Fair Warning | The Benefits of the Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer AMEX Platinum are Greatly Exaggerated

Happy New Year! This article serves as a mini prelude to my upcoming 2026 Airline Miles Strategy article, which I am carefully crafting, so stay tuned to Refined Points for that.

For the longest time, the Maybank Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer American Express Platinum credit card, or KrisFlyer AMEX Platinum for short, has been the backbone of serious airline miles chasers in Malaysia. It is easy to see why. Best in class local MPR rates, direct conversions to KrisFlyer, and a relatively low minimum annual income requirement of RM60,000.

If you want a quick refresher on KrisFlyer MPR rates in Malaysia, be sure to visit my KrisFlyer Ultimate Guide below.

The KrisFlyer Ultimate Guide

As a matter of fact, in my several articles writing about or mentioning the KrisFlyer AMEX Platinum on Refined Points, I have always stated that the card can be a spectacular tool if and only if it is utilised properly.

However, I stopped short of recommending this credit card outright, and I omitted it from my 2025 Airline Miles Strategy article, despite holding it myself. This is a card I have had for several years, and it has practically gone unused for a long time. With a new year now upon us, and plenty of influencers and bloggers recommending this credit card to their respective followers, it is a good time to play devil’s advocate and say it plainly:

The benefits are greatly exaggerated.

Make no mistake. With an industry leading 0.4 miles per ringgit on local spend, the highest attainable local miles per ringgit rate if we put aside the American Express Platinum Charge Card, it is no surprise many people only look at what is on the surface.

But beneath all the glamour, there are several obvious, and less obvious, flaws you need to understand before you anoint this card as your daily driver.

AMEX Acceptance in Malaysia

The number one issue is painfully simple. American Express acceptance in Malaysia is still nowhere near the level of Visa and Mastercard.

American Express itself states it has more than 130,000 merchant locations in Malaysia. That sounds like a lot until you zoom out and compare it to the size of Malaysia’s overall card acceptance footprint, which sits in the high hundreds of thousands of payment terminals based on Bank Negara Malaysia reporting.

Put differently, Visa and Mastercard acceptance feels like “almost everywhere that takes cards,” while American Express acceptance often feels like “it depends,” and that is a very different reality when you are trying to rack up miles consistently.

This is also made more obvious by the way American Express operates locally. In Malaysia, Maybank is effectively the key player behind the American Express ecosystem, both from an issuing and merchant acquiring perspective.

In the real world, this translates to a very specific behaviour pattern among cardholders. People start bending their lives around acceptance. They purposely spend at merchants they would not have chosen otherwise, purely because the terminal accepts American Express. You see this most clearly in affluent areas like Bangsar and Mont Kiara, where acceptance tends to be better because the merchant mix skews more premium.

Source: Reddit

But let me be blunt. Spending more money on the same product or service just to earn more miles is a ridiculous strategy.

A typical haircut might cost RM30 to RM50 at most neighbourhood barbers. Go to a place that accepts American Express in an affluent area and that same haircut can easily cost double. If you overpay by RM50 just to force an American Express transaction through, you earn an extra 20 KrisFlyer miles at 0.4 miles per ringgit. Even if you value KrisFlyer miles generously, you are still effectively paying tens of ringgit to earn something worth around a ringgit or two.

That is not “optimising miles.” That is lighting cash on fire and calling it strategy.

Higher AMEX Fees Abroad

Now, despite the spectacular local MPR and online MPR on the KrisFlyer AMEX Platinum, the overseas MPR rate leaves much to be desired.

With 0.5 miles per ringgit on overseas spend, it sits relatively well among cards in its annual income range, but it still loses out badly when you compare it to many stronger travel cards in the RM100,000 annual income range that offer meaningfully higher overseas earn rates.

In plain English, it makes little sense to consolidate overseas spend on the KrisFlyer AMEX Platinum if you have access to better overseas earn options.

It gets worse when you add fees into the equation. Maybank’s published fee schedule indicates that foreign currency transactions converted by American Express apply a 2.5% conversion factor, while Maybank Visa and Mastercard foreign currency transactions are typically structured around a lower network component plus the bank’s administrative fee, commonly totalling around 2.25%.

