IndiGo SBI Card
Downgrade1.5% on IndiGo tickets, 0.5% on your life — the renewal bonus is what actually pays the fee.
What it's worth to you — net annual value
Welcome: 2,500 IndiGo BluChips on the first transaction within 60 days; 2,500 BluChips again on every renewal
How these numbers are computed →
Spend tiers, milestones and fee waivers included, at our house ₹/point. Portal and category multipliers can push higher — run your exact number →
The take
SBI's IndiGo co-brand earns a modest 3 BluChips per ₹100 on 6E bookings (1.5%), 2 on hotels and travel, and just 1 on general spend — the very same rate on IndiGo fares as the ₹799 Axis retail card, at nearly double the fee. The card itself is not where the value sits; the fee case rests entirely on the bonuses — 2,500 BluChips on the first swipe, 2,500 again on every renewal, and milestone chips at ₹2L/₹4L/₹6L can float the ₹1,499 for a regular flyer. What you don't get is optionality: unlike SBI's own MILES range, these points never transfer to an airline partner — they die in an IndiGo cabin at ₹0.50 apiece. A downgrade for anyone who isn't leaning hard on the renewal and milestone chips.
What's good
- 3 BluChips per ₹100 (1.5%) on IndiGo App/Web bookings — more once IndiGo loyalty-tier chips stack
- 2,500 welcome BluChips + 2,500 on every renewal — the fee-offset engine
- Milestone BluChips at ₹2L / ₹4L / ₹6L (up to 7,500/yr)
- 4 domestic lounge visits a year (1/quarter, ₹50k prior-quarter gate)
- Mastercard or RuPay — RuPay variant links to UPI
Watch out
- 0.5% general earn; the IndiGo rate is only 1.5% (3 BluChips) — no better than the ₹799 Axis card on 6E fares
- BluChips redeem only for IndiGo flights — no transfer partners, unlike SBI MILES
- 3.5% forex markup
- ₹1,499 fee with no spend waiver — leans on the renewal bonus to justify itself
- Fuel, rent, utilities, government, wallet and insurance earn nothing
What earns, what doesn't
Base 1 BluChip/₹100; hotels/lodging 2; IndiGo flight bookings 12 (6%). SBI publishes the exclusion set explicitly — utility, government, rental, fuel, gaming/cross-sell and insurance MCCs earn zero. Mastercard or RuPay.
- Fuel · excluded Zero BluChips — in SBI's published exclusion list
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero BluChips — in SBI's published exclusion list
- Wallet loads · excluded Zero BluChips — cross-sell/wallet in SBI's exclusion list
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · excluded Zero BluChips — in SBI's published exclusion list
per SBI Card T&C (community-sourced) · rank every card by spend category →
Lounge access
Gate: ₹50,000 spend in the prior quarter unlocks that quarter's visit
Opens 76 of 662 tracked lounge doors across 42 airports — see the full map →
Can you get it?
The cutoffs and the actual route in — not the "apply now" button, the door that opens.
Direct application — no invite list, no banking relationship required.
per the official SBI Card MITC — figures marked (community) aren't in the PDF; the issuer won't say · filter the ranking by what you can get →
The fine print
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
Fee ₹1,499 (₹1,769 incl. GST), no spend waiver. Forex 3.5% and age 21–70 per BankBazaar/CardInsider. Mastercard or RuPay network. APR (SBI standard ~3.5%/mo tier), late-fee slabs and cash-advance follow SBI Card's standard MITC — not separately machine-verified for this co-brand; verify before quoting.
per the official SBI Card MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
What's changed for this card
Full tracker →Devaluations and buffs that touch this card directly, its issuer, or the points and programs it earns and transfers to.
- 10 Jul 2026BluChip ↔ Accor ALL ratios surface — 6:1 in, 3:2 out, live 13 JulyCorridor announced Apr 2025; no ratios published for 15 months → 6,000 BluChips → 1,000 ALL points (6:1); 3,000 ALL → 2,000 BluChips (3:2); live 13 Jul 2026
India's first airline↔hotel points corridor finally has numbers: ratios spotted on the Accor ALL site ahead of the 13 July joint launch. 6,000 BluChips buy 1,000 ALL points — a respectable 60% of value retained at house values, making Accor the best BluChip exit that isn't an IndiGo seat. The reverse leg (3,000 ALL → 2,000 BluChips) torches 81% of ALL's fixed stay value; use it never. And the fantasy of resurrecting the dead Axis EDGE→Accor route through BluChips dies at this ratio: even inside Axis's intro window the chain recovers just 30%.
