Earn 30,000 Asia Miles with the RBC Cathay Pacific Visa Platinum Visa

There is a current 30,000 Asia Miles sign up bonus promotions with the RBC Cathay Pacific Visa Platinum Visa. Note that the regular RBC website does not have this offer. The only advertise the 15,000 bonus offer instead. There is also a slight change in the features of the credit card which we will point out in this post.

Highlights

But first, below are the highlights of the credit card:

• $120 annual fee
• $50 annual fee for each supplementary cardholder
• Earn 30,000 sign up bonus miles (if you apply between May 16, 2016 and July 15, 2016)
• Earn 2 miles for every $1 CAD spent on Cathay Pacific tickets purchased on the Cathay Pacific website
• Earn 2 miles for every $5 HKD spent on in-flight purchases (minimum purchase of $500 HKD)
• Earn 1.25 mile for every $1 CAD spent on foreign currency spending
• Earn 1 point for every $1 CAD spent on all other purchases
• Complimentary first-year Green Tier membership into The Marco Polo Club for primary cardholder

Changes

First of all, you may have noticed that the annual fee is now $120 instead of $150 previously. Furthermore, the supplementary cardholder fee has dropped from $75 to $50 now. So that’s a very welcoming change. The $120 annual fee puts it more in line with many of the other Aeroplan co-branded credit cards offering similar benefits.

The sign up bonus is broken down as follows:

• Earn the first 15,000 bonus Asia Miles upon approval
• Earn the additional 15,000 bonus Asia Miles after spending $7,500 in the first 3 months

So after meeting the spend requirement, at worse you will have 37,500 Asia Miles to work with, assuming you do not take advantage of any multiplier bonuses.

Speaking of which, the newest addition to the bonus spending ratios is the foreign purchases. A 0.25 bump may not seem like a lot, but it is still a 25% increase. It just has to be a purchase made outside of Canada and classified by Visa’s “Merchant Category Code” where “Country” is not equal to Canada.

Conclusion

Keep in mind that Cathay Pacific is a member of the Oneword alliance. However, miles expire 36 months after they were deposited. I am not a fan of this expiry policy. But if you do fly with Oneworld often enough and can redeem at least once every 3 years, then it could be worthwhile.

Either way, this credit card definitely increased in value in my eyes. If you are a fan of Cathay Pacific and Asia Miles, this is definitely a must-have in your wallet.