Google Pay Flex SBI Card
KeepSBI and Google's fully digital co-brand — the card lives inside the Google Pay app, and so does everything it pays you.
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: Welcome gift worth ₹500 in the Google Pay app, plus 500 Stars — a rupee each — on payment of the joining fee
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 →
Breaks even only by erasing its fee at ₹9,000 a month
At ₹9,000 a month — ₹1,08,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹400 gross (earn ₹400) against a fee of ₹0 — the ₹499 is waived, the spend having cleared ₹1,00,000 a year = ₹400 net — the first rung at or above ₹0. 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 #667
Why #667 Priced at last, and the number is small: 0.4% in a unit that never touches the card account. Stars are a rupee each by SBI's own clause, so there is no spread to hunt — what there is instead is a one-year fuse, a 1,500-a-cycle ceiling, and a balance held in Google's app rather than the bank's. Hold it for UPI on credit, not for the earn.
The take
This is the first Indian credit card built to be operated from someone else's app. SBI Card and Google launched it on 29 July 2026 as part of Flex by Google Pay, on RuPay and Visa, and the RuPay variant links to UPI — which is the actual product idea: a credit line you spend through the QR code you were already scanning. Application, statement, repayment and rewards all sit in Google Pay rather than on sbicard.com. The fee is ₹499 to get and ₹499 a year to keep, and SBI's Key Fact Statement reverses the renewal outright if you put ₹1,00,000 through the card in the preceding year — a bar low enough that most people who actually use it as a daily card will never pay twice. What you get for it is a welcome gift worth ₹500 in the Google Pay app plus a bonus on paying the joining fee, and a rewards engine that pays in "Stars". Read the Stars clause before you decide what that is worth: they are credited to your Google Pay account rather than to the card, they expire after a year, they are capped at 1,500 a statement cycle, and SBI's own terms say they cannot be moved into any other loyalty programme. That is not a points card. It is a well-built rebate on UPI spending with a Google-shaped ceiling on it, and the honest way to judge it is against a cashback card, not against anything that flies.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
This card reaches break-even by ERASING its fee, not by out-earning it: the waiver is the decision.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
₹499/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹499/yr
The waiver ₹1,00,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹8,333 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹9,000 a month — ₹1,08,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee, and it gets there by erasing the fee at the waiver rather than out-earning it.
At your spend
₹2,400 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹9,600 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹18,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹18,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹18,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
Everyday earn plus milestones, minus the fee — the same model as the value panel above, so the two cannot disagree. run your exact spend →
Your copy of this card
You hold this card.
Kept on this device, in your browser. It is never sent to us, never synced, and nothing else on the site reads it yet.
The downgrade
SBI Card 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.
What has changed under this card
- 23 Sep 2026 Axis EDGE brings Accor back, drops ITC, and adds Cathay, Miles & More and Hilton a program these points reach
- 28 Aug 2026 Axis more than doubles its DCC markup — 3.5% generic, but Olympus and Magnus get their own rates a program these points reach
- 28 Aug 2026 Priority Pass stops opening Indian domestic lounges on every Axis card a program these points reach
We price what is in force today — a change that has not happened yet is not in these numbers. the full archive for this card →
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
- ₹499 a year, reversed in full if you spend ₹1,00,000 on the card in the preceding year — SBI's Key Fact Statement prints the waiver as a fee-table row, not an offer
- Welcome gift worth ₹500 in the Google Pay app, plus a bonus credited on payment of the joining fee
- RuPay variant links to UPI, so the credit line is spendable at any UPI QR — the reason the card exists
- The whole card lives in Google Pay: apply, track, repay and redeem without opening SBI's app or site
- Outstanding balances convert to EMI, and other banks' card balances can be transferred in on EMI
Watch out
- Everything it pays you is credited to your GOOGLE PAY account, not to the card — closing the card does not hand that balance back, and SBI's terms say it cannot be moved to any other loyalty programme
- 0.4% is the real steady-state rate — 2 Stars per cumulative ₹500 at a rupee a Star, and 0.2% if the card goes a cycle without ₹100 of spend
- Stars expire after a year, and are capped at 1,500 a statement cycle no matter how much you spend — ₹93,750 of spend at the 8X rung before the earn simply stops
- The headline multipliers are funded by Google Pay directly and SBI's own T&C calls them an introductory offer, subject to change
- Nothing is earned on rent, jewellery, wallet loads, government payments, education, insurance, or financial-institution transactions — seven whole MCC blocks, plus every EMI and standing instruction
- No lounge access: the card appears in neither Set A nor Set B of SBI's Airport Lounge Access page
- 3.5% foreign-currency markup — SBI's reduced-markup list names AURUM, ELITE, PRIME NRI Secured, IndiGo SBI Card ELITE, Tata Neu Infinity and the MILES range, and this is on none of them
- Interest runs to 3.75% a month (45% a year), and rent payments carry a flat ₹199 processing fee
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes Google Pay Stars 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 →
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹1,00,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹499 fee. A different question from the one above — earning points and counting toward a threshold are separate rules, and issuers write them separately.
