How St. George's annual 'birthday bonus' boosts your points by 10%

Please note: This offer has expired.

The St. George Amplify Signature Visa credit card offers a nifty gift every year around the time of your birthday: a 10% bonus on all the credit card points you’ve earned over the past year.

It’s an easy way to take your points haul to the next level, and best of all, you don’t need to do anything to make it happen – within four weeks of your big day, these bonus points will automatically hit your Amplify Rewards account.

Put simply, you’ll begin by earning 1.5 Amplify Rewards points for every dollar you spend on purchases, equal to 0.75 Virgin Australia Velocity points, 0.75 Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles or 0.75 Malaysia Airlines Enrich miles when converted at a 2:1 rate: but this isn’t all.

Come birthday time, you’ll also get that generous 10% bonus, taking your points haul from 1.5 to 1.65 Amplify Rewards points per dollar spent – and that’s on-par with earning a higher 0.825 frequent flyer points for every $1 charged to the card over the past 12 months.

If you’re earning Qantas Points instead through St. George’s Amplify Qantas rewards option, it works in much the same way.

You’d begin by earning 0.75 Qantas Points per $1 spent directly in your Qantas Frequent Flyer account, and will receive your 10% points bonus into that same account around birthday time, giving you a total of 0.825 Qantas Points per $1 spent on purchases.

The only thing excluded from the birthday bonus are other types of bonus points the bank provides: such as the 90,000 Qantas Points or 90,000 Amplify Rewards points you can earn as a new cardholder when you apply before September 26 2018 and spend $4,000 on eligible purchases within 90 days of card approval.

That means you can’t earn a 9,000-point (10%) bonus on the sign-up figure just because your birthday rolls around, but for points earned in the ‘normal’ way such as from spending on the card, you’ll get a nice reward when cutting your birthday cake.

Taking the birthday bonus into account, a total overall earn rate of 0.825 KrisFlyer miles per $1 spent also makes this card the highest-earning Visa or Mastercard in Australia for KrisFlyer miles, for members who first earn Amplify Rewards points and later convert them into KrisFlyer miles.

Having no points capping or tiering keeps that true whether you spend a little or a lot every month, while a $279 annual fee applies.

If you’d prefer to transact with Bank of Melbourne or BankSA instead, the BoM Amplify Signature Visa and BankSA Amplify Signature Visa cards also feature the same sign-up bonus, earning rates, fees and birthday bonus: which, like St. George, are backed by Westpac Group.

Chris C.

Chris is a a former contributor to Executive Traveller.