What is The Best Credit card in Switzerland for 2024?
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A credit card is a powerful personal finance tool. But it is only good if used correctly. Unfortunately, many people do not use credit cards correctly.
The first important thing is to choose a card with no annual fee. Contrary to what credit card companies want you to believe, getting a free credit card and smaller cashback is often better than an expensive card with a lot of cashback. It is essential to research and compare with your actual credit card spending.
But many options make finding the best credit card in Switzerland challenging. So, this article explores the different credit card options available in Switzerland.
I assume you carry no credit card debt and always pay your balance in full. Otherwise, it is an entirely different issue!
What do I use my credit card for?
To choose the best credit card for your situation, you need to know how you use it. I will use my case as an example. So, what do I purchase with my credit card?
I use my credit cards for all my shopping in Switzerland. As long as the shop accepts credit cards, I use one. Except for tiny amounts when I have the cash on me. Why? The reason is simple. I try to maximize my cashback bonus.
I also use them for all my online shopping, mainly for online shops and travel. If there is no fee for using a credit card, I use it. Again, this is to get some money back. The only case I am more careful about is when I cannot pay in CHF. In these cases, you pay a penalty fee for foreign currency transactions. We will discuss this in detail later in the article.
Never use your credit card to withdraw money! They all have terrible fees for withdrawal. Your debit card is here to withdraw money. And there is no bonus on the money you withdraw. Therefore, there are only disadvantages.
I have checked my credit card statements for the last 12 months and summed up my expenses. I have spent around 15,000 CHF on my credit card, of which about 5,000 CHF were spent in foreign currencies. I will use this as the basis to compare different credit cards.
Keep in mind that I am not a big spender. We do not spend that much overall, and only a few expenses can be paid with credit cards.
And since we are talking about credit cards, it is necessary to mention that you should never carry a credit card debt! You will pay substantial interest rates on any credit card debt. Always pay your balance in full at the end of the month. There is no such thing as a credit score in Switzerland. Do not try to optimize your credit.
PostFinance MasterCard as an example
We should have analyzed my credit card before I realized it was terrible. We will take this card as an example (not a great one!).
I had a MasterCard Standard card from PostFinance. I paid 50 CHF per year for it. The cashback bonus was 0.3%. That means that for every 1000 CHF I spent, I got 3 CHF back. I also had to pay 1.2% for transactions in foreign currencies (USD and EUR for me).
I was with PostFinance for a long time. And I used the credit card they offered me without really comparing. Not comparing offers is a mistake that many people make.
Here is how much it cost me for one year:
- Bonus: 15’000 x 0.3% = +45 CHF
- Annual fees: 50 CHF = -50 CHF
- Foreign fees: 5’000 x 1.2% = -60 CHF
- Total: 45 – 50 – 60 = -65 CHF
I know I should compute the bonus before the transaction fees. But it makes a 50-cent difference. So it is better to keep it simple ;)
So, each year, my previous credit card cost me 65 CHF. All my cashback money was paying my fees. I would have been better off using a free card with no cashback. We should see if we can do better with other credit cards.
To break even with this card, you must spend 16’666 CHF per year and not use it for foreign fees.
Other PostFinance credit cards
PostFinance offers other cards as well. All their Visa offers are the same as their MasterCard offers, so we focus on the MasterCard offers:
- MasterCard Gold: For 90 CHF a year and with 0.5% cashback. This card would cost me 75 CHF a year.
- MasterCard Platinum: For 250 CHF a year and with 0.5% cashback. This card would cost 235 CHF a year.
Unfortunately, I cannot have better fees by changing to another offer from PostFinance. So, we must look at other banks and their credit card offers.
Other bank credit cards
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Since I already had the best fit at PostFinance, we should see how it compares with other banks. I only consider real cashback. Real cashback is cash you are sure you can spend. Most of the other bonus systems are too dependent on your shopping style.
Here are the cheapest cards we can find:
- UBS Basic MasterCard: No fees (for 24 transactions per year), no bonus, and 2% foreign fees: cost 100 CHF per year
- UBS MasterCard Standard: 100 CHF per year, no bonus, and 1.75% foreign fees: cost 187.50 CHF per year
- Credit Suisse MasterCard Standard: No fees (for more than 10000 CHF per year), no bonus, and 2.5% foreign fees: cost 125 CHF per year
- Viseca MasterCard Silver: 100 CHF per year, no bonus, 1.75% foreign fees: cost 187.50 CHF per year
- Valiant MasterCard Silver: 100 CHF per year, no bonus, 1.75% foreign fees: cost 187.50 CHF per year
All these cards are more expensive than the PostFinance card! And these are only the cheapest ones. There are some much more expensive cards out there. For instance, the UBS MasterCard Platinum would cost me 587.50 CHF annually.
