Questions and Answers

Goo day
I am a first year student in South Africa at the University of Cape Town, while I actually live 1200 km north near Johannesburg.
I actually discovered that I can pay my university fees as well as boarding fees with a credit card. That would be much more than ZAR 120 000 in this year alone, which is a lot of spend I think in South Africa.
I would like to maximize the spend on this in order to maybe pay for a few flights home a year between CPT and JNB. I would like to know the expert’s opinion on what card would be the best to get? Is there a “magic formula” or template I can use in order to see how good a certain card is.
The options available in SA is quite massive. I would list a few here:

Diners Club : [URL]https://www.dinersclub.co.za/[/URL] (One can buy flights on Mango with this)
American Express : [URL]https://network.americanexpress.com/za/en/homepage/[/URL]
Ebucks : [URL]https://www.ebucks.com/web/eBucks/[/URL] (Some people say one can get discounts on Kulula and Emirates with it, but I am not sure if the bank costs cancels the discount out.)
Nedbank Greenbacks
Absa Rewards

The only airline specific ones are :
SAA Voyager Nedbank Card : [URL]https://www.nedbank.co.za/content/nedbank/desktop/gt/en/info/campaigns/saa-voyager.html?cmpid=psea:goo:car:saavoyager:gsn:nat&gclid=Cj0KEQiA_KvEBRCtzNil4-KR-LIBEiQAmgekF742-JTilMIUoL2Oo4DfZnvAOUxhtjoNQZOfErRwLZ0aAnj78P8HAQ[/URL]
Barclays BA Card : [URL]http://www.bacard.co.za/bacard[/URL]
Avios Card : [URL]http://www.avioscard.co.za/avios[/URL]

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Given the details you provided, BA might be the best airline program to work with, even though their award chart is distance based and charge high fees for awards, depending on the airline and route. CPT-JNB is just under 800 miles, meaning 7500 Avios for a one way award in economy. I’m not sure what SAA’s award chart is like but I dont think it’ll beat BA’s rate.

Therefore, the best card of the bunch might be the Barclays BA card, which earns 1 Avios for each R7,50 worth of spend. The earning sucks but is better than the Avios card, which is 1 Avios for each R10 of spend (though double avios at certain merchants). The Amex cards transfer to BA but it’s 2MR points for each Avios point, which means 1 Avios for each R10 of spend. However, if you got the Amex Platinum card, their accelerated earning equates to 1 Avois per R6,67 spent. While that is the best earn rate, The Amex Platinum card also has high fees, so that’s something to take into consideration as well.