Niyo Global SBM Credit Card
Keep₹5,000 in an FD buys a genuinely 0% forex Visa that never charges you a rupee to keep.
a year at ₹40,000 a month, after the fee
Skip the arithmetic — the board, ranked → · nothing to sign up for
What it's worth to you, after the fee
Welcome: None published — the KFS carries no welcome benefit and Niyo publishes no sign-up bonus.
Priced on the everyday mix — 30% groceries · 10% utilities · 20% travel · 6% fuel · 34% everything else — with this card's published category rules applied. Plus milestones, minus the fee. No accelerator credit — the ranking model on /compare adds ~20% of spend at the card's best accelerator, so its ₹ for this card reads higher.
How these numbers are computed — and why the rankings show a bigger one →
Spend tiers, milestones and fee waivers included, at our house ₹/point. Portal and category multipliers can push higher — run your exact number →
Pays from the first rupee
At ₹1,000 a month — ₹12,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹100 gross (earn ₹100) against its ₹0 fee = ₹100 net — at or above ₹0 from the first rung we price. The ladder runs in ₹1,000 steps to ₹1,00,000 a month and ₹10,000 steps to ₹5,00,000; figures are rounded to the hundred, and the accelerator is never credited.
3 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants · why it ranks #89
Why #89 Slots immediately behind IDFC FIRST WOW! because it is the same trade — an FD you can place today bought for a 0% forex markup that never renews — with a lower door (₹5,000 against ₹20,000) and twice the earn, but a redemption pipe that ends inside one app.
Niyo prices its own coin and does it three times: "100 Niyo Coins equal ₹10 in value", "2,500 Niyo Coins per referral — worth ₹250", "5,000 Niyo Coins worth ₹500" for a reversed international ATM fee. ₹0.10 is a nominal published rate, not a derived one. What it buys is the constraint: coins spend only against flight bookings and visa services inside the Niyo app, capped at 75% of the transaction, and they die at 12 months.
The take
This is the credit card almost nobody realises exists, because Niyo's famous product is a DEBIT card and this one shares its name. It is a real credit card, issued by SBM Bank India, secured against a fixed deposit from ₹5,000 — and its forex markup is not "low", it is nil. The KFS says so on the row and then says it again in a footnote: "Niyo or SBM Bank doesn't apply any markup on international (forex) transactions. VISA exchange rates are applicable only." Against an Indian market that charges 3.5% as a matter of course, that is the entire reason to carry it, and it is why this desk ranks a secured entry card above cards costing twenty times as much. The rest is honest and small. You earn 10 Niyo Coins per ₹100 on domestic card spend at a nominal ₹0.10 a coin — 1%, twice what IDFC's WOW! pays — but the coins only come off a flight or a visa fee inside the Niyo app, only up to 75% of the bill, and they expire in 12 months. Foreign spend, the thing the card is for, is not in the published earn grid at all. There is no lounge row in the KFS. Your credit limit is 90% of the deposit, and you raise it by opening another FD from the app, not by asking anyone. Cash abroad costs ₹423 + GST or 2.5%, whichever is higher — but the fee comes back as 5,000 coins, up to three withdrawals a quarter. Buy it as a forex instrument and a credit-file starter, and do not expect it to reward you.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
This card is lifetime free. There is no fee due, no renewal to weigh, and nothing to cancel to save.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
nothing due at the anniversary · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹0 — lifetime free
At your spend
₹3,000 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹6,000 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹12,000 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹36,000 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹60,000 a year at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend
Everyday earn plus milestones, with no fee to subtract — the same model as the value panel above, so the two cannot disagree. run your exact spend →
The downgrade
SBM Bank India (Niyo) publishes no document naming a card you can step down to, so we name none — an invented product change is a phone call you would waste. That leaves keep or cancel, and the numbers above are the whole of it.
If you call to cancel
What the bank offers to keep you is the one fact this desk cannot compute. We are collecting those reports — dated, and only in aggregate — before publishing any: an offer one reader was made is not one you are owed. Called about this card? Tell us what they offered →
The desk publishes subscribable .ics feeds for the dates it knows — offer deadlines, devaluations, expiry audits. Your renewal date is not one of them: only your statement knows it.
