Best credit card for Grab Spending

Grab is now a household name that most people in Malaysia use directly or indirectly in their daily lives as their super-app covers so many areas, i.e., ride-hailing (Grab), food delivery and pickup (Grab Food), digital payment services (Grab Wallet, Grab PayLater), groceries (Jaya Grocer and Grab Mart), shipping (Grab Express), and many more. In the meantime, Grab has its own loyalty program for users to collect GrabRewards. Depending on the membership tier/status, members earn different multipliers of GrabRewards.

To further speed up the earning of GrabRewards, using the right credit card for Grab spending could be crucial as there is a co-branded card between Maybank and Grab (Maybank Grab Mastercard Platinum Credit Card), and also many other credit cards that reward spending on Grab. To help readers pick the best credit card for Grab spending, we use the DuitHub reward estimator to focus on e-wallet, online, and other spending and see which credit cards turn out to be the top credit cards for Grab.

Merchant Category Codes (MCC) for Grab

Before we deep dive into the best credit cards for Grab, as Grab provides services in many areas, the first thing to do would be to understand what the Merchant Category Code (MCC) is for each of the Grab services. The reason why identifying the right MCC is important for this analysis is due to not all credit cards supporting e-wallets or not all issuing banks labeling Grab rides as transportation services. To understand further about Merchant Category Code, one can refer to the Visa merchant data standards manual.

For Grab rides, it is categorized under MCC 4121, taxicabs, and limousines. Services like Grab, Uber, and Lyft fall under this category. Unless specified, although this is transportation spending, most credit cards treat MCC 4121 as other retail spending. In DuitHub, we classify this as “retail, food, and grocery.”

Grab Food is usually categorized under MCC 5812, 5814, and 5499. It is often confused with dining & restaurants as dining & restaurants are mainly under MCC 5812, 5814, and 5499 as well.

Grab Pay (e-wallet) is more complicated, as some banks may categorize it under MCC 7399 (professional services), some may put it under MCC 6540 (store value card purchase), and most banks don’t reward e-wallet reloads due to some business reasons.

Grab Mart and Jaya Grocer shopping might be categorized separately as well. Most banks label Grab Mart as MCC 5499, as it is considered delivery of food stores, and Jaya Grocer should be under MCC 5411.

The MCC labeling might be different from bank to bank so we advise you to check with the bank before spending or applying for your credit card to avoid confusion only after receiving your first credit card statement.

Maybank Grab Mastercard Platinum Credit Card

Maybank Grab Mastercard Platinum Credit Card is the only card in the Malaysian market that allows you to earn GrabRewards directly through credit card spending. For any transactions made on Grab, including Grab e-wallet reloads, you will receive 1 GrabReward point for every Ringgit spent. While other local and overseas transactions earn you 1 GrabReward point for every 3 Ringgit spent. New users receive 1000 GrabRewards points when they get the card, 5x Grab rides, and 5x Grab Food worth RM 5 each, and most importantly, this card is free from an annual fee.

UOB One Platinum Visa Credit Card

Besides the Maybank Grab Mastercard Platinum Credit Card, the UOB One Platinum Visa credit card is an alternative to get rewards in the form of cashback. The card recognizes all Grab spending, and cardholders get 10% cashback on Grab spending with a monthly cap of RM15, given that you have RM1,500 spending in the month. This is a good choice for whoever spends around RM150 per month on Grab, as you can directly get 10% off from the spending. This allows you to manage your spending on Grab with other cashback categories (For example, you can spend RM500 on Food and Groceries, RM500 on Dining and Restaurants, and RM350 on Petrol, and this makes up RM1500 total spending which qualifies for the full RM60 cashback).

Other Credit Cards

Although most credit cards may not spell out giving rewards on Grab spending, since most Grab transactions fall into the typical MCC as stated above, most credit card rewards are still applied to Grab spending. Do note that most banks do not give rewards for e-wallet reloads, but there are still cards like (Alliance Bank Visa Infinite, UOB World, and most UOB credit cards, Hong Leong Sutera Platinum, CIMB E-Credit Card, RHB, and Hong Leong Visa Infinites) that give high rewards on e-wallet spending. For example, UOB World rewards 0.8 Miles per Ringgit for e-wallet reloads, while Alliance Bank Visa Infinite earns 0.53 Miles per Ringgit for e-wallet reloads (capped at RM3,000 spending per month).

What is the value of GrabRewards?

The next important question would be how GrabRewards compares to other rewards such as air miles and cashback. Currently, you can use 1500 points to get RM10 off on Grab rides and Jaya Grocer. With the Maybank Grab Credit card, that means you are spending RM600 to get 600 GrabRewards, and from this RM600 spending, you get an extra 900 GrabRewards (if you are a Grab Unlimited user). With the RM600 spent, you get a RM10 discount on your next spending, so it is a 1.67% cashback indirectly. In our opinion, it may not be worth it, as the Alliance Bank Visa Infinite credit card, UOB World, and UOB One Platinum credit card can give you rewards more than that.

Conclusion

In this article, we explained how to maximize your Grab spending to get the maximum rewards. If you’re a heavy user, it might be wise to carry multiple cashback cards, and when you maximize the cashback on one card, you can move from card to card. The decision to make here is how you can prioritize which card to use. Let’s have one example: if you have UOB One Platinum credit card, Maybank Grab Mastercard Platinum credit card, and Standard Chartered Simply Cash credit card. You can prioritize the quota of e-wallets in UOB and Standard Chartered credit cards, and then keep the remaining spending using the Maybank Grab Mastercard as the reward might be lower than the others, but it is unlimited.