How to read a bank dining promo

A bank dining promo is a small contract dressed for a party. The headline is the fun part: half off, a free dessert, buy one and take one. The fine print underneath decides whether that headline is yours tonight.

We read the dining promos of nine banks every night, and every one of them breaks down into the same handful of fields. This piece walks through those fields in plain words, with made-up examples, so you can read any bank’s promo page with the same eyes.

The discount

Most dining promos come in one of three shapes. A percentage takes a share off, like the -50% on our first sticker. A fixed peso amount either takes a set amount off or sets the price of a particular item or bundle, like P99. And buy-one-take-one, written B1T1, gives you a second item when you pay for the first.

Each shape hides a question. With a percentage, ask what it applies to: the whole bill, selected dishes, or only the second item. If the page says “up to”, the number is the most anyone can get, not what everyone gets. With a peso amount, check whether it is money off or a set price, and for which item. With buy-one-take-one, check which item is free; it is often the same item, or one of equal or lower price.

The bank, and the card it needs

Every card deal belongs to one bank, but it does not always belong to every card that bank issues. A promo may be for credit cards only, or include debit cards, or name a single card line. Many promos also name the card networks they accept, such as Visa, Mastercard or JCB.

If your card is not named on the bank’s page, assume it is not included until the bank tells you otherwise. That one habit saves more awkward moments at the counter than any other.

The days

Valid days come in three flavours: every day, weekdays only, or specific days, such as one day a week. A bank might write “Mondays to Fridays”, “every Tuesday” or a list of dates. The example below draws a week as seven squares, with the valid days filled in.

Read the days together with the dates. A promo can run for a whole month and still only work on weekdays inside it. If a promo is limited to certain hours, that also lives in the fine print rather than the headline.

The end date

Every bank promo has a last day, and the end date is usually the clearest line on the page, so it is worth a glance. Check it against the day you plan to go, not the day you read the promo: a weekend plan made on a Wednesday can fall just past the last day.

Where it is valid

A promo can be good at every branch of a restaurant, at a list of branches, or only in certain cities. Banks usually list the participating branches on the promo page itself. If the bank names particular branches, those are the branches to go to, even when the chain has a branch closer to you.

The conditions

Then comes the part people skip. These are the conditions banks commonly attach, in plain words:

• Minimum spend. The bill has to reach a set amount before the promo applies. Check whether that amount is counted before or after service charge, and whether it has to be on a single receipt.
• Dine-in only. The promo does not cover take-out or delivery, even from the same branch.
• Not valid with other promos. You cannot stack it with another discount or a voucher on the same bill.
• A cap per table or per receipt. The discount stops at a set amount, or it can only be used once per table or once per receipt, however big the group.
• Blackout dates. Days the promo does not run, often around holidays, even when they fall on a valid day of the week.

None of these are traps. They are how a restaurant and a bank keep an offer affordable. They just work far better when you know them before you order than after the bill arrives.

Why the same deal reads differently on two banks’ pages

Put two banks’ dining pages side by side and they rarely look alike. Each bank writes its own terms, in its own order and its own words. One puts the valid days in the headline; another lists them deep in the mechanics. One says “minimum spend”, another says “minimum single-receipt purchase”. One shows the end date at the top, another inside a long block of small print.

Even when a restaurant runs a similar promo with two banks, the details can differ: the discount, the days, the branches, the cap. They are separate offers with separate fine print, so read each one on its own. And if the bank’s page and the restaurant’s own post seem to disagree, ask the restaurant before you order.

What we do with all this

We read the dining promos of nine banks every night: BDO, BPI, Chinabank, EastWest, Maybank, Metrobank, RCBC, Security Bank and UnionBank. Our lists, and tara, the map we make, show the same core fields for every deal, the discount, the card networks, the days, where it is valid and when it ends, so a promo from one bank reads like a promo from any other. Every deal keeps a link to the bank’s own page, so the full terms are one tap away. When a deal ends, it comes off.

What we do not do is choose for you. We do not recommend a card or tell you which deal to take, and we are not a bank or a restaurant. Before you pay, confirm the details with the bank or the restaurant: they set the terms, and they have the last word.

A short checklist for the table

• Is my card, or my card’s network, named on the bank’s page?
• Is today a valid day, and is it before the end date?
• Is this branch included?
• Is there a minimum spend, and does our order reach it?
• Is it dine-in only, and are we dining in?
• Can it be combined with anything else we are using?

A handful of questions, asked before the menus come out, and you can order with a clear head.

How we know these fields

We are Jetzets, and we built tara, a map of credit card dining deals. Every night tara reads the public promo pages of nine banks and breaks each promo into the fields above, so we read a lot of fine print. How we check deals shows how that reading works, and where it can still be wrong.