Many people still prefer cash over cards and many wonder if I tell them that you will save money by using a credit card. Most people still only hear the word “credit” and automatically assume debts in that regard. But they could not be more wrong, even all Swiss banks are currently changing their debit cards/bank cards to the MasterCard or Visa system, so why not profit anyway? However, it is really important to note that this only works if you pay your bills always on time and do not use any partial payment options.
In Switzerland, there are few free credit card offers with cash-back options and I am here to tell you which ones you should get
General Spendings
SwissCard AMEX
For general spending in Switzerland and for CHF (more on that later), get a free American Express from Swisscard, either the “Cashback Cards” or the “Poinz” offering. Both offers provide you with 2 cards (an Amex and a Visa or Mastercard) and for each spending with AMEX you will get back 1% of the spending. Yes, you heard right, 1%. If you spend like 20’000 CHF in a year means that you will get 200 CHF back! The Mastercard or Visa is not that good and will only give you 0.25% cashback, so lets go on to “Cembra”.
Go to www.cashback-cards.ch and get your card duo
Cembra
Cembra is another credit card company and their Certo card will give you 1% cashback for 3 selected shops + 0.33% for any other shops.
That means:
- Select 3 shops where you cannot pay with AMEX and you shop often
- Use this card for any other shop as well because the cashback is better than the Swiss card cashback of the non-Amex cards
Go to www.certo-card.ch and get your card!
Foreign currencies / outside Switzerland
So far we covered transactions in CHF and in Switzerland only. Any of these cards will not work well with foreign transactions (non-CHF or outside) because they have a really bad exchange rate plus they add an abnormal fee to each transaction (usually 1.5% to 2.5%).
Neon / Revolut
My recommendation for such transactions is Neon, a swiss fintech bank which provides a free (prepaid) Mastercard using the Mastercard reference exchange rate and no additional surcharges.
The only disadvantage is that it is a prepaid/debit card and there you will need to put money in the Neon bank account before spending.
Feel free to use my code to get a 10 CHF starter amound on your Neon bank account:
HXEAQDI know there is Revolut as well, however, it is not a Swiss bank, and therefore I consider it risky as i have heard stories about blocked accounts just at the right time (usually when abroad). With Neon you get a real Swiss bank account with a real IBAN!
Go to www.neon-free.ch or download their app from the Google Play or Apple Store
Now let’s head over to Lesson 2: Coupons and loyalty cards