So yes, on Maybank’s own pricing, American Express conversion costs can be higher than Visa and Mastercard for overseas spend. That difference looks small on paper, but it is still a step in the wrong direction, especially when the earn rate is not market leading to begin with.

Blind Loyalty to KrisFlyer is a Handicap

Let me start off by putting my foot down and saying this: Earning KrisFlyer miles instead of Enrich miles is almost always the right move.

With overinflated Enrich award redemptions, inconsistent hard products, and what many consider to be a genuinely poor regional and long-haul business class seat, limited by the slow rollout of the A330-900neo relative to what is out there today, there is little benefit to locking yourself into Enrich miles, with the sole exception of some regional ASEAN redemptions.

Singapore Airlines Saver Awards Post-Devaluation November 2025

Oneworld redemptions via Enrich can also be done, but the value is usually barbaric, and that is a story for another day.

Nevertheless, I will caution that the flaws which come with cards like the Hong Leong Bank Visa Infinite, which enforces direct Enrich conversions, and the KrisFlyer AMEX Platinum, which enforces direct KrisFlyer conversions, are fundamentally similar.

You are locked. Your miles do not sit as flexible bank points that you can move around between programs. They go straight into one frequent flyer program, and that is it. This is the opposite of what you get with CIMB, UOB, HSBC, RHB, Standard Chartered, and practically every other competitive airline miles card in Malaysia, where the entire advantage is flexibility.

And flexibility matters more than ever today.

Singapore Airlines Saver award seats are some of the most sought after redemptions in the world. KrisFlyer members from virtually all around the world compete for the same Saver seats, and it should not surprise anyone that Saver availability can feel increasingly tight even many months in advance.

Saver Awards to Tokyo in December 2026 are completely booked out

My own close friends in Singapore are well aware of this reality, and many have normalised booking Advantage awards to get the trip done.

There's a decently detailed article by The MileLion on this exact topic, as well as a Reddit post incase you're bored and love reading comments like me.

As Malaysians, our ability to earn KrisFlyer miles is also nothing like our Singapore counterparts. They enjoy stronger earn ecosystems, better targeted campaigns, and in many cases simply higher spending power. Thinking you are playing on the same stage is extremely foolish.

The best ways to overcome this gap are to be better at searching for award seats, to be flexible with dates and routings, and to accept that sometimes you will need to pivot.

Which brings me to the simplest point of this article: Do not lock yourself to one program.

I have never and will never recommend a cobranded card, or any card that hard locks you into a single frequent flyer program, as the foundation of your entire miles strategy.

A Reminder: CIMB and UOB's Airline Conversion Partners

It is precisely why I have channelled a large portion of my redemptions through Cathay Pacific Asia Miles for more than 8 years. It lets me access multiple strong oneworld carriers on a single platform without being forced into the inflated redemption oddities you find when you try to do the same thing through certain programs.

Another angle people rarely talk about is what you are actually buying into when you stockpile KrisFlyer miles, which is effectively Star Alliance access.

Yes, Star Alliance is massive, but from a Malaysian perspective, the list of truly relevant, consistently attractive long haul options is surprisingly short. In practice, you are mainly looking at Thai Airways, EVA Air and ANA. All three can deliver genuinely strong soft products, especially on service and catering, and ANA in particular can be excellent when you catch the right aircraft.

But in terms of hard product consistency, Star Alliance generally trails what you can access more reliably through oneworld. Qatar Airways QSuites, Japan Airlines latest business class seats, and Cathay Pacific’s best cabins are simply a tougher benchmark, and it is one of the reasons I primarily focus on the Oneworld alliance.

Final Thoughts

The KrisFlyer AMEX Platinum is still an excellent card. But it is excellent in situational use cases, not as your daily driver.

If you have a predictable set of merchants that you already spend at and they accept American Express, and you are intentionally building KrisFlyer miles for a specific redemption plan, this card can be a very efficient tool.

Are they really?

The moment you start changing your lifestyle, paying more just to force acceptance, or relying on it as your primary card across Malaysia and abroad, the “0.4 miles per ringgit” headline quickly becomes a fantasy number.

In 2026, realistic earnings matter more than barebones miles per ringgit ratings. And that is exactly the lens Refined Points will continue to use.