Best way to earn KrisFlyer miles in Malaysia

Singapore Airlines is one of the most popular airlines in the world and, operating closely to Malaysia, it becomes the main choice for many Malaysians who want to travel out of the region. As a Star Alliance member, Singapore Airlines has its very competitive frequent-flyer program called KrisFlyer, where many Malaysian credit cards provide methods to collect its miles. For travelers looking for alternatives from the Malaysia Airlines Enrich program, KrisFlyer always comes into the picture when comparisons are made.

Due to its popularity, Maybank and Singapore Airlines have a co-branded credit card called the Maybank KrisFlyer American Express Platinum Credit Card, which focuses on earning KrisFlyer miles. The question here is, are they the fastest way to earn KrisFlyer miles in Malaysia, or are there other alternatives that cardholders can look into? In this article, we want to help readers understand the current landscape in earning KrisFlyer miles using credit cards in Malaysia.

Maybank KrisFlyer American Express Platinum and Gold Credit Card

As the name implies, the Maybank KrisFlyer American Express Platinum and Gold Credit Cards are designed for KrisFlyer travel, especially if you’re a frequent Singapore Airlines user. The card earns 1 mile per Ringgit for all transactions made on Singapore Airlines, Scoot, and KrisShop. For overseas and other online transactions, the card also manages to get 0.5 miles per Ringgit, making it a very decent card to collect KrisFlyer miles. At the same time, the card also comes with complimentary 5 times access to Plaza Premium Lounges per year.

As this is an American Express card, the disadvantage here is that the card may not be accepted by all merchants in Malaysia, making it hard for you to spend even though it has a solid air miles conversion rate. The card also comes with Mr. & Mrs. Smith SilverSmith membership, which is closely associated with the American Express hotel offers program. Besides earning KrisFlyer miles, this card also provides 4x annual access to selected golf clubs around the world, 50% off dining at Shangri-La Hotel Kuala Lumpur, and 40% off dining at Marriott Bonvoy hotels in Malaysia. As this card needs an annual income of RM60,000 to qualify, they are meant for the middle-income and above. In the next paragraph, we are going to look into what the alternatives are.

How about other credit cards?

By using the DuitHub reward explorer, assuming that someone is spending RM3,000 per month, equally divided across different categories, and then optimizing against earning KrisFlyer miles, coming on top is the Maybank American Express Platinum card, which gives 0.5 Miles per Ringgit, followed closely by the Maybank KrisFlyer American Express Platinum credit card, which gets 0.42 Miles per Ringgit, and then it is followed by the UOB Lady’s Solitaire and UOB Visa Infinite credit card, which get 0.3 and 0.29 Miles per Ringgit respectively.

However, if you’re someone who travels very frequently and mainly spends overseas and on travel, the credit cards that appear on top for earning KrisFlyer miles are the UOB Prvi Miles Elite credit card, the UOB Visa Infinite credit card, and the Maybank American Express Platinum credit card. The UOB Prvi Miles Elite credit card gets 0.83 Miles per Ringgit, while the latter two get 0.5 Miles per Ringgit. This is partly due to the UOB Prvi Miles Elite credit card giving 10x UNIRinggit for overseas spending and thus making its overseas spending rewards outperform other cards in the market.

What we can conclude here is that the miles you earn really depend on the type of spender, and the co-branded card may not be the best in terms of miles conversion, but it has a lower entry requirement compared to the other more affluent credit cards.

KrisFlyer or Enrich?

The next question that comes to mind is since focusing on one frequent flyer program is always something to consider, as cardholders may not have very high spending to invest in more than one frequent flyer program, should someone focus on the more popular Enrich frequent flyer program or KrisFlyer? By searching in the DuitHub credit card explorer and DuitHub reward estimator, we have a few observations that we would like to share.

As the Maybank American Express Platinum credit card is having a similar earn and burn rate for Enrich and KrisFlyer, it still tops the list with 0.5 Miles per Ringgit, and cardholders can have an alternative in the newly launched Ambank Enrich Visa Infinite credit card, which earns 0.4 Enrich Miles per Ringgit. As it is easier to spend with a Visa card compared to an American Express card, there are higher chances for you to earn more Enrich Miles with the Ambank Enrich co-branded credit card than the Maybank American Express Platinum credit card.

For more affluent cardholders with high overseas spending, the preferred card here is still the UOB Prvi Miles Elite credit card for Enrich points, with an average of 0.83 Miles per Ringgit, followed closely behind by the Ambank Enrich Visa Infinite credit card, which reaches 0.67 Miles per Ringgit.

From the Miles per Ringgit from all the cards mentioned above, we can see that the Enrich co-branded card is earning slightly more than the KrisFlyer co-branded card. Considering the acceptance of merchants towards Visa/Mastercard credit cards versus American Express credit cards, it does seem like focusing on Enrich is better than KrisFlyer, but the difference between them is not that far.

The next question here would be if 1 Enrich point is equivalent to 1 KrisFlyer point. We will cover this in a different article to explain further as there are many factors that probably contribute to the choice of Enrich versus KrisFlyer, but we hope the analysis above could provide you with some insight into which frequent flyer program you should focus on.

Bottomline

In summary, Malaysian banks do issue competitive credit cards for customers to earn KrisFlyer miles, and the difference in earning KrisFlyer miles and Enrich miles is actually very small. The Maybank KrisFlyer American Express Platinum and Gold Credit Cards are always a decent choice for KrisFlyer miles and other spending under Singapore Airlines. There are cards like the Maybank American Express Platinum for someone to collect not just KrisFlyer miles but at the same time Enrich or Air Asia Big Points. If you’re an affluent customer, you can opt for the UOB Prvi Miles Elite or UOB Prvi Miles credit card as they also provide flexibility while giving out the best Miles per Ringgit rewards in the credit card market.