Compare two credit cards using the same spending basket

Make the basket identical

Start with a normal month of planned spending. Separate domestic purchases, foreign purchases and cash. Record whether each balance will be paid in full or carried. Do not give one card a favourable full-payment assumption and charge interest on the other unless their written conditions actually differ.

Put the evidence next to the number

Use each issuer’s fee guide and agreement. Standard Bank’s FAQ is one source for its own card rules [1]; it cannot establish a competitor’s prices. Show a monthly cost and a first-year cost separately if there are once-off charges. Include the cost of another account only when that account is required for the card.

Value benefits you can actually use

Write the reward cap, eligible categories and redemption conditions alongside your basket. Keep unused points or an unwanted benefit at zero in your calculation. Run a second scenario with lower spending to see whether the conclusion depends on stretching the budget. Explain the trade-off instead of publishing an unsupported winner.

Keep a second comparison without rewards

Run the same spending basket once with usable rewards and once with no rewards claimed. If the conclusion reverses, inspect the eligibility, cap and redemption evidence more carefully. Separate a charge paid immediately from one spread into a monthly average so the cash-flow effect remains visible. Mark every missing field as unknown; a neat table should not hide an unverified price. Keep both issuers’ source dates and product names at the top. If one card requires changing another account, treat that change as a separate decision with its own costs and practical steps.

A calculation you can check

Fictional full-payment example: Card A costs R60 and supplies R25 usable rewards, so net cost is R35. Card B costs R30 and supplies R5, so net cost is R25. This excludes interest by assumption, not by promise.

Questions about this decision