Yes, I am talking about cashback here. Specifically debit card cashback. I can never pay my credit card on time. So I'll just stick to debit card. Cashback is a great deal. Assuming a $1000 spending every month and a 2% cashback. In one year, you would have gotten back $240 on your $12000 spending. More than what you can expect from a fix deposit with a bank.
If you do a simple search on debit card cashback, you would find offers from banks with 1% to 20% varying cashback. This would be great if it is applied to ALL spending. But most of them require spending only at merchants that the banks work with to enjoy the benefit. This is understandable. Someone has to foot the bill. In this case most likely the merchant looking for advertising/marketing exposure.
In recent years, there are some non-bank FinTech startups that offers debit card cashback for ALL your spending. How do they beat the banks at their own game? Using thin air it seems. A utility token is created and sold to anyone who wishes to use the card. When user spend with the card, it pays the user a certain percentage as cashback in the utility token. Since there are new users who wish to purchase the utility token in order to use the card, existing users can sell their token for cash. Try wrapping your head around that!
Monaco (MCO) is such a token offered by Crypto.com. Here's a referral code to sign up and we both get a USD50 rebate: click here
I had signed up, purchased and staked 50 MCO (around USD250) for a Ruby Visa debit card (made of metal!) which is entitled to a 2% cashback on all card spending. The staking will be released after 6 months.
Updates on 5/6/2020:
I have received my Ruby card. The metal card is really well made. I will start using it and monitor if the cashback is indeed available for all spending. I also found out that if you use your card together with the Curve app, You can get an extra 1% cashback for some selected merchants at no extra cost. However this is currently only available for the EU region.
Updates on 12/6/2020:
I have started using the card and is pleasantly surprise that a whopping 10% cashback was applied for my Sheng Siong supermarket purchase. For a spending of SGD168.80, the cashback is about USD12.15 or 10%. Not bad at all, it is like getting a free tub of Haagen Dazs ice cream for nothing. Similarly, I got a 5% cashback when I top up to my Grabpay app. No problem filling up petrol at Shell too. See the below screenshots. Here's a referral code to sign up and we both get a USD50 rebate: click here or key in referral code k6dtdg0jqi
