HSBC Live+ card review: what 5% on dining, shopping and entertainment adds up to

The HSBC Live+ is a category cashback card: 5% on dining, shopping, entertainment and Shell or Caltex petrol, 0.3% on the rest. The catch is the minimum. Miss $600 in any one month and the whole quarter drops to 0.3%.

Here's what it pays, the monthly minimum, the quarterly cap, and a worked year you can redo with your own numbers.

The HSBC Live+ at a glance

Figures from the Live+ cashback programme terms (effective 13 March 2026), HSBC's tariff guide and the product page, checked 1 Nov 2026.

How much cashback does the Live+ give?

Clause 4 of the terms pays 5% cashback on eligible purchases at four groups of merchants, once you meet the minimum in clause 5: - Dining: restaurants (5812), fast food (5814), bakeries (5462) and caterers (5811), excluding hotel dining. - Shopping: department stores, discount and variety stores, marketplaces, duty free, clothes and shoes, sporting goods and luggage. - Entertainment: cinemas (7832), streaming and pay TV (4899), digital media (5815) and record stores (5735). - Petrol: Caltex and Shell stations in Singapore.

Everything else that's eligible earns 0.3% (clause 7), alongside the 5% on the four categories. The two don't stack on the same purchase. Clause 6 says that if you miss the minimum, the four categories also drop to 0.3%.

Those four-digit numbers are merchant category codes (MCCs). Each merchant's bank assigns one to the business, and HSBC's terms say plainly that HSBC doesn't choose it. The card reads the code, not the receipt.

Bottom line: "shopping" here is narrower than it sounds. Electronics shops, bookshops, pharmacies and supermarkets aren't on the list, so they earn 0.3%.

So, is the popcorn dining or entertainment?

A popcorn combo is food, bought at a cinema. The card doesn't know you bought popcorn. It knows which merchant charged you and what code that merchant has.

• Popcorn bought at the cinema's own counter is charged by the cinema, so it usually posts under the cinema's code, 7832, which is entertainment.
• Popcorn bought at a café or snack kiosk in the same mall posts under that shop's code, often 5812 or 5814, which is dining.
• Popcorn bought at a supermarket on the way posts as 5411, which isn't on the list at all and earns 0.3%.

For the Live+, the first two give the same answer: both are in the 5% list. What matters more is that the purchase counts towards the month's $600, and that it isn't hotel dining, which is excluded.

Bottom line: if a regular place matters to your sums, check that its cashback shows up as 5% on your statement before counting on it.

The $600 minimum, every month

Clause 5(i) says you need $600 of eligible purchases in each of the three months of a calendar quarter (January to March, April to June, and so on). It's not $1,800 over the quarter. It's $600, three times.

In the quarter your card is issued, clause 5(ii) replaces that with $1,000 over the quarter.

Here's how one weak month changes a quarter. Say the card carries $1,200 of category spending and $1,250 of other spending over October to December, but November's total is only $550:

That one month, $50 short, costs $63.75 − $7.35 = $56.40 for the whole quarter.

Insurance, tax, utilities, school fees, rent and payments through AXS, PayPal or CardUp aren't eligible purchases, so they don't count towards the $600 either.

Bottom line: track the minimum month by month, not quarter by quarter. A month with a holiday or a quiet December is where it tends to slip.

The $250 quarterly cap

Clause 10 caps all cashback at $250 per calendar quarter per card account, the 0.3% included.

At 5%, $250 is reached on $250 ÷ 5% = $5,000 of category spending in a quarter, roughly $1,667 a month. Above that, the extra earns nothing for the rest of the quarter.

Clause 8 works out cashback on each month's total of eligible purchases, rounded up to the nearest cent, and the cashback is credited within two months after the quarter ends. Under the terms, it offsets future charges on the card. Withdraw it as cash, or use it against fees, interest or tax payments? Cannot.

Bottom line: for most people the limit is the monthly minimum, not the cap. The cap starts to matter if your category spending is near $1,700 a month.

Paying overseas

The dining, shopping and entertainment categories aren't limited to Singapore. Petrol is. A restaurant abroad with code 5812 counts as dining. HSBC's tariff guide lists a 2.25% foreign currency fee plus up to 1% charged by Visa, and 1% on purchases converted to Singapore dollars at the till.

A $200 dinner in Kuala Lumpur, charged in ringgit, with the minimum met: $200 × 5% = $10 cashback, against up to $200 × 3.25% = $6.50 in fees. A $200 supermarket bill on the same trip earns $0.60 against the same $6.50.

Bottom line: abroad, the 5% only beats the fee in the four categories.

The annual fee and its waiver

The fee is $196.20 including GST (HSBC's tariff guide). The product page says it's waived in the first year, and from the second year when you spend more than $12,500 a year on the card.

That's about $1,042 a month. Meeting the $600 minimum every month is $7,200 a year, so check whether your total spending on the card also clears $12,500.

The Live+ isn't part of HSBC's Reward points programme: HSBC's Rewards terms exclude Live+ cards issued from 21 June 2024 (section A, clause 2). It pays cashback only.

Bottom line: the $600 minimum and the fee waiver are two different targets.

How it compares on cashback per $1

Category cashback cards, as at 24 Oct 2026, from each bank's terms as Sum's card catalogue reads them:

The Live+ has the lowest headline rate of the four and the lowest monthly minimum. Its quarterly cap, $250, is a little more than the Citi Cash Back's three months of $80. A flat card like the OCBC INFINITY pays 1.6% on nearly everything with no minimum at all.

A worked year

Say Kelvin is 34. Each month he puts on the card $350 of eating out, $200 of clothes and department store shopping, $50 of cinema tickets and streaming, $120 of petrol at Shell, and $500 of groceries and other spending. That's $1,220 a month, so he clears $600 every month. Made-up example.

He spends $1,220 × 12 = $14,640 a year, over $12,500, so the fee is waived. His cashback on everything works out to $450 ÷ $14,640 = about 3.1%.

If his groceries were higher and his eating out lower, the rate would drift down towards 0.3%. If one month fell below $600, that quarter would earn about $11 instead of $112.50.

Bottom line: swap in your own split between the four categories and the rest. The calculator page runs the same sums: HSBC Live+ on the card rewards calculator.

Three things to remember

1. 5% on dining, shopping, entertainment and Shell or Caltex, 0.3% on the rest, and the categories follow merchant codes.
2. $600 in every month of the quarter, or the whole quarter drops to 0.3%.
3. $250 of cashback a quarter at most, paid within two months after the quarter, against card charges.

Ethan's rating

6.0out of 10

Earn rate

• Very low
• Low
• Moderate
• High
• Very high

Effort to earn

• Effortless
• Easy
• Some effort
• Shiong
• Very shiong

Value for the fee

• Way overpriced
• Overpriced
• Fair
• Good value
• Great value

Against other cashback cards

$600 minimum spend a monthCashback cards: the lower the monthly minimum, the higher the rating.

• Bottom
• Below average
• Average
• Above average
• Top

Where it earns

• DiningBonus rate
• GroceriesLow
• TransportLow
• OnlineGood
• TravelLow
• OverseasLow
• Everything elseLow

One person's opinion, from the terms in this review. Your own spending decides what a card is worth to you.

Track it in Sum

Import your card statements. The card optimiser reads each purchase the way the bank's terms do. The trackers show where a card stands against a monthly minimum before the month ends, which is what matters most on a card like this. Each tracker opens into the purchases behind it.

Ethan

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