SBI Card MILES ELITE
KeepSBI finally built a real miles card — the partner list is the point.
What it's worth to you — net annual value
Welcome: 5,000 Travel Credits on ₹1L spend in 60 days
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
MILES ELITE is SBI Card's first serious answer to Atlas and TravelOne: Travel Credits that move 1:1 into Air India Maharaja, BA Avios, Flying Blue, Aeroplan, Asia Miles and a dozen more — about 25 partners in all, the widest 1:1 airline list on any Indian bank card. The catch is the engine: 1% on general spend is weak, so this card only sings on travel spend (3%) and the ₹12 lakh milestone's 20,000 bonus credits. Pair it with a stronger everyday earner and use it as your transfer hub.
What's good
- ~25 transfer partners; 1:1 to Maharaja, Avios, Flying Blue, Aeroplan, Asia Miles
- 6 Travel Credits per ₹200 on travel — 3% effective
- 20,000 bonus credits at ₹12L; fee reversal at ₹15L
- 1.99% forex; up to 15 domestic lounge visits/yr (1 per ₹1L spend) + 6 international (Priority Pass)
Watch out
- Travel Credits expire in 24 months; redemptions only in 2,000-credit multiples
- Earn capped at 15,000 Travel Credits a statement month (≈₹15L general / ₹5L travel spend) — the excess earns nothing
- Fuel, rent, utilities, insurance, wallets and education earn zero
- 1% base earn — everyday spend belongs elsewhere
- Emirates, Turkish, United, JAL, Saudia, Ethiopian and Air Arabia transfer at a weaker 2:1
- Portal redemption halves the value to ₹0.50/credit
- Priority Pass complimentary for the first 2 years only
What earns, what doesn't
- Fuel · excluded MCC 5172/5541/5542/5983; 1% surcharge waiver ₹500–₹4k txns, cap ~₹250/cycle — community
- Rent & property management · excluded MCC 6513; SBI Card also levies ₹199+tax processing fee per rent txn — community
- Wallet loads · excluded MCC 6540, 6541
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · excluded MCC 4900/4814/4899/9399 — full exclusion, no partial earn
Where the miles go
Ratios read card points : partner miles — 2:1 means 2 points become 1 mile. Never the other way round.
Lounge access
Gate: Priority Pass complimentary for the first 2 years only
Opens 583 of 644 tracked lounge doors across 244 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.
SBI Card publishes no income cutoff for MILES ELITE, and the application is old-school paper-heavy: expect three months of payslips or an ITR alongside PAN and address proof, with a 750+ score the commonly reported comfort zone. An existing SBI banking or SBI Card relationship is consistently reported to smooth approval — neither is required, but this issuer visibly prefers the devil it knows.
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 ₹4,999 + GST. Card replacement ₹100–₹250. One of only two cards here under 2% forex. SBI does not publicly disclose Miles Elite income cutoffs.
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%.
- 30 Jun 2026Amex India cuts Etihad Guest as an MR transfer partnerMR points transferable to Etihad Guest Miles → Etihad Guest transfer route closed for good
Membership Rewards points could move to Etihad Guest only until 30 June 2026, 11:59 PM IST — after that the route is dead, part of a global Amex-Etihad wind-down already hitting the UK, US, Canada and Germany. Neither side explained why, but Etihad's generous Etihad Guest sweet spots (especially A380 First redemptions) were a favourite MR outlet for Indian cardholders, and this closes one of the better ones with no replacement announced. Points already transferred are unaffected — only future transfers stop.
- 1 Jun 2026AU, YES and IndusInd points open transfers to Maharaja ClubAU/YES/IndusInd points locked in closed loops → Maharaja routes: IndusInd Tiger 1:1 (Pinnacle 2:1, Legend 4:1); AU Zenith+ 3:2, other AU cards 6:1; YES Marquee/Reserv 15:1
Three banks joined Air India's transfer roster at once — and the ratios are the whole story. The lifetime-free IndusInd Tiger gets the only honest 1:1 (capped 25k/month); AU Zenith+ lands a genuinely good 3:2 that triples what AU points were worth; everything else — Pinnacle 2:1, Legend 4:1, the AU 6:1 crowd, YES at a punitive 15:1 — is a decoy dressed as a partnership.
- 2 Apr 2026Axis purges Marriott, Accor and Qatar from its transfer list overnightMarriott, Accor, Qatar Airways at Group A ratios → All three gone; BA, Finnair, Vietnam Airlines added at 2:1
With zero advance notice — despite Axis's own MITC requiring 30 days — EDGE Miles/Rewards cardholders woke up on 2 April 2026 to find Marriott Bonvoy, Accor Live Limitless and Qatar Airways Privilege Club stripped from the transfer partner list. The three replacements (British Airways Executive Club, Finnair Plus, Vietnam Airlines LotusSmiles) land in the worst tier: 2:1 on Atlas instead of the usual 1:2, and 5:1 on Magnus/Reserve instead of 5:2 — so you need up to 4x the points for the same miles. This guts Atlas and Magnus's best hotel-transfer sweet spots in one stroke and pushes the whole EDGE ecosystem toward airline-only redemptions.
- 1 Apr 2026Maharaja Club gets cheaper awards and faster creditingHigher award costs; slow points crediting → Domestic awards from 1,500 pts; credited within 2 hours
A rare buff. Air India's post-merger programme drops domestic award flights to 1,500 points, cabin upgrades to 4,000, credits Star Alliance miles within two hours, and eases Platinum to 60 flights. The transfer target Indian card geeks care about actually got better.
- 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.
- 1 Sept 2025Taj InnerCircle–NeuPass expands to Shangri-La, oneworld and moreLargely Taj-only earn and benefits → Reciprocal perks with Shangri-La Circle, MyMillennium, oneworld
India's marquee hotel loyalty programme grows up. Taj InnerCircle–NeuPass adds marketing tie-ups with Shangri-La Circle and MyMillennium and a oneworld partnership, while Copper/Silver tiers earn 4–5 NeuCoins per ₹100. More reasons to keep spend inside the Tata Neu orbit.
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 Product page checked 11 Jul 2026
- official MILES rewards T&C PDF checked 13 Jul 2026
- official Card e-kit T&C PDF (15,000 TC/month cap; 2,000-TC transfer multiples; PP 24 months) checked 13 Jul 2026
- community CardExpert review checked 11 Jul 2026
- community CardInsider review (Mastercard + RuPay networks) checked 11 Jul 2026
- community Magnify — approval reality: no published cutoff, docs list, SBI relationship helps checked 11 Jul 2026
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