Banks return cashback: how much you can earn

Almost immediately after the start of the war, all banks in Ukraine froze cashback loyalty programs on their cards.

It’s not out of greed: international payment systems have temporarily canceled the payment of internal interbank rewards for card transactions, which are the source of cashback payments to cardholders.

But since the middle of last year, interbank commissions began to return. Because of this, at the end of the year, bankers began to renew cashback and accumulate rewards for purchases. Financial market experts admit that Ukrainians are very responsive to this service, although they often do not understand how to choose the best offer.

Restrictions everywhere

In fact, funding sources for cashback programs are very limited. The interbank interchange commission is very modest, so banks use various tricks to avoid losses when paying fees to customers.

The most common practice is to limit the categories for which cashback is credited. Most banks allow you to choose only a few categories each month, thus controlling the amount of their costs. In addition, the very need to regularly select categories reduces the number of cashback users. Many simply forget to do this, and someone does not know about the existence of such an option. For the bank, such clients are a real find. Because they don’t have to pay a reward, other, more active users can offer up to a 10% reward for certain categories. True, usually such percentages are set for not the most popular purchases, such as souvenirs or flowers, which are not bought every day. In such conditions, it is also not possible to earn much in cashback.

And if so, most banks limit the maximum amount of monthly accrual. No matter how much the client collected, more than 500 hryvnias will not be credited to him.

Better less is better

Of course, there are exceptions. Recently, a small Unex Bank, owned by two Czechs Tomas Fiala and Ivan Svitek, restarted its own cashback program. This bank took a different path: they didn’t offer huge interest rates, but they almost completely abandoned restrictions. 1% cashback is credited here for all purchases from 1 hryvnia, including on the Internet and abroad. When buying food, detergents, clothes, shoes, children’s products, medicine, fuel and other products and services, the cardholder always gets back 1% of the amount spent. There are also exceptions, but they are few and far between and all of them are clearly indicated in the rules in the form of special MCC codes, moreover, they are mostly related to unique operations, such as the purchase of motor homes and snowmobiles.

At the same time, there is no maximum amount limit here – how much you earn, you receive too much. You don’t have to choose categories every month or activate cashback every time, just connect it once online. And payment of the card fee will happen automatically every month.

Two bank cards participate in the program: credit UnexCard 2.0 and payment UnexSmart. According to the first, you can also receive up to 100 thousand hryvnias of a credit limit with a grace period of 62 days, and the bank will accumulate cashback even for purchases made at the expense of credit funds.

And with the UnexSmart card, which, by the way, can be obtained free of charge in a few minutes online without visiting branches, the bank also charges interest on the deposit of the client’s money stored on the card – up to 8% per year in hryvnia. Other amenities include free card replenishment at the two largest non-bank terminal networks, commission-free withdrawals from own ATMs and cash desks, mobile replenishment and commission-free utility bill payments in the application.

The bank ensures that you can get a free UnexSmart card in less than 10 minutes. All you need is a smartphone with the Diya app installed. The instant card must be linked to a Google Pay or Apple Pay wallet, and then you can use it like a regular plastic one. If necessary, the bank will issue a plastic, you can pick it up at the nearest bank branch.