Interesting GrabPay Card Quirks from Refunds on Digital Card after Physical Card Activation

Even though the GrabRewards programme went through a major devaluation back on 02 March 2020, it is still a great card to use when you want to double-dip on GrabRewards Points and credit card points/miles. Due to the current COVID-19 global situation, I have been forced to cancel some flights and hotels but unfortunately, most of the refunds did not post automatically to my GrabPay Wallet since the transactions were made on the previous digital GrabPay Card.

Now many of you should already know this, but when you activate the physical GrabPay Card, the card number will change - if you have recurring payments set-up using the previous digital card number, they will most likely fail! Since most of the aforementioned travel plans are booked and paid for using my digital GrabPay Card, the refund did post immediately to my GrabPay wallet. In fact, I was actually worried that the refunds would get lost in limbo (or Mastercard purgatory) since the card number has already changed. When I received a refund from PayPal, the email stated that the refund has been successfully posted back to my digital GrabPay Card and after reaching out to Grab, they have reassured me that the money will be reflected in my GrabPay wallet despite having different digital and physical card numbers (as they were linked on the backend).

Photo Credit: Grab Singapore

I was advised that a refund to the GrabPay wallet may take up to 50 business days but strangely, the refunded amount from PayPal posted the following day. On the other hand, I have another refund (which I did not reach out to Grab about since it was below S$100) which was posted 2 weeks ago but has not reflected in my GrabPay Wallet balance. Therefore, while I am quite certain that refunded amounts to your digital card will post into your GrabPay Wallet (even after activating the physical card), you might want to follow up with Grab if it is a large amount of money. I am not sure what will happen if your GrabPay Wallet balance is already at S$5,000.

Additionally, I noticed that the GrabPoints that were clawed back were at the new rate - that means to say that a S$500 transaction that I have earned 5,000 GrabRewards Points as a Platinum member before the devaluation, had only 2,000 GrabRewards Points deducted from my account after the refund.