Not published. SBI Card states what the Google Pay Flex SBI Card earns, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver — the ₹1,00,000 bar. We won't guess it from the earn table or from a sibling card: Axis published three cards' rules on one day and all three lists differed. If you hold this card and have it in writing from the issuer, send us the document and we'll source it.
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?
the route in — no cutoffs published
The cutoffs and the actual route in — not the "apply now" button, the door that opens.
Not confirmed on sale — the issuer still documents this card but we could not confirm it is open to new applications. Treat any application path with care.
Through the Google Pay app rather than through SBI. SBI Card's own catalogue entry carries no apply button for this card — `isOnline` reads "no" on the product record, and the only call to action is "SEE BENEFITS" — because the application journey is inside Flex by Google Pay. The card is a July 2026 launch and is being rolled out through the app, so availability is a function of what Google Pay offers your account.
SBI Card publishes no income or age cutoffs for this card. Blank means blank — we don't invent numbers to fill a grid.
per the official SBI Card 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
5 of 7 MITC rows published
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
MITC fee row verbatim: "Google Pay Flex SBI Card 499 499 (Waived off on annual spends of Rs.1 Lakh or more in the preceding year)" — the same ₹499 in year one and every year after, which is why the card carries no separate joining fee. Add-on cards free; card replacement ₹100–₹250. Rewards are Stars, fixed by the card's own terms at "1 Rewards point = 1 Star = 1 Re.", earned at 1 Star per cumulative ₹500 base and 2 Stars once ₹100 was spent in the previous statement cycle, capped at 1,500 Stars a cycle and expiring one year from accrual. Rent, wallet loads, jewellery, insurance, school fees, government payments and financial-institution transactions are excluded by MCC. The 4X and 8X milestone tiers are, in SBI's own words, "offered by Google Pay directly … an introductory offer and is subject to change".
per the official SBI Card MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
What's changed for this card
8 dated changes
Devaluations and buffs that touch this card directly, its issuer, or the points and programs it earns and transfers to. Every one is dated here; the tracker carries each one's before → after and the write-up.
- 23 Sept 2026Axis EDGE brings Accor back, drops ITC, and adds Cathay, Miles & More and HiltonAccor and Marriott off the grid since 2 April 2026; Club ITC live; no Cathay, Miles & More or Hilton → Accor live at the punished rates; ITC removed; Cathay, Hilton and Miles & More live; Marriott still gone
Axis's own Travel EDGE terms, re-read 25 September 2026, already show the grid that went live on 23 September. Accor ALL is back, and not at the old Atlas 1:2: EDGE Miles convert at 2:1 (Olympus 1:2) and EDGE Rewards at 5:1, with Magnus for Burgundy at 5:2 and only Burgundy Private still at 5:4. Club ITC is off the table. Three partners are new. Cathay Asia Miles sits on that same punished grid. Hilton Honors is the ordinary one: EDGE Miles 1:2, EDGE Rewards 5:2, Burgundy 5:4. Lufthansa Miles & More is the exception on Atlas, which converts 1:1 there while every other standard airline on that card is 1:2; the EDGE Rewards side of Miles & More is the ordinary 5:2. Marriott stays removed. Qatar Privilege Club was already back. Flying Blue, Air India and Qantas moved into Group A, which is the capped group. The Axis Rewards credit card's Amex network is advertised as joining-fee and annual-fee nil for a limited period; there is no separate Amex variant on this board, so that offer is not modelled as a fee change.
- 28 Aug 2026Axis more than doubles its DCC markup — 3.5% generic, but Olympus and Magnus get their own rates
- 28 Aug 2026Priority Pass stops opening Indian domestic lounges on every Axis card
- 3 Aug 2026SBI drops Etihad Guest from the MILES transfer table — the last SBI door into the programme
- 25 Jul 2026Qatar Avios quietly returns to Axis at the punished grid
- 1 Jul 2026PhonePe SBI SELECT BLACK stops paying on UPI outside PhonePe
- 1 Jul 2026PhonePe SBI PURPLE stops paying on UPI outside PhonePe
- 18 Jun 2026Axis adds IndiGo BluChip to the EDGE transfer roster
Every SBI Card change we've dated → 19 events since 1998, 13 of them nerfs — worst year 2025.
Verified against SBI Card's own documents on · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 4 of them, each with the day we read it
- official SBI Card's own product record — the ₹499 joining and renewal lines, the ₹1 lakh fee reversal, the welcome gift and the Stars milestone ladder
- official The card's own Terms & Conditions booklet — clause 11's Stars programme, the exclusion table, the one-year expiry and the clause sending every Star to a Google Pay account
- official Key Fact Statement — the ₹499 fee row and its ₹1 lakh waiver, the 3.5% foreign-currency fee and the 3.75% monthly interest rate
- official Airport Lounge Access — the card appears in neither Set A nor Set B, so it opens no SBI lounge door