- 18 Jun 2026Axis adds IndiGo BluChip to the EDGE transfer rosterNo IndiGo route from EDGE Miles or Reward Points → Group B: Miles 2:1, points 5:1 (intro 2x better till 17 Aug)
Two months after gutting the partner list, Axis adds one back: IndiGo BluChip, at the new-partner ratios (1:2 intro on Miles until 17 August 2026, then 2:1; points 5:2 intro, then 5:1). Lifetime-valid BluChips on India's biggest airline is genuinely useful — at the intro ratio. After that, do the maths before you move anything.
- 10 Jan 2026SBI Card splits domestic lounges into tiers, adds entry feesUniform domestic lounge list, free swipe-in access → Set A/Set B lounge tiers by card, plus ₹2–25 entry charges
From 10 January 2026, SBI Card sorts its domestic lounge network into a Set A (top cards like Club Vistara SBI Card, Apollo SELECT) and a broader Set B (PRIME, Pulse, Titan SBI Card and others) — and bolts on a non-refundable ₹2 authorization charge plus a ₹25 validation hold on every visit. It's marketed as an expansion since more airports are covered, but the fine print is a two-tier system with new friction at the gate, right after SBI had already pulled complimentary air accident insurance six months earlier.
- 1 Nov 2025SBI adds 1% on third-party education and wallet loadsNo fee on education / wallet loads → 1% fee via third-party apps
Pay tuition straight to the college and you're fine; route it through CRED/Paytm and SBI now clips 1%. Wallet loads get the same treatment. Another door on manufactured spend quietly shut.
- 15 Jul 2025SBI Card pulls free air accident insurance from its top cards₹50L–₹1Cr complimentary air accident cover on top cards → Cover discontinued entirely, no replacement offered
SBI Card Elite, Miles Elite, Miles Prime, Prime and Pulse all lost their complimentary air accident insurance on 15 July 2025 — cover that ran as high as ₹1 crore on the top-end cards. No like-for-like replacement was offered; it's a straight benefit removal that quietly thins out what used to be a genuine differentiator for SBI's premium travel lineup versus HDFC and Axis.
- 9 Apr 2025IndiGo BluChip and Accor ALL agree two-way points conversionNo airline↔hotel points corridor in India → BluChip ↔ ALL two-way conversion agreed; ratios TBA
India's first airline–hotel loyalty pact: IndiGo BluChip and ALL – Accor Live Limitless commit to points sharing, co-branded loyalty and seamless two-way conversion. The conversion is expected to finally go live in July 2026 — and the unpublished ratio decides everything. If BluChip→ALL lands near 2:1, the Axis EDGE Miles intro window (1:2 to BluChip till 17 Aug 2026) quietly resurrects the EDGE→Accor corridor Axis killed on 2 April 2026 — at up to 90% of the old value.
- 15 Apr 2024SBI Card kills reward points on rentRent earned reward points → MCC 6513 excluded — zero points
After 15 April 2024 no SBI card earns on rent, from SimplySAVE to Aurum. The rent-MCC exclusion is now industry standard; SBI just made it explicit and total.
- 1 Jul 2023SBI kills reward points on rent across its co-brand cardsRent payments earned normal Reward Points → Rent payments earn zero Reward Points
Effective July 1, 2023, SBI Card cut off reward-point accrual on rent payments across a wide swath of its co-branded lineup — Aditya Birla, Apollo, BPCL, the metro cards, Fabindia, IRCTC and Ola Money SBI Cards all lost the category in one stroke. Rent-via-credit-card had been one of the last easy manufactured-spend levers on SBI's ecosystem; this closed it a full nine months before rivals followed with their own rent crackdowns.
Go deeper
Sources
Every fact on this page is checked against these documents — the issuer's own paperwork first. Spot something stale? The PDF wins, and we re-verify.
- official IndiGo — SBI co-brand loyalty partner page checked 21 Jul 2026
- community CardInsider — ₹1,499 fee; base card earns 3 BluChips/₹100 on IndiGo App & Web (2 hotels/travel, 1 all-other), 2,500 welcome/renewal, milestones ₹2L/₹4L/₹6L, Mastercard/RuPay, 3.5% forex checked 21 Jul 2026
- community BankBazaar — welcome, earn split (3/2/1), 4 domestic lounges (₹50k gate), age 21–70 checked 21 Jul 2026
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