Reliance SBI Card
Keep₹2,250 of Reliance vouchers and 2.5% on AJIO — provided you never pay by UPI.
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: Reliance Retail voucher worth ₹500, plus a book of discount vouchers SBI books at ₹3,200 — delivered within 30 days of the first-year fee clearing
Priced on the everyday mix — 30% groceries · 10% utilities · 20% travel · 6% fuel · 34% everything else — with this card's published category rules applied: it earns nothing on fuel here, so that spend is dropped, not paid at the headline, and stops pacing milestones and the waiver. 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 ₹300 gross (earn ₹300) against a fee of ₹0 — the ₹499 is waived, the spend having cleared ₹1,00,000 a year = ₹300 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 #255
Why #255 The base Reliance card is a JioMart and AJIO rebate wrapped in a fee that waives at ₹1 lakh — real value for a Reliance household, and a quarter of a percent for everybody else.
Closed-loop, and the booklet says so in its own heading: "Reward Redemption – Closed loop redemption only into Reliance Retail Voucher". The points "can only be redeemed against the Reliance Retail Vouchers only" and "cannot be exchanged for cash or credit or used to obtain cash advances, or used against payment for any charges incurred on the SBI Card". Four points to the rupee, floor and ceiling, and they expire 24 months from accrual.
The take
This is the base rung below Reliance SBI Card PRIME, and for a household that already buys its groceries, clothes and phones inside the Reliance ecosystem it is a straightforwardly good ₹499 card. Ten Reward Points per ₹100 at AJIO and JioMart is 2.5%; five per ₹100 at the other Reliance Retail chains and on dining and movies is 1.25%; and the voucher ladder pays ₹500, ₹750 and ₹1,000 as your Reliance Retail spend crosses ₹25,000, ₹50,000 and ₹80,000 — ₹2,250 in a year, on top of the ₹500 welcome voucher. The fee reverses at ₹1 lakh of total spend, so the steady-state cost is nothing. Three things to hold in mind. The voucher ladder is gated on spend at Reliance Retail specifically, not on what you put through the card. Paying by UPI at a Reliance store drops you to one point per ₹100 — the accelerator is card-rails only. And the points are contractually closed-loop: they become Reliance Retail vouchers or they become nothing, with no cash, no statement credit and no airline anywhere in sight.
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
₹700 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹1,400 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹2,800 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹8,500 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹14,100 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
- 3 Aug 2026 SBI drops Etihad Guest from the MILES transfer table — the last SBI door into the programme issuer-wide
- 31 Mar 2026 SBI kills both Etihad Guest co-brands and force-swaps holders into MILES issuer-wide
- 10 Jan 2026 SBI Card splits domestic lounges into tiers, adds entry fees issuer-wide
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
- 10 Reward Points per ₹100 at AJIO and JioMart online — 2.5% at four points to the rupee
- ₹500, ₹750 and ₹1,000 Reliance Retail vouchers as annual Reliance Retail spend crosses ₹25,000, ₹50,000 and ₹80,000
- ₹500 Reliance Retail welcome voucher, delivered within 30 days of the first-year fee clearing
- ₹499 renewal reversed at ₹1 lakh of annual spend
- 5 Reward Points per ₹100 at other Reliance Retail chains and on dining and movies
Watch out
- Pay by UPI at a Reliance store and you earn 1 Reward Point per ₹100, not 5 or 10 — the accelerator is card-rails only
- The three vouchers need spend AT RELIANCE RETAIL, not total card spend — ₹80,000 of it for the full ₹2,250
- Points are closed-loop by contract: Reliance Retail vouchers only, never cash, never statement credit
- The 5X on dining and movies caps at 5,000 Reward Points per statement cycle, then drops to 1 per ₹100
- Accelerated in-store points are matched on Reliance Retail's own merchant IDs — if a store's ID has not been shared with SBI, the points do not accrue
- Fuel and wallet loads earn nothing; rent stopped earning on 1 Apr 2024 and government payments on 15 Jun 2024
- No lounge access at this tier, and 3.5% forex
- Points expire 24 months from accrual; a voluntary closure leaves 30 days to redeem, any other closure forfeits them
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes SBI Reward Points 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 →
What earns, what doesn't
7 sourced rules · 5 pay zero
Base 1 Reward Point per ₹100 at four points to the rupee = 0.25%. 10 per ₹100 at AJIO and JioMart online (2.5%), 5 per ₹100 at other participating Reliance Retail stores and on dining and movies (1.25%). Two traps live in the booklet: accelerated in-store points are matched on Reliance Retail's own merchant IDs rather than on MCC, and a UPI payment at a participating store drops to the base 1 point per ₹100.
