My credit card rewards have been downgraded. How do I compare the card schemes out there?
Sunday, 8 March 2026
Senior business reporter Rob Stock answers your money questions. Got a question for Sunday magazine? Email it to sundaymagazine@stuff.co.nz
QUESTION: My credit card rewards have been downgraded. How do I compare the card schemes out there to see whether I should change?
ANSWER: A good question, but I am going to start with a rant. I hate the dance around “rewards” businesses force us to to engage in. I consider they are not rewards, but the partial return of excessive pricing by companies seeking to manipulate our behaviour. I hate their attempts to capture our time, attention, and data.
When the message at Woolworths comes up telling me I have earned $15 in rewards, I think: “Oh, that’s $15 you previously overcharged me, then.”
Read more:
When they tell me I have “saved” $1.19 on a packet of Griffin’s Shrewsbury biscuits because I scanned my Everyday Rewards Card, I marvel at the sheer front the company has to make the claim.
Just imagine how uncluttered our commercial dealings would be if the whole boring and manipulative mess of rewards, incentives, bonus buys, specials, sales, and cashbacks were all swept away, and in their place was just fair and reasonable everyday pricing.
Rant over.
I acknowledge that you can come out on the positive side of rewards, especially if you are wealthier and a bigger spender.
But remember, on average rewards work for the businesses that dream them up, not their customers.
Rewards are what businesses want you to be looking at as they have their hand in your pocket.
Nobody ever got rich on maximising credit card rewards, except the banks and credit card companies.
Recently, card rewards have been subject to a form of shrinkflation; the rewards version of going to buy a pot of marmalade, and finding it’s smaller than it used to be.
Sometimes rewards scheme reworkings are a bit more manipulative like the switch made by One.nz from cashback to “phone dollars” that can only be used to buy new phones from One.nz. I saw that tagged with the word “enshitify” on social media in homage to tech journalist Cory Doctorow, who coined the term.
The banks’ credit card rewards schemes have been undergoing enshitifcation as a result of regulation on cap on interchange fees, which banks require retailers to pay them every time you swipe or tap your credit card.
For example, BNZ’s credit card rewards just got about a quarter worse.
Comparing rewards is a bit gruelling. It depends so much on your spending patterns.
Assuming the past is about to repeat, a way to compare card rewards schemes is tot up your last 12 months of card spending, then open up the rewards pages of each of the bank and non-bank credit cards, and work out the value of the rewards you would have earned.
But this is only one aspect of the deal.
Sure, American Express has the best rewards, and Kiwibank lost a lot of customers when it closed down its Airpoints rewards, but which one is accepted more widely?
And, by gosh, Kiwibank’s zero fee, 12.90%, 55 days interest freeZero Visa card is life-enhancingly simple.
In my book, rewards are a cherry on top of a cake. Worry about the cake, not the cherry.
If you carry interest-bearing debt over each month on your credit card, that’s the thing to think about.
Worry about living within your means, paying off your home loan faster, improving your business, contributing enough to your retirement nest egg, or getting your KiwiSaver into the right fund for you, before you worry about card rewards.
- Sunday Magazine