What changed
From 1 April 2026, DBS- and UOB-issued American Express cards no longer earn reward points or miles on transactions made through CardUp, a bill payment platform many cardholders used to charge rent, income tax, school fees, and other typically non-card-payable bills to their credit card — allowing them to hit minimum spend requirements or earn rewards on otherwise uncardable expenses.
For cardholders who built a habit of routing large recurring payments through CardUp specifically to hit reward thresholds or minimum spend requirements, this closes a meaningful earning channel starting this month.
Why banks close these channels
Bill payment platforms like CardUp exist in a category banks have historically been ambivalent about — they generate genuine card network transaction volume (interchange revenue for the bank), but they also let cardholders manufacture spend and hit reward thresholds using money that would have moved by bank transfer or cheque regardless, without adding organic retail spend to the bank's network. As reward programme costs and network economics shift, banks periodically reassess which merchant categories and platforms qualify for full rewards earning — and cardholders relying on these platforms to hit specific thresholds are the ones most affected when a change lands.
The broader lesson: published card terms are not fixed
This is a useful, concrete example of something that applies more broadly: the terms attached to your credit card — reward earning categories, minimum spend qualifying transactions, and yes, annual fee waiver criteria — are not permanent. Banks review and adjust them periodically, sometimes with broad customer communication, sometimes as a change buried in a terms update that's easy to miss if you're not specifically checking.
The same logic applies directly to fee waiver eligibility: a spend-based waiver threshold, a specific card's waiver policy, or which transaction categories count toward it can all change with limited fanfare, the same way CardUp earning eligibility just did for two major issuers' Amex cards.
What this means practically
If you were relying on CardUp specifically to hit a minimum spend requirement tied to a reward or fee benefit on a DBS or UOB Amex card, it's worth reviewing your card's terms now to understand what qualifying spend categories remain available, and whether you're still on track for any spend-linked benefit this card year.
More broadly, this is a good prompt to periodically re-read your own cards' current terms and conditions rather than assuming the rules you learned when you first got the card still apply unchanged.
The clawbacks.ai approach
Because our AI agent calls the bank directly for each annual waiver rather than relying on a fixed, memorised set of rules, it works from your account's actual current status and terms — not assumptions that may be a card-terms update or two out of date.