Trust Freedom Card Now Earns 1.3 Miles Per Dollar With No FX Fee (Plus Up to 100,000 Bonus Max Miles)

For years, every miles chaser in Singapore has accepted the same trade-off when spending overseas. You either earn miles and pay the 3.25% foreign transaction fee, or you skip the fee with a multi-currency card and give up the miles. The Trust Freedom Card has now removed that trade-off. It earns 1.3 miles per dollar on local and foreign spend with zero FX fees, and it comes with no annual fee, forever. On top of that, customers who have never held a Trust credit card and sign up by 31 October 2026 can earn up to 100,000 bonus Max Miles.

Apply for the Trust Freedom Card in the Trust app with my referral code 9VCJF1P5 and earn up to 100,000 Max Miles!

What Has Changed on the Trust Freedom Card

The Trust Freedom Card is the old Trust Cashback Card with a new name and four reward modes. You pick one each membership quarter: Bonus Cashback, Unlimited Cashback, Stockback, or the new Trust Miles mode, which launched on 21 September 2026. You switch modes in the Trust app, and the change takes effect from your next membership quarter. Note that a membership quarter is not the same as a calendar quarter, so check yours in the app before you plan around it.

Feature	Trust Freedom Card (Miles mode)
Local spend	1.3 Trust Miles per S$1
Foreign spend	1.3 Trust Miles per S$1
FX fee	None (Visa exchange rate)
Annual fee	None, forever (no waiver to request)
Earning block	Every S$5 (nothing on transactions under S$5)
Minimum spend / cap	None / Uncapped
Transfer partners	KrisFlyer or HeyMax Max Miles (1:1)
Conversion fee	S$27.25 per transfer (instant)
Miles validity	End of the third calendar year after earning

On paper, 1.3 mpd is unremarkable. For local spend I would still reach for a 4 mpd card in the right category. The rate becomes interesting once you remember that every other miles card in Singapore adds 3.25% to every foreign currency transaction.

The Welcome Offer: Up to 100,000 Max Miles

The welcome offer is for brand new Trust credit card customers only. If you currently hold a Trust credit card, or have ever held one in the past, you will not qualify. From 21 September to 31 October 2026, eligible new customers who apply for the Freedom Card, select Trust Miles as their initial reward, and meet a minimum spend within 31 days of card approval will receive bonus Max Miles via HeyMax.

Spend in 31 days	Bonus Max Miles	Plus base Trust Miles	Effective mpd
S$1,000	20,000	1,300	21.3
S$5,000	50,000	6,500	11.3
S$15,000	100,000	19,500	8.0

The sweet spot depends on how much spend you can genuinely move onto the card within a month. Moving from S$1,000 to S$5,000 earns 30,000 extra bonus miles on S$4,000 of additional spend, which works out to 7.5 bonus miles per dollar at the margin. Going from S$5,000 to S$15,000 still adds 5 bonus miles per dollar. If you have a large overseas trip, a renovation, or a big-ticket purchase such as furniture or electronics coming up in the next few weeks, the top tier is within reach. I would not manufacture spend you would not otherwise make, though. Common big payments like insurance premiums, school fees and rent are excluded, so check the exclusion list below before you count on a particular payment.

Photo Credit: Trust Bank

To apply, download the Trust app, choose the Freedom Card, enter referral code 9VCJF1P5, and make sure you select Trust Miles as your initial reward. That last step is essential, as choosing a cashback or Stockback mode at sign-up will make you ineligible for the bonus Max Miles. The bonus is paid in Max Miles, and this is where it gets particularly useful. HeyMax charges no fees on Max Miles transfers. Its direct transfer partners include Qatar Airways Privilege Club, EVA Air Infinity MileageLands, Japan Airlines JAL Mileage Bank and even Malaysia Airlines Enrich - all at 1:1. Conversions are usually instant, and Max Miles do not expire. 100,000 Max Miles parked in HeyMax is a flexible pot you can deploy into whichever programme has the award space when you need it.

The Maths That Changed My Overseas Spending

Until now, most of my overseas spend has gone on the HSBC Premier Mastercard, which earns 2.76 miles per dollar on foreign currency spend. It also charges a 3.25% FX fee like everyone else. I had accepted that fee as the cost of earning miles abroad. The Trust Freedom Card has made me rerun the numbers.

The right way to compare the two cards is the cost per extra mile. Assume S$1,000 of foreign currency spend:

Per S$1,000 overseas	HSBC Premier	Trust Freedom
Miles earned	2,760	1,300
FX fee paid	S$32.50	S$0
Extra miles from HSBC	1,460
Cost per extra mile	2.23 cents

By putting overseas spend on the HSBC Premier rather than the Trust Freedom Card, I am effectively buying 1,460 extra miles for S$32.50, or about 2.23 cents per mile. That is more than I would like to pay for a mile (as there are cheaper ways to acquire them), and more than you would pay for miles during most bonus sales. On a S$5,000 trip, the gap is 7,300 miles for S$162.50 in fees. I would rather keep the S$162.50.

