Get rewarded for spending money!

A good cash back card makes spending money (literally) worth your while. We enumerate how it can help you save up on essential spends.

As human beings, we are hardwired to look for benefits and rewards in whatever we do. Case in point: coming across a sale on clothes at your favourite store. You cannot pass up the chance to get a good bargain on some new clothing, because it means that you’re spending less to get more.

Banks in the UAE use this same desire for rewards when offering customers cash back cards.

How a cash back card works

A cash back card is a credit card that offers a host of rewards in the form of cash back for spending money for certain categories of goods and services, and/or at member retail outlets (i.e. partners with the bank offering you the card). The cash back is a rebate on the overall percentage of spending on the card. Some banks even have the same reward system for debit cards.

The leading banks in the country offer cash back cards with excellent benefits, such as:

·         Up to 10% cash back on groceries, school and university fees, dining out, and telecom expenses.

·         You get 3% cash back on groceries, dining out, school and university fees, and telecom expenses for expenses in the range of AED 2,500 to 7,499.

·         You get 5% cash back on groceries, dining out, school and university fees, and telecom expenses, for expenses in the range of AED 7,500 to 14,999.

·         You get 10% cash back on expenses above AED 15,000.

·         You can call the bank’s designated number to redeem the cash back points whenever you wish.

·         The cash back points are considered valid for a period of two years, during which time you may redeem them. But you must have minimum 100 cash back points to redeem.

Why get a cash back credit card?

There are a few significant perks to using a credit card that has a good reward points system in place. They are:

* Save money: Since you’re going to use your credit card anyway, you might as well have an incentive to do so. Cash back points are a great incentive, especially when they are offered on daily spends.

* No need to keep track: The best banks in the UAE offer this category of credit card, and they are diligent about recording your spends and keeping score of the cash back points you earn. Thus, you don’t need to keep track of your reward points by yourself.

* Simple redemption: Whenever you feel that you want to redeem the reward points, you can simply place a request online or use the bank’s designated redemption phone number to do so. No other action is necessary to receive the cash back.