This has led to some suggestions that cashback credit cards now offer better value – but given the high-spending demographic of air miles card holders, it is not a plausible solution.

Despite these revisions, however, UOB’s air miles credit cards remain among the best in Malaysia. We’ll still need to take a deeper look at the changes and share our findings in a future article. For now, just keep note of the 23 September effective date for the revision, and plan your redemption strategy accordingly if you are a UOB cardholder.

(Source: UOB)

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• Alliance Bank
• Maybank
• UOB