Standard Chartered Ultimate
KeepThe highest flat rate in the country — with a hard ceiling.
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: 6,000 reward points (₹6,000) on fee payment
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 →
Pays for itself at ₹17,000 a month
At ₹17,000 a month — ₹2,04,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹5,300 gross (earn ₹5,300) against its ₹5,000 fee = ₹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.
2 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants
Our #2 for Government & tax; #3 for Insurance — 2 of the 23 questions this desk ranks.
The take
The Ultimate does one thing better than every other card here: 3.33% back on general spend, fixed, no gymnastics — 1 point is ₹1, full stop. What it cannot do is fly you anywhere at outsized value: there are no airline or hotel transfer partners, so ₹1 per point is both the floor and the ceiling, minus a ₹99 fee per redemption. If you want a predictable engine and already hold a transfer card for the aspirational stuff, this is the best boring card in India. Just know the April 2023 category cuts show Standard Chartered will trim it when it suits them.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
Here is the fee, the spend that clears it, and everything that has moved under this card since you last decided.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
₹5,000/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹5,000/yr
Break-even ₹17,000 a month — ₹2,04,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee.
At your spend
₹2,800 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹10,600 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹26,200 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹88,500 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹1,50,900 a year, net of the fee, at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend
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
Standard Chartered 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
- 3.33% flat on general spend — the top unconditional rate in India
- Fixed 1 point = ₹1; zero redemption maths
- 4 domestic lounge visits/quarter + 1 PP international/month (₹20k prior-month gate)
- 2.36% effective forex — better than the 3.5% default
Watch out
- No transfer partners — the ceiling is exactly ₹1/point
- Utilities, supermarkets, insurance, rent, govt cut to 2% since Apr 2023
- ₹99 + GST per redemption; points lapse about 3 years after you earn them, in quarterly batches
- ₹5,000 fee with no spend-based waiver
- SC is transferring its India card book to Federal Bank after 31 Jul 2026 — continued use counts as consent, declining still moves the account (SC benefits then cease), and SC has published no card-level list and no word on post-migration terms
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes StanC 360° 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
13 sourced rules · 2 pay zero
- Fuel · excluded Zero RP since 2-Apr-2023; 1% surcharge waiver all pumps, cap ₹1,000/month
- Rent & property management · reduced 3 RP/₹150 (2%) on MCC 7349+6513 vs base 5/₹150 (3.3%) — still EARNS on rent, uncapped (rare)
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · reduced 3 RP/₹150 on MCC 4900, uncapped since 2-Apr-2023
- Insurance · reduced 3 RP/₹150 on MCC 5960+6300, uncapped — one of the only cards earning meaningfully on insurance
per Standard Chartered T&C · rank every card by spend category →
Lounge access
689 of 793 tracked doors
Gate: ₹20k prior-month spend for the monthly PP international visit; a Priority Pass visit at an INDIAN lounge is chargeable, not complimentary
Opens 689 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 275 airports , via Mastercard India, Priority Pass Global — see the full map →
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 Standard Chartered 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 ₹5,000, no spend waiver. Forex cut 3.5%→2% effective 25-Aug-2024. SC publishes no official income cutoff for Ultimate.
per the official Standard Chartered MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
What's changed for this card
3 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.
- 15 Oct 2024EaseMyTrip card loses Priority Pass, domestic visits halved1 complimentary domestic lounge visit per quarter + Priority Pass with 2 international visits a year → 2 domestic visits per calendar year; no Priority Pass, no complimentary international lounge access
The travel co-brand quietly stopped being a travel card: from 15 October 2024, Standard Chartered pulled Priority Pass from the EaseMyTrip card entirely and cut domestic lounge access from four visits a year to two. International lounges are now pay-per-visit at rack rates. What's left is a ₹350 EaseMyTrip discount coupon — which, to be fair, is what it always really was.
- 25 Aug 2024Ultimate's forex settles at a clean 2% at posting
- 2 Apr 2023Ultimate cuts six categories from 3.33% to 2%
Verified against Standard Chartered's own documents on · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 6 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product page (₹5,000 joining and ₹5,000 renewal fee, 6,000-pt welcome on fee payment, 5 RP/₹150 = ₹1/pt, 4/quarter domestic + 1 PP/month int'l on ₹20k prior-month spend)
- official Revision FAQ — the Apr-2023 cuts only: from 2 Apr 2023 utilities, supermarkets, insurance, property management/rent, schools and government earn 3 RP/₹150 (was 5)
- official Tariffs & charges
- official Rewards-points expiry FAQ — points lapse roughly three years after they are earned and are written off in quarterly batches; exact dates only in the rewards portal
- official Federal Bank migration FAQ — the card relationship (credit limit, reward points, outstanding) transfers after 31 Jul 2026; consent via I Agree / SMS ACCEPT / continued use
- community CardInsider — Visa Infinite variant discontinued