Again, there is no better choice for me here.
Now that we have considered banks, we can look at alternatives. And we will see that the best credit cards are not with banks.
Best credit card – Cembra Certo One
A great Swiss credit card with excellent cashback (up to 1%!), very flexible, and with a good mobile application.
- No yearly fee
- 1% cashback in three shops
In the past, the Cembra Cumulus Mastercard was the best card in Switzerland. However, Migros stopped its partnership with Cembra and started its card.
But now, Cembra provides its card: The Cembra Certo One. This great card offers 1% cashback in three shops (the user can choose) and 0.3% cashback in all other shops.
I do most of my shopping at three shops. I estimate I will get an average of 0.8% cashback from this card.
Here is how much this card will cost me for one year:
- Bonus: 15’000 x 0.8% = 120 CHF
- Annual fees: 0 CHF = -0 CHF
- Foreign fees: 5’000 x 1.5% = -75 CHF
- Total: 50 – 0 – 75 = 45 CHF
My card would earn me 45 CHF a year. Compared to the 65 CHF I pay now, this is 110 CHF saved each year! This saving is not a lot, but I’d rather keep the money myself!
I have a review of the Certo One card on my blog.
Highest cashback – Swisscard American Express
If you want more cash back, another option is the Swisscard American Express Mastercard. This card is also free and offers you a 1% cashback. And they even have a 5% cashback for the first three months.
1% is the highest cashback for a free card in Switzerland. Even some non-free cards do not have higher cashback. And this cashback will be counted towards your bills at the end of the year.
But there is a catch! In Switzerland, American Express is not as well supported as MasterCard and Visa. However, I found out that you can still use it in some major places:
- All gas stations
- Aligro, Migros and Coop shops
- Most large shops, but not Aldi and Lidl
- You can use it on a few online shopping websites
If you want to optimize your credit card usage, the Swisscard Amex is the best cashback credit card! However, this would mean having two credit cards instead of one.
For more information, I have an entire article about Swisscard cards.
Neon for Foreign Currencies
All the services you need to pay, save and invest, in a neat package, with extremely good prices!
Use the poorswiss code to receive 10CHF!
- Pay abroad for free
- Invest with great fees
When you travel, you must pay in foreign currencies with your credit card. With most credit cards, this is very expensive. Fortunately, there are some ways to do that for free.
Neon offers free purchases abroad with their Mastercard. You could use this credit card only for foreign currencies. It could be excellent to save on all the currency transaction fees. In my case, this saves me about 100 CHF per year.
Another idea is to use a prepaid card such as Revolut. They have about the same exchange rate surchage as Neon.
However, there are problems with Revolut. First, topping up the card is not instant. It is a regular bank transfer. It takes at least one working day. I do not want to worry about topping up the card whenever needed. I could consider moving significant money to cover small regular fees in foreign currencies.
Another problem with Revolut is that it is expensive during the weekend. You need to read the small prints because not everything is free with a Revolut card. Finally, there were many issues with Revolut, where accounts were closed. So, use Revolut at your own risk. For me, Neon is now the best payment card for foreign currencies.
To help you choose, I have an article about Neon vs Revolut.
In both cases, you may still have to get another card in some cases. Indeed, both Neon and Revolut are prepaid cards. Some services do not allow prepaid cards.
Travel hacking credit card?
Finally, the last option for a credit card is to use it for travel.
You can read many stories about people traveling for free using their credit card bonuses. These are mainly stories in the United States.
Switzerland’s best travel points credit card is the Swiss Miles & More MasterCard. This credit card will give you one award mile for every 2 CHF spent. You will also get 1000 award miles every year. All this is for 120 CHF per year. If we run the computation once again:
- Bonus: 15’000 x 50% = 750 + 1000 = 8500 miles
- Annual fees: 120 CHF = -120 CHF
- Foreign fees: 5’000 x 2.5% = -125 CHF
- Total: -120 – 125 = -245 CHF
The credit card would cost me 245 CHF per year and give me 8500 miles. My most expensive flight is to Hong Kong, which costs around 800 CHF. I need 70000 miles to get it for free, which I would get after 8.23 years.
At this point, I would have spent 2000 CHF in fees. Not a very good deal! Even including the 20’000 welcome miles, it would not be attractive. I do not spend enough on my credit card for this to be interesting. And the foreign fees are way too high.
Note: You can earn more points with the Swiss Miles & More American Express. But it is not well supported in Switzerland. And even with that, it is not worth it.
Do I need cashback?
