By Samantha Boh

SINGAPORE - The first credit card here to boast social-media features was launched by Citibank Singapore yesterday.

Citibank's Clear Platinum Card will allow users to collect reward points online, in addition to collecting them through expenditure at retail outlets.

To complement it, Citibank also launched "Clear.24.7", an application hosted on its Facebook page.

Through this, Citibank hopes to reach its target audience of 21- to 35-year-olds, who make up more than 1.5 million Facebook users in Singapore.

Ms Jacquelyn Tan, Citibank's Head of Credit Payment Products, said that with the proliferation of smartphones and mobile applications, Citibank wanted to introduce a "new dimension to customers' credit-card experience that would fit in with their lifestyles".

The application will allow card users to gain Clear.24.7 points by "checking in" at specific locations, and "sharing" or "liking" deals.

For six weeks starting today, each Clear.24.7 point will gain a user one reward point, up to a maximum of 5,000 points.

The conversion rate will be reviewed after this period.

Users can also vote for a particular experience and gain, at the end of the month, a 1-for-1 deal involving the top choice under "Clear Deal of the Month".

In addition, users who shop online will be able to gain five points per dollar spent on their Clear Platinum Card.

The card is free for the first year, but an annual fee of $160 will be charged from the second year onwards.

Moving away from traditional paper-based collaterals, Citibank will be engaging card users with mostly online marketing communication via electronic direct mailers, its official website and Facebook page.

According to Monetary Authority of Singapore statistics, the number of main credit-card users in Singapore stand at 6.9 million as of the end of last year.

Visa's Strategic Market Analysis Report for Singapore also showed that the proportion of total card spend attributed to e-commerce grew at a year-on-year rate of 28 per cent from 2010 to last year.

Ms Tan said Citibank is building on the consumer base in the social-media space to give cardmembers the power to customise their card experiences.

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