I have heard that it was possible to buy a car in Malaysia with a credit card. 4 years ago when I purchased my Bezza, I was told that I am allowed to use my card but will have to pay a surcharge of 1.5%! I of course decided against it.
A month ago, I purchased another new Perodua car, this time a Myvi as I felt that Bezza is a little noisy on the highway and the mileage is not so low after nearly 4 years of highway driving (for work purposes).
I asked around and was told that Perodua Sentral does accept FULL payment of the car using Credit card. I quickly went down to the branch and viola, yes they do! And the better news is they also accept AMEX card, this means that I can swipe my Maybank 2 Card AMEX with them.
I happened to have a credit limit of RM60k so swiping the card once for the card is sufficient. If you have a lower credit limit, you might want to split into 2 or 3 different cards - I understand that Perodua will happily assist you in this. I looked into the detail T&Cs and realized that now on weekend spends, you'll be given 5% rebate up to RM50/month with no treatpoints. So if I swipe my card for the purchase of the car on weekends, my cash incentive/rebate is RM50 only! What if I swiped the card on weekdays? I calculated that I will be getting ~250,000 treatpoints (5x points x RM50,000). And how much I get out of it in $$? If I redeem the points via merchant like SenHeng, it's 500 points to RM1. Which means that it's about RM500 of value!
SenQ/SenHeng credit card points redemption at store
1 week before I got my car, I went and swipe the full amount. After few days, the points came in and I went to SenHeng and bought myself a few things using part of the points. It went through flawlessly and I literally paid nothing for them! So, if you're one of the car buyers who like to buy cars with cash like me, do consider using Credit card to pay in full or at least check with the showroom on what is the maximum allowed without any charges! It's definitely more worth it than paying it with solid cash. But make sure you don't forget to redeem them as points get devalued often and it has gone down the drain over the years that I owned all types of credit card.
The amount charged to my card
