Yeeee another let’s-optimize-the-small-cents rabbit hole. Credit card now.

After hearing it once by Emanuele, a colleague, saying “sheeeet I could have saved 2% if I purchased the forniture for my new house with American Express, over 3k that’s quite a bit”. My cheap AF brain went in the mode “shit I’m missing a huge opportunity, I must spend 5-10 hours to understand what’s the best credit card and exploit this huuuuge opportunity”.

But this was something like six months ago, I fortunately waited a week for the dopamine effect to fade. I processed the fact that American Express (Amex from now) is nowhere close to the acceptance rate of Mastercard and Visa, and it’s just not worth going shops and seeing transactions fail in front of a tired-as-f Aldi cashiers.

This is until Daniele and Riccardo, my ex-flatemates, came up with a screenshot of a 600 euros purchase with a whopping 6 euros cashback on a Mastercard. And here we go again with another dopamine hit. I’m a serious addict.

Now

So let’s see my current status. I’m now using Revolut as only card account I use in shops and online. Their multi-currency card, together with the perfect app has never failed me. When paying in Italy and Switzerland I don’t have to worry about forex commissions, and everything else about their service is free. The perfection until now.

I even went so far to purchase their gray beautiful card. [Please, I’m aware, it’s a worthless piece of plastic. Thank you for letting me notice. But it’s beautiful. Stop judging.]

revolut-shiny-card.jpg

The point here is that Revolut has no cashback for basic accounts, and this is typical for Swiss banks. In this country it seems like the cashback is reserved for credit cards only, meaning that there is no debit card that offers cashback on no-maintence-fee accounts.

p.s. before you ask, Trade Republic, the large digital bank that competes with Revolut is currently not available for residents of Switzerland.

Credit card

Gut gut. So now let’s compare the December 2025 credit card options. These are all the credit cards which are offered at Swiss residents, comparing the cashback for each one. Again, these options are restricted to no-management-fee accounts only.

Card Circuit Cashback
American Express NA* NA*
Certo One MC 1% on 3 favorite merchants • 0.25% on the rest
Swisscard Cashback Visa or MC + Amex (mandatory) 1% on Amex • 0.25% on Visa / MC
Poinz Visa + Amex (mandatory) 1% on Amex • 0.25% on Visa
Migros Cumulus Visa 0.33% in Migros credits
Coop Supercard MC 0.33% in Coop credits

*American Express as circuit has no direct option for cashback cards. You have to pass through a card provider.

All the companies are converging to converge on the same numbers. They have cashback of 1% for Amex, 0.25% for Visa / Mastercard, and 0.33% for grocery stores.

As mentioned before, Amex is not for me. I don’t want to check each store if it is accepted. It’s not worth the effort. → My choice is a Visa or Mastercard which is accepted in the whole world, with a little cashback.

Impact on me

Good, but now let’s see the impact it would have on me monthly. I assume a best case scenario of 1% cashback on all transactions, including physical like groceries, and digital ones like trains and Amazon. Since in Revolut I have a monthly average april to november 2025 of 600 chf-equivalent per month, the 1% would accrue to a whopping 6 CHF.

Let’s put this in perspective:

  • Physical goods. This amount of money per month, would not even buy a full sandwitch in the cheapest bar of Milano centrale central station. [Byw, kind of nice sandwiches. Approved by a starting Marco in endless trips back and forth in Chioggia.]

    bistrot-centrale.jpg

  • Time. If I’d consider the additional hours spend for yearly accounting costs, at my current net hourly rate, I probably wouldn’t inside the cashback returns.

CHF only

Yeeeeeaaah, I might have written until here forgetting a huge detail. From a Reddit comment:

I would advise you to NEVER use regular credit card like Certo or Poinz outside Switzerland. They have an insane bad currency exchange rate. Instead use Neon or Revolut

Searching a bit more carefully, there is no equivalent to multi-currency credit cards like Revolut, since in Switzerland credit cards are CHF-billed. Gemini and gpt both strongly agree on this.

So, this additionally means:

  • I would need to think each time I make a transaction if it’s in CHF or EUR and use the appropriate card, and
  • My considerations about savings should be adjusted to around 300 CHF since I would’t be using use the card in Italy :(

Conclusions

In conclusion, the cashback alone is not a good reason to have a credit card. Under these conditions I would worry about “Am I paying in CHF, or EUR? Should I use the credit card or Revolut?”. Just not really my thing to save ~1 CHF per month.

The only benefit that’s coming up to mind is to have a separate credit card for car rental deposits. Buuuuuut I’m tired of writing. Ye, I know, it’s a few sentences, but still took 3+3+something hours somehow. I just want to publish. The car rental deposit is another analiziz paraliziz spiral I will get in, in the future.

Thanks. Bye.

P.S. A wise me a few days ago:

CHFC first. One hugh point to not forget is the the 2.5% yoy expected return I have on CHFC (standard five percent yoy, then split in two). Always favor long term gains compared to the short term savings.

Shit if I was wise to calculate that.

P.S.S. Nah, for now I’m not explaining what it means. I might in the future. Bye for real now 🧡.