- Fuel · excluded Zero points — MCC 5172, 5541, 5542 and 5983; the 1% surcharge waiver on ₹500–₹3,000 (max ₹100 a statement cycle) is all fuel gets
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero points from 1 Apr 2024 (MCC 6513), named on this card by name in its own e-kit; SBI's MITC adds a ₹199 processing fee per rent transaction
- Wallet loads · excluded Zero points on e-wallet loads (MCC 6540, 6541) since 1 Jul 2020, and they carry a 1% fee above ₹1,000 from 1 Nov 2025
- Government / tax · excluded Zero points from 15 Jun 2024 — MCC 9399 and 9311, named on this card by name
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 Reliance SBI Card earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver and the milestones — 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?
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.
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
7 of 7 MITC rows published
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
Fee ₹499 to get and ₹499 to keep, reversed on ₹1 lakh of spend in the preceding year. SBI calls that same single charge a "Joining Fee" in the welcome clause and an "Annual Fee" in the fees block — one charge, two names. Redemption is closed-loop into Reliance Retail vouchers, never cash or statement credit. UPI at a Reliance store earns the base rate only. Points expire 24 months from accrual; 30 days to redeem after a voluntary closure.
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.
- 3 Aug 2026SBI drops Etihad Guest from the MILES transfer table — the last SBI door into the programmeSBI Card Travel Credits transferred 1:1 into Etihad Guest, one of eighteen airline partners in §3 of the MILES rewards T&C. At the ₹1/partner-mile anchor that was a full-value exit, and it was the only route left after the two Etihad Guest SBI co-brands were retired. → No Etihad route at all. The MILES rewards T&C now lists seventeen airline partners and Etihad is not one of them — the word does not appear anywhere in the seven-page document. Every other SBI partner survives at the same ratio.
SBI Card's own MILES rewards T&C, re-fetched on 22 August 2026 and carrying a 3 August 2026 ModDate inside the PDF, has one fewer airline in it than the edition this desk read on 2 August. The deletion is provable from the numbering rather than from absence alone: the table's first seven rows are unchanged (Air Canada 3, Air France-KLM 4, Air India 5, British Airways 6, Cathay 7), and every row from position eight onward has moved up exactly one — Thai from 14 to 13, Qantas from 17 to 16. Position eight was Etihad Airways / Etihad Guest / 1:1. All twenty-four other partners we carry, airline and hotel, are still there at the same ratios, so this is Etihad being dropped and not SBI narrowing transfers. The timing matters more than the ratio. SBI phased out the Etihad Guest SBI and Etihad Guest SBI Premier cards from December 2025 and reissued holders onto MILES products, and the transfer route was what made that migration survivable — a Premier holder who had spent six years earning Etihad miles could keep feeding the same account through Travel Credits. That is now closed, and India's remaining pipes into Etihad Guest run through BOBCARD's Etihad co-brands, not through SBI. If you hold SBI Travel Credits earmarked for an Abu Dhabi business seat, they are Aeroplan, Flying Blue, Avios or Maharaja points now. ON THE DATE: SBI publishes no notice and no cut-off. The date here is the day the desk read the change out of SBI's own document; the PDF's internal ModDate puts the edition at 3 August 2026, which is the earliest day we can prove, not an announcement.
- 1 Jul 2026PhonePe SBI SELECT BLACK stops paying on UPI outside PhonePe
- 1 Jul 2026PhonePe SBI PURPLE stops paying on UPI outside PhonePe
- 31 Mar 2026SBI kills both Etihad Guest co-brands and force-swaps holders into MILES
- 9 Mar 2026Paytm SBI Card stops earning on school and education spends
- 9 Mar 2026Paytm SBI Card SELECT stops earning on school and education spends
- 10 Jan 2026SBI Card splits domestic lounges into tiers, adds entry fees
- 1 Dec 2025SBI discontinues the OLA Money card and moves holders onto a house card
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 — 3 of them, each with the day we read it
- official The card's own e-kit — 10 / 5 / 1 Reward Points per ₹100, the UPI carve-out, the 5,000-point statement-cycle cap on dining and movies, and the closed-loop voucher redemption
- official Product page — the ₹500 welcome voucher, the ₹500 / ₹750 / ₹1,000 Reliance Retail voucher ladder, and the ₹499 fee reversed at ₹1 lakh of annual spend
- official SBI's MITC — Reliance SBI Card ₹499 annual and ₹499 renewal, waived on ₹1 lakh of spend in the preceding year, with a 3.5% foreign-currency transaction fee