No, not really. Getting cashback on your credit card is just a small optimization. If you are a reasonable spender, like me, it will not make a massive difference in the long term.
On the other hand, you need a free credit card and a way to cut foreign exchange fees! It is essential to cut your expenses!
With my level of spending, I make between 50CHF and 100CHF per year on cashback. So, cutting my credit card spending is more important than optimizing my cash back. Now, it would be interesting for you if you could spend more on your credit card (with cashback, so no foreign currencies).
So, if you want to keep it simple, use one free credit card! It is perfectly fine. I currently use three credit cards, but I am strongly considering getting rid of my Amex. The benefits are minimal overall. And it means one more card in my wallet and choosing between cards.
For me, the best single card would be either using Neon directly or the Certo One Mastercard. Neon has the advantage of allowing you a single card for every purchase (domestic and foreign), while the Certo One Mastercard has the advantage of being a credit card (emergency money and sometimes prepaid cards are refused).
So, it is up to you to decide how far you want to optimize!
Conclusion
The best credit card in Switzerland is the Cembra Certo One MasterCard. This card saves me 40 CHF yearly compared to my previous credit card from PostFinance. Of course, this is only the best credit card for me! If you spend more (or less), it may be different.
If you want higher cashback, you can use the Swisscard American Express. However, you will need two cards because many shops do not take American Express.
As this article shows, you cannot do much with Switzerland’s credit cards. The best you can do is minimize your fees. Take a credit card without an annual fee, and also minimize spending in foreign currencies.
If you can use a credit card in a shop, use it! If you can use a credit card online without extra fees, use it! Do not think of traveling for free using your credit card unless you spend enormous amounts of money on it. In this case, you are probably not on the correct blog.
One other thing you can do is to change your credit card often. A lot of services are waiving the fees for the first year. And a lot of services are also increasing cashback in the first year. Or giving you a welcome package. If you do the math and be careful, this can save a bit more money.
However, be very careful! And do not forget to cancel the card before the second year. And there could be some minimum time for the contract. I think it is not worth the trouble.
If you want to keep it simple, I recommend using a Neon Mastercard or a Certo One Mastercard (but not for foreign currencies). For more information, read my Review of Neon and my review of the Certo One Mastercard.
If you want to go all-in like me, you should read about my credit card strategy! This strategy will minimize your fees (the most important) and also maximize your cashback. But this will require you to have several cards!
What about you? What credit card do you use? Do you have any tips to maximize cashback?
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What do you think of the Poinz cashback credit card?
For me, it’s just the same as the cashback cards but more difficult to use the poinz and more of a meme.
Really?? You can potentially get extra cashback if you use poinz i.e of you store your payment card on poinz and with it shop with a few shops listed on the app locally i.e with steg you get 1% cashback as is with any card and then the extra bonus with whatever card youre using, if i.e using the amex card witu poinz or cashback card the cashback would be 2% in total, but this is only limited to the shops listed locally in the poinz app, still, better than the cashback card.
Also apparently with poinz you get your cashback credit within a few days and you can either buy gift cards with them which are pretty limited or wait till you have accumulated over a 100 chf then you can withdraw them to your bank account. With the cashback cards, the cashback is paid out in a yearly cycle, theres no other option. Poinz is generally better but because poinz only gives visa a 2nd card, I also got the cashbsck card with mastercard mainly because mastercard seems to get better offers, namely the autosense migrol fuel offers that seem to come every year.
Hi Dan,
You may indeed get a little more points, but as you just explained, it’s limited to some shops, which makes it more complicated. For me, it’s really not worth it.
You just need to store the credit card once in the poinz app, the extra cashback on top of the credit card is then automatically processed with the credit card cadhback. Its quite easy, I have been using poinz for a few weeks and the cashback actually become available every month (betterthan cashback cards) also, you could use the cashback to buy giftcards such as i.e zalando and get 5% cashback, the only slight downside is, to cashout is only possible for 100 chf or more amounts.
Thanks for sharing your experience with Poinz, Dan!
Hi there, great article.
I’d like to add that on top of the foreign fee rip off, Swiss credit card usually have the worst possible exchange rate.
I just experienced a crazy 5.5% hike on my latest plane tix purchase (forex + foreign fee).
I hold Wise & Revolut, guess I won’t be using Swiss credit cards ever again.
Hi Trish,
That’s a good point. The foreign fee is only the visible tip of the iceberg. The exchange rate is generally difficult to find out before hand. 5.5% is quite insane.
Except for Neon debit card, I would not use any swiss card for anything but CHF.
Good luck never paying these dumb fees again!
Hi Poor Swiss,
I have just ordered my cumulus mastercard. In the form that they have sent by post, they say “collect cumulus points all over the world”. I thought cumulus was for Migros Switzerland. Am I missing sth?
