The spend guide
Which card for this spend?
MCC roulette is where reward rates go to die. The headline "3.3%" is for the spends the bank likes — swipe the wrong card at a petrol pump, a rent platform or a tax portal and you earn precisely nothing, sometimes with a 1% fee on top for the privilege. Below: all 58 cards we track, ranked per category, zeroes named. One warning before you get clever — since 20-Jun-2025 Axis matches exclusions on its internal spend category, not the 4-digit MCC, so merchant-miscoding tricks are dead on Atlas, Magnus and Reserve.
Know your categories, want your total? → The calculator.
Instant lookup
Will my card earn on this?
Fuel
MCC 5541, 5542, 5983, 5172, 5552UNIQUE: still earns 5 MR/₹100 on fuel capped 5,000 MR/month — the ONLY card of the 24 earning on fuel after Amex killed fuel earn on all other consumer cards 12-Jun-2025; 0% HPCL convenience fee <₹5k, 1% ≥₹5k, BPCL/IOCL 1%, others 2.5%
0 full · 1 capped / reduced · 57 earn nothing
Rent & property management
MCC 6513, 73491 MR/₹40 via CRED/NoBroker etc. (platform fee 1.5–3% applies; Amex attracts higher platform fees) — community-verified, no Amex exclusion
6 full · 10 capped / reduced · 42 earn nothing
Government / tax
MCC 9399, 9311, 9222, 9402, 9405, 9211, 92231 MR/₹40 on tax/govt — no published exclusion; classic Amex tax-payment play — community-verified
7 full · 14 capped / reduced · 37 earn nothing
Utilities (electricity/water/gas)
MCC 4900, 4899, 4816Utility MCC 4900 is NOT on the official Annexure-1 list — earns 2 miles/₹100; 1% fee on utility txns ≥₹50k (cap ₹3,000/txn) still applies (official MITC)
7 full · 29 capped / reduced · 22 earn nothing
Insurance
MCC 6300, 5960, 6380, 6381Base 1.5% NeuCoins — no published cap (community, flag)
5 full · 28 capped / reduced · 25 earn nothing
Education
MCC 8211, 8220, 8241, 8244, 8249, 8299Same as Magnus
29 full · 15 capped / reduced · 14 earn nothing
Wallet loads
MCC 6540, 6541, 6539Community (TechnoFino): wallet loads (6540) earn full 5 RP/₹150 ≈3.3% — the wallet-load king; NOT in any official exclusion list, but issuer could reclassify — flag
1 full · 5 capped / reduced · 52 earn nothing
Groceries & supermarkets
MCC 5411, 5422, 5451, 5499Same as Magnus
48 full · 8 capped / reduced · 2 earn nothing
Telecom
MCC 48144814 not in reduced/excluded lists → full 5/₹150 — flag (inferred from official list absence)
19 full · 22 capped / reduced · 17 earn nothing
Jewellery / gold
MCC 5944, 5094No published earn restriction (Tanishq voucher REDEMPTION capped 50k RP/quarter is a burn-side cap); community confirms earn OK
47 full · 3 capped / reduced · 8 earn nothing
Forex / international spends
MCC any MCC, currency != INR12/₹200; Burgundy variant markup 2%+GST
54 full · 1 capped / reduced · 3 earn nothing
UPI (RuPay-on-UPI only)
MCC n/aNo RuPay variant means no UPI linkage at all, whatever the earn table says — UPI credit rides RuPay rails only.
RuPay Select variant (Oct-2025) links to UPI; community reports UPI earns the standard base rate — HDFC has not published a separate UPI schedule
7 full · 8 capped / reduced · 2 earn nothing · 41 n/a
EMI conversions / merchant EMI
MCC n/a (issuer flag, not MCC)UNUSUAL: the official FAQ confirms EMI transactions DO earn reward points on this card
1 full · 57 earn nothing
Where this comes from
Rules are read from issuer T&C, reward annexures and FAQs (HSBC and SBI publish full MCC tables; HDFC and Amex publish only category names), backed by community reporting where the banks stay vague — those rows are marked "community-sourced". Where sources conflict we keep the conservative treatment and say so in the note. Full-earn rankings use each card's effective reward rate from the rankings. Issuers churn these rules quarterly — a note's date is the rule's date, not ours.