A half-year of small changes that add up
No single event defined Singapore's credit card landscape in the first half of 2026. Instead, a steady sequence of smaller shifts — savings rate cuts, retired facilities, tightened waiver eligibility, and a widening pool of no-fee cards — moved the ground under cardholders' feet gradually. Taken together, they paint a clear direction of travel.
Savings rates came down, raising the relative cost of unwaived fees
OCBC cut interest rates on its widely held 360 Account, effective May 2026, part of a broader softening in savings yields across the sector this year. As deposit returns fell, the opportunity cost of an unwaived S$180–S$600 annual card fee rose in relative terms — the same fee now represents a larger bite out of what your money is earning elsewhere at the same bank.
Digital banks kept setting the no-fee bar
With five digital banks licensed in Singapore (Trust Bank, GXS Bank, MariBank, ANEXT Bank, Green Link Digital Bank) and no new licences being issued as of May 2026, the competitive pressure on traditional banks came not from new entrants but from the existing five continuing to normalise no-annual-fee cards and, in June, competitive unconditional savings rates — GXS Bank at 3.00% p.a., MariBank at 2.68% p.a. with no conditions attached, and Trust Bank up to 2.40% p.a. under its bonus criteria.
Traditional banks responded by widening their own no-fee lineups
UOB EVOL moved to a fully unconditional annual fee waiver from 1 July 2026, removing a monthly-transaction rule that had complicated the waiver previously. It joins an already substantial list of permanently no-annual-fee cards in the Singapore market: HSBC Revolution, MariBank Credit Card, Standard Chartered Simply Cash, Trust Bank Credit Card, CIMB Visa Signature, CIMB Visa Infinite, CIMB World Mastercard, DBS Live Fresh, and Maybank eVibes, alongside EVOL.
But premium card waiver eligibility tightened in the other direction
At the same time, banks moved to tighten self-service waiver mechanisms on premium cards. DBS Vantage will remove its spend-based waiver for cardholders spending below S$60,000 a year, effective August 2026 — a substantial jump from previous terms. Separately, a broader change taking effect 1 August 2026 discontinues automatic annual fee waivers tied to a S$25,000 retail spend threshold across several cards. The message for premium cardholders: automatic, no-call waivers are becoming less common, even as no-fee everyday cards become more common at the other end of the market.
Facilities cardholders relied on quietly disappeared
OCBC retired its VOYAGE Payment Facility, the mechanism that let cardholders buy miles directly, pivoting instead toward CardUp as the preferred bill-payment route. For cardholders who used the facility to help clear annual spend thresholds, this closed one route — though bill-payment facilitator platforms remain a viable, if fee-bearing, alternative.
Regulatory and infrastructure changes layered on more verification
Beyond fees directly, MAS's enhanced scam safeguards went live 30 April 2026, adding transaction holds and cooling-off periods sector-wide. The Personal Data Protection Commission updated its cross-border data transfer guidance on 14 April 2026. Neither change targets fee waiver calls specifically, but both reflect a banking environment that's layering in more verification and more caution around remote account interactions generally — context worth knowing before you call.
The throughline for H2 2026
Two trends are pulling in opposite directions at once: no-fee cards are becoming more common at the mass-market end, while premium card waivers are becoming harder to get automatically. For most cardholders, this makes the case for actively requesting a fee waiver — rather than assuming one will apply — stronger heading into the second half of the year, not weaker.
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