The elephant in the room is the HSBC Premier’s limousine benefit. Spending S$12,000 in a quarter unlocks two complimentary limo rides, a perk I have enjoyed for airport transfers. However, if I reached that S$12,000 entirely with foreign currency spend, I would pay S$390 in FX fees to earn 33,120 miles. The same S$12,000 on the Trust Freedom Card earns 15,600 miles with no fees at all. Paying S$390 for 17,520 extra miles and two limo rides does not stack up for me, especially when the same spend could go towards the Trust welcome bonus. For now, saving the 3.25% and earning 1.3 mpd is the better deal by a wide margin.

This matters most if you are working towards one of the new customer bonus tiers. Every dollar of overseas spend you move from the HSBC Premier to the Trust Freedom Card during your first 31 days does two things. It avoids the FX fee, and it counts towards the spending thresholds for bonus Max Miles. No other overseas spending option comes close to that during the welcome period.

Photo Credit: Trust Bank

The Fine Print Worth Knowing

The S$27.25 conversion fee is the one real catch. It is charged per transfer, so the solution is to batch. Converting 1,300 Trust Miles on its own costs about 2.1 cents per mile, which wipes out much of the benefit. Converting 20,000 Trust Miles at once brings that down to roughly 0.14 cents per mile. Trust Miles are valid until the end of the third calendar year after they are earned, so there is no hurry. I plan to let mine accumulate and convert once a year. Moving them into Max Miles also stops the expiry clock, since Max Miles do not expire.

Remember the S$5 earning blocks as well. A S$4.80 coffee earns nothing, and a S$9 meal earns the same as a S$5 one. This matters far less for the large overseas bills where this card shines.

As with any foreign currency spend, always choose to pay in the local currency when a terminal offers dynamic currency conversion. Paying in S$ abroad means the merchant’s exchange rate, not Visa’s, and it defeats the purpose of carrying a no FX fee card.

Finally, the welcome offer is strictly for customers who have never held a Trust credit card, and you must select Trust Miles as your initial reward when you apply. Existing and former Trust cardholders can still switch to Miles mode for the 1.3 mpd and no FX fee, but they will not receive the bonus Max Miles.

What Does Not Earn Trust Miles

Trust Miles are only awarded on retail transactions, and the exclusion list is longer than some readers might expect. If you are planning large payments to hit a welcome bonus tier, check them against this list first. The following transactions do not earn rewards:

• Cash advances, Instant Loans and Balance Transfers.

• Transactions that are later cancelled, voided, refunded or reversed, or that are never posted to your Freedom Card.

• AXS, SAM and ATM transactions.

• Insurance premiums.

• Monthly instalments of a split purchase.

• Fees and charges, including annual fees, service fees, interest, administrative fees, finance charges and late payment fees.

• Amounts rolled over from a previous month’s statement.

• Top-ups or payments of funds into any account.

• Tax refunds credited to your Freedom Card.

• Transactions under the following Merchant Category Codes (MCCs):

  • Utilities, rentals and cleaning services: 4900, 6513, 7349

  • Financial institutions, brokers, quasi-cash, insurance, stored value card loads and wire transfers: 4829, 5960, 6010, 6011, 6012, 6051, 6211, 6300, 6540

  • Gambling: 7995

  • Educational institutions: 8211, 8220, 8241, 8244, 8249, 8299

  • Charities, political and religious organisations, and government payments: 8398, 8651, 8661, 9211, 9222, 9223, 9311, 9399, 9402, 9405

  • Other services: 7299, 7399, 8999

• Any other transactions, fees or payments that Trust decides to exclude.

The ones most likely to catch people out are insurance premiums, education fees, utilities and rent, and e-wallet top-ups. These are exactly the large, lumpy payments people tend to use for welcome bonus spend. Also watch MCC 7399 (business services) and 7299 (miscellaneous personal services). Many online subscriptions and payment platforms code under these, so it is worth checking how a merchant codes before you rely on it. Your everyday overseas spend on hotels, dining, shopping and transport is unaffected, and that is where this card is meant to be used anyway.

Is the Trust Freedom Card Worth Getting?

For anyone who spends meaningfully overseas, I think the answer is yes. With no annual fee, forever, there is no cost to keeping it in your wallet as a dedicated foreign currency card, and no yearly waiver call to the bank. If you have never held a Trust credit card, the welcome offer of up to 100,000 Max Miles, which you can move freely into Avios or Asia Miles, makes signing up before 31 October 2026 an easy decision. It will not replace your 4 mpd cards, but it should replace the 3.25% fee you have been paying on everything else abroad. For me, that means my HSBC Premier will see a lot less overseas action from now on, limo rides or not.