There's no universally right number
Singapore cardholders tend to fall into one of two camps: consolidators who keep one or two cards and use them heavily, or collectors who hold five or more to chase different rewards categories, sign-up bonuses, or perks. Both approaches are defensible — but they carry very different implications for annual fees and for how banks assess you when you ask for a waiver.
The case for fewer cards: concentrated relationship value
Banks assess ongoing fee waiver requests against your Total Relationship Value (TRV) — your deposits, spend, transaction count, and tenure, all at that specific bank. Concentrating your spend on one or two cards at a bank where you also hold a savings account or other products builds a stronger TRV profile than spreading the same total spend across five different banks.
In practice, this means a customer who puts S$3,000/month through a single card, at a bank where they also keep a fixed deposit, often has an easier time getting a fee waived than a customer who splits the same S$3,000 across three cards at three different banks, each showing modest activity.
The case for more cards: spreading spend requirements and reducing single-issuer risk
The counter-argument is that many premium cards attach benefits — travel insurance, lounge access, bonus reward categories — to specific minimum annual spend thresholds. Holding two or three cards, each targeting a different spend category (say, one for overseas travel spend, one for local dining, one for everyday retail), can let you hit multiple thresholds without over-concentrating spend that could otherwise go toward one card's higher-tier rewards.
There's also a simple risk-diversification argument: if one bank freezes your account, restricts your limit, or has a service outage, having a second card at a different institution means you're not without a working payment method.
The annual fee math that ties it together
Each additional card is a fresh annual fee liability unless actively managed. A three-card holder paying S$180 average annual fee per card is carrying S$540/year in fees that a waiver call could eliminate on each one. The more cards you hold, the more separate waiver conversations you need to have — and the more likely it is that at least one gets forgotten.
This is the practical argument for a middle path: hold as many cards as genuinely serve a distinct purpose (one everyday-spend card, one travel card, perhaps one for a specific rewards category), but treat every single one as requiring an annual waiver check, not just the one you use most.
A rule of thumb
If you can't name the specific reason each card in your wallet exists — a spend category it covers, a perk you actually use, or a relationship-building role at a bank where you keep other products — it's a candidate for either cancellation or, at minimum, an annual fee waiver call rather than quiet payment.
The clawbacks.ai approach
Whether you hold one card or five, clawbacks.ai handles the annual waiver call for every card you register — so the number of cards you hold no longer determines how many waiver conversations you have to personally manage.