What's good
- Forex markup is Nil — the KFS row reads "Nil (VISA exchange rates applicable)" and the footnote repeats it
- No joining or annual fee is ever charged: the KFS prints ₹500 on both lines and marks each "waived off"
- FD-secured from ₹5,000 — no income proof, no credit history, and the deposit keeps earning
- 10 Niyo Coins per ₹100 on domestic card spend ≈ 1% at the ₹0.10 Niyo prices a coin at
- International ATM fees come back as 5,000 coins (₹500), up to 3 withdrawals a calendar quarter
Watch out
- The coins are a one-app loop: flights and visa services inside Niyo, capped at 75% of the transaction, and nothing else — no transfers, no statement credit, no cash
- Coins expire 12 months from the date they are earned
- No coin rate is published for INTERNATIONAL spend — the card's own use case earns nothing we can source
- The KFS has no lounge row. Niyo markets lounge access abroad "with international spend criteria", but no quota is published and the Niyo Global lounge benefit a reader will find online belongs to the DEBIT card — so this card opens no doors on our map
- Your credit limit is 90% of the FD, not 100% — ₹5,000 deposited is a ₹4,500 line
- 3% a month, 42.58% a year on revolving credit; ₹150 late payment, ₹150 over-limit
- Cash advance is ₹423 + GST or 2.5%, whichever is higher — the reversal only covers 3 international withdrawals a quarter
- Everything runs through the Niyo app — statements, payments, limits, redemption. There is no branch and no web console
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes Niyo Coins into a programme that publishes an award chart. These points buy catalogue and portal redemptions, not award seats — so this page has no flight to show you, and will not invent one.
what the cards that DO reach a chart can fly — 2,196 corridors priced →
Lounge access
0 of 793 tracked doors
No lounge access. This card opens exactly 0 of 793 tracked lounge doors — board with the crowd, or find a card that doesn't →
Can you get it?
income, age and the route in
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.
There is no underwriting gate. Open the Niyo app, complete KYC, place a fixed deposit of at least ₹5,000 with SBM Bank India, and the credit card is issued against it with a limit of 90% of the deposit. Want a bigger line: create another FD in the app and the limits add up — Niyo's own page puts the ceiling at ₹25 lakh per 30-day billing cycle. Paying the bill from the linked savings account refreshes the limit; paying it out of the FD shrinks it. That makes this, alongside IDFC's WOW!, one of the two routes in India to a zero-forex credit card for someone with no credit file at all.
per the official SBM Bank India (Niyo) MITC — figures marked (community) aren't in the PDF; the issuer won't say · filter the board by what you can get →
The fine print
6 of 7 MITC rows published
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
Effectively lifetime free: the KFS prints ₹500 against each of the two fee lines (primary and add-on, joining and annual membership alike) and marks every one of them "waived off", and Niyo's own product page says "No Annual Fees, Ever". Card issuance is Nil; re-issuance is ₹249. Secured against an SBM Bank fixed deposit from ₹5,000, with a credit limit of 90% of the active FD and a ceiling of ₹25 lakh per 30-day billing cycle — raise the limit by opening another FD in the Niyo app. Minimum amount due is 5% of the total, minimum ₹100, and there is a 3-day grace period after the due date. No lounge row appears anywhere in the document, and no reward or welcome row does either — Niyo Coins are documented on Niyo's own site, not in the KFS.
per the official SBM Bank India (Niyo) MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
What's changed for this card
nothing tracked yet — which is itself a fact
No tracked devaluations or changes yet — this card's history starts here.
Verified against SBM Bank India (Niyo)'s own documents on · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 5 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Key Fact Statement — forex markup "Nil (VISA exchange rates applicable)", ₹500 on both fee lines marked "waived off", minimum ₹5,000 FD, 3%/month interest, ₹150 late payment
- official Niyo's own Niyo Coins guide — 10% Niyo Coins on domestic POS and e-commerce, 100 coins = ₹10, redeemable against flights and visa services up to 75% of the transaction, valid 12 months
- official Secured-card product page — ₹5,000 minimum FD, credit limit 90% of the active FD, ₹25 lakh per 30-day cycle, "Zero Forex Markup", "No Annual Fees, Ever"
- official How the secured card works — lifetime-free framing, limit refresh mechanics, and the international ATM fee returned as Niyo Coins
- official SBM Bank India's Niyo Global page — the issuer confirming the partnership; note this page describes the Visa Signature DEBIT card, not this credit card