I am encouraged to use my own credit card to book work related accommodation, care rentals meals etc. when on company business, it appears if I was anywhere else than Switzerland I could get card that awards spending like the Hilton HHonors card and benefit personally when I'm paying.
Any one know if any of the Swiss banks or other institutions do a credit card with air miles or bonus points attached?
I have a UBS card and they offer 'Keyclub points' - you acquire an amount based on what you spend and can then spend the points on different things..
No idea about any others, but might be worth looking at.
Credit card companies have been hard pressed into cutting commissions so good offers are hard to come by these days.
One of the more generous offers is TCS Mastercard Gold - 1% kickback in cash.
Free cards from cumulus and coop give about 0.3% in respective store points
Cards provided through Viseca (such as the Cantonal Bank Mastercard) have a reward programme called Surprize. We have a gold card and try to use it for every purchase, large or small, and each year we build up enough points to get the annual card fee waived, plus some left over to exchange for shopping vouchers.
No If you want to make your comment useful, state the monetary value of these points
Not to steal the thread from the OP, but this is an issue that I'll be wrestling with when I move to Switzerland. I'm a huge miles and points guy in the US. Probably have 15 different credit cards, but use 2 of them mostly.
But, from what I have read the idea of miles and points, don't really translate to switzerland. They don't have a Chase Saphire Reserve, or a Citi Prestige style card.
You could continue to use your US (or whatever country you may be from originally) based cards, as long as they don't have foreign exchange fees, and most reward earning cards don't. The issue will be paying the bill. pay from US accounts or transfer cash back to pay them, which has it's own costs, which coupon negate any rewards...
Just a question, please don't get annoyed, but why the hell would any normal person need 15 credit cards?
No, it's a good question! A lot of us (points and miles people), will open a credit card with an airline. Now, every time we fly that airline we get free baggage. Those costs savings add up.
I open a new hotel credit card for 50K points and two free nights. I spend the minimum required to get the 50K points, now I've got 3 nights at the Park Hyatt Sidney Opera House for free. Those rooms can be 800-1100 a night!
You could close the card after, but in most cases it actually helps to keep it open. I don't carry a balance on any card, but leaving the cards open increases my available credit and I utilize very little of that credit so my credit score increases.
It's quote the opposite of what most people thing. If I did all 15 cards in 1 year.. yes, then my credit report would look horrible, but you do this over the course of a few years, you churn and burn some. But in the end, you continue to use 2 or so for your daily needs. 1 travel, 1 for entertainment.. something like that.
To shift the debt?
In the US you can get up to 50.000 miles for a simple signup.
Signup, keep the card for 1 year (or otherwise minimum term), cut it and quit, after another year repeat it.
There are tons of companies offering that in the US.
They can do it because plenty of customers are stupid AND keep on having a negative balance on the card = super high interest to pay. Apparently thats normal in the US.
Behavior here, where 95% pay on time is hardly seen there. Banks here charge you an arm and a leg for "foreign" transactions. And bonus/cashback is seldom.
OP: Best you can get are like 20k miles from either Corner or SwissCard. But they are not as customer friendly as you might have been used in the US. The churning game wont work here.
For more information I suggest checking Flyertalk, Swiss subsection. Got a thread about it all.
Oh, there's zero debt. It's all a points and miles game! Balance is paid in full every month. Otherwise you loose the benefit of points and miles with high interest fees.
If you fly a lot for business, you might get enough miles to be a Swiss Senator (star alliance gold equivalent). Then you can get Amex/MasterCard for free, which you can use to collect even more miles.
I understand why 15 cards makes sense if you are collecting miles, but in Switzerland, hardly any credit cards are free - every card you have will cost you at least Fr.100 per year.
Get a Cornercard Miles & More card; air miles for every spend on it, and Cornercard is a great company to deal with vs the usual (eg Swisscard)
Cornercard gives 1 mile per CHF 2....whereas Swisscard give 1.5 miles for every CHF 2 spent worldwide when you pay with your SWISS Miles & More American Express... and the welcome bonuses are not the same either.
Foreign spending is expensive with both, though.
Diners from Corner has 1 mile per 1 CHF. But acceptance could be better. Amex isnt accepted everywhere too..
I have dropped out of the credit card game mostly because its just not worth in Switzerland very much.
It's not a big deal when you realize that they probably don't have these kind of deals here because either there are not so many stupid people here or there are laws protecting them or both.
While you may miss out on some points, the benefits of living in a society with less stupid people far outweighs it.
That's a strangely unfriendly response
Surprize is not a straight cashback scheme, you collect points to exchange for an extensive range of gifts or vouchers (for stores like Manor, for Swiss, travel agencies, BP, lots of different stuff). The rate of return for the vouchers varies widely. They give 1 point per CHF spent, but you earn double points at the Migros and Coop. For 48,000 points the annual fee is waived. Recently they were offering 20 CHF Manor vouchers for 5200 points, but that was a special offer.
That's not the case at all.
Some employers - particularly government bodies - prohibit their employees privately benefiting from business travel arangements. Please check with your HR department before going down this route.
By 'own credit card', do you mean your personal card, or your personal business card issued by your employer as opposed to a centralised / lodge card?
Does your employer have a travel management company? Do they have a list of prefered travel and/or accommodation suppliers?
Hi Tom, where can I see the "prizes" that can be exchanged for the points?
Google Swiss Miles and more credit card...