Thanks,
CD
Hi CD,
I think it simply means that if you pay abroad with your card, you will also get 0.33% cashback. But you should not do that since the fees on the card for paying abroad are quite bad.
Hello Mr. Poor Swiss,
Thank you for this nice comparison. Just a quick question, when is the cashback credited? Once per year at the end of the year? And the same with the first 3 months of 5% cashback?
John
Hi John,
With the Amex, it’s once a year. I don’t know if the data is the same for everybody or if it depends on when you created the card. But I receive my cashback around May.
I just ordered the amex, I think I use the one in switzerland and when it is not accepted to use the visa that is still given to me together with the amex (even if it has a much lower cashback), I almost never shopping at migros, I would have no advantages. For online purchases on Swiss sites, are there any additional charges with amex that you know?
Hi Gianluca,
There are no extra charges on Amex that I know of. But not every site allows it, compared to Visa and MC which are well supported.
And it indeed makes sense if you never shop at Migros. And some cashback is important, but perfection is not that useful :)
Thank you for the great article. I own a Viseca Silver Mastercard. While it is very expensive, and their “cashback” program is not a real cashback one (I never used those points, it’s very difficult to optimize the return value), they come with interesting insurances. Not a big fan of insurances, but their best-price guarantee saved me more than 1000.- when I purchased my kitchen appliances, which corresponds to about 10 years worth of annual fees.
What is your opinion on this kind of insurances? Do you have suggestions about alternative ways we can get similar insurances when we go for a free card that does not include them?
Hi Andrea,
It’s true that some cards have good insurance. However, I believe in most cases, one does not need these insurances. Often, they are very limited in what they cover and sometimes even redundant with a Swiss mandatory insurance.
It’s true that you can be lucky (kind of!) and use them, but most people should not use credit cards for insurance. I only take on insurance for something I would not be able to cover myself.
Thanks for sharing your experience!
Hi,
Great article. So useful for the cashbacks. However I was wondering which credit card is better for renting a car inside and outside Switzerland and having extra card with my partner?
Once we got stuck in Spain where we had reserved a car, they didn’t give us the car because my partner has post debit card and they didn’t accept my revolut card.
Does Neon will be considered as credit card to reserve a car? (it’s a debit card right?) Is the cumulus master card acceptable for such car reservation payments inside and outside Switzerland?
We are not big spenders just like you so is there any cheaper solutions just to use for this kind of payment?
Hi Achilles,
In Switzerland, both the Mastercard and the Amex will be good to rent cars.
Abroad, none of them will be good but they will both work.
Unfortunately, Neon is very unlikely to work, it’ a debit card.
I would personally use the Mastercard and pay the foreign conversions fees.I don’t see a better way at this time, unfortunately. This is the weak point of my strategy.
Thanks for this post!
What’s your strategy for the cases when you need to pay in foreign currency and the payment needs to be made via a credit card? For example, this is the case when booking some hotel or renting a car at some of the companies. One cannot use a prepaid debit card to make those bookings, that means that you cannot use Revolut. On the other hand, Cumulus credit card has quite substantial foreign fees.
Hi Victor,
I do not have a strategy for these cases. This happens so rarely for me, that I will simply pay the foreign fees on either my Cumulus or my Amex.
But I would first try with my Neon card, it may simply be accepted. There are some cases where debit cards are accepted.
Small question:
Given the fact Revolut or Neon card are not accepted for crypto purchases, would these credit card (cumulus, or swisscard cashback american express) work on platform like Coinbase or Gemini and get the cashback?
Thank you :)
Hi,
That’s a good question. I think they should work, but this would only be good if you pay no fees and if you pay in CHF. Otherwise, they will be terrible.
Are you sure that the Neon card is not accepted? I would have thought it would work.
Some great tips! Have you done any specific reviews of travel cards? I love Revolut for travel
and use it to withdraw money for free (just a bit tricky with the CHF 200 max per month, but it usually works to manage this by using card wherever possible and bringing a bit of cash to exchange in the beginning). Does NEON offer the same? Or is there another bank with a better option for withdrawing cash abroad? Especially trying to avoiding foreign ATM fees since that can get pricey, even with Revolut…
Hi Eli,
I have done a review of Revolut and a comparison of Revolut and TransferWise.
But I currently use Neon for my travel, I prefer having a Swiss card (and fewer cards).
Neon is great for paying abroad but not for withdrawing abroad. I do not know any free card that is good for withdrawing money abroad.
DKB
Exactly, yet unfortunately DKB will change their plan, scrap the free Credit Card and replace it with a Prepaid Credit Card