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Update 31 Mar 2023: SBI Card has announced revised terms for the CASHBACK SBI Card. The monthly cashback cap on online spending has been reduced to ₹5,000, domestic lounge benefit has been eliminated and a number of categories of spending, including Railway tickets have been excluded from earning cashback. We will be updating this and our other relevant posts with the new terms soon. We expect that the CASHBACK SBI Card will continue to be a top pick for Online Shopping after these changes, except for people spending more than ₹1 lacs online each month.
We think the CASHBACK SBI Card is the best credit card in India for online shopping. It offers 5% cashback on all online transactions with a high monthly cashback cap of ₹10,000.
This means you can earn 5% cashback on up to ₹2 lacs of monthly online spending. All online spending beyond this level and all offline spending earns 1% unlimited cashback.
The CASHBACK SBI Card has an annual fee of ₹999, which is waived in the first year. The fee is also waived in subsequent years, if you charge more than ₹2 lacs to your card each year.
Based on our sample spending profiles, the CASHBACK has a net reward yield of 1.9–2.3%, which makes it a great general purpose card as well.
The Ultimate Credit Card from Standard Chartered Bank is also a good option for online shopping. It offers unlimited 3.33% effective rewards on all your spending, including online transactions.
This makes the Ultimate a great general purpose card as well. However, it has a high and non-waivable annual fee of ₹5,000.
You do get reward points worth ₹5,000 every year when you pay the annual fee. Adding the value of these points, the card actually offers a net reward yield of 3%+, which makes it worth paying the fee.
Not everyone will be comfortable exchanging ₹5,000 into reward points. Excluding the value of these points, the Ultimate has a net reward yield of 2.3-3.0%. That is still enough to make the Ultimate one to the best credit cards in India.
CASHBACK SBI Card offers 5% cashback on all online transactions with a monthly cap of ₹10,000 in rewards and 1% on everything else.
The Ultimate Card gives the highest, unlimited rewards of 3.33% on all spend but has a high and non-waivable fee of ₹5,000. We think the rewards make it worth paying the fee.
Credit card acceptance in India can be patchy as not all merchants are set up to swipe. However all online stores accept cards for payment, making online shopping a major use case for credit cards.
A dedicated card for online shopping can make sense if you rely heavily on multiple online merchants like Amazon, Flipkart, bigbasket, Zomato, Swiggy etc. and your monthly spending with these merchants is high enough.
In that case, the cards recommended in this post will maximize your rewards without costing you a bomb in annual fees.
Luckily for online shoppers, the best cards for them are also great general purpose cards, meaning they can collect high rewards with just a single all-purpose card.
Otherwise, most people would be better off choosing the best credit cards in India for their monthly spending level – those are the RBL Bank Monthly Treats for entry level, the ACE Credit Card from Axis Bank for monthly spending between ₹10,000 – 1 lacs and the Magnus Credit Card, also from Axis Bank for monthly spending above ₹1 lacs a month.
This would be a more convenient way to earn higher rewards, rather than choosing a card just for online shopping.
Banks in India offer more than 400 credit cards, most of which do not offer any special rewards on online shopping transactions. That means you are stuck collecting the base reward rate for your card when you charge these bills to your card.
This can be annoying for reward collectors like us, because online shopping is often a large portion of the total value charged to our cards.
To find the best credit cards for online shopping, we looked through the terms and conditions of all the credit cards offered by 15 major banks in India and shortlisted 8 cards that offered at least a 3% rewards on online transactions.
Table 1: Shortlisted Credit Cards for Food Delivery
| Credit Card | Effective Rewards |
Monthly Reward Cap |
Annual Fee (₹) |
Annual Spend for Fee Waiver (₹) |
Net Reward Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flipkart Axis Bank Super Elite | 12.0% | 400 | 500 | 200,000 | 2.10% |
| SC DigiSmart | 10.0%** | Varies by Merchant |
600 | 60,000 | 1.60% |
| Amex SmartEarn | 6.0% | 150 | 495 | 40,000 | 1.50% |
| Cashback SBI Card | 5.0% | 10,000 | 999 | 200,000 | 2.10% |
| Paytm HDFC Bank Select | 5.0% | 3,000 | 1,000 | 150,000 | 1.90% |
| Millennia Credit Card | 5.0% | 1,000 | 1,000 | 100,000 | 2.30% |
| BOB Varunah Premium* | 3.8% | 2,500 | 2,499 | 150,000 | 1.70% |
| Ultimate Credit Card | 3.3% | Unlimited | 5,000 | N/A | 2.50% |
| Infinia Credit Card | 3.3% | Unlimited | 12,500 | 10,00,000 | 2.30% |
| * Only for Indian Navy Personnel
** 20% on Myntra & Yatra.com, 15% on Ola, 10% on Zomato & Blinkit |
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However, each of these cards has a different annual fee and reward structure, which means picking the best isn’t as simple as picking the one with the highest promised rewards for online shopping.
Most of these cards have different annual fees that must be paid if you do not charge a specific minimum amount to the card in a year. If the annual fee is not waived, the annual fee will eat into your rewards.
Many cards also have a cap on the rewards you can earn, either in total or just for online shopping.
Finally, we also considered the level of rewards each card offered for other spending, not just for online shopping. After all, if you can use a single card for everything, that saves you some hassle, which is worth something.
We preferred cards that offered the highest reward rate on online shopping and had no caps on those reward. We also preferred cards that had low annual fee, and a high overall net reward yield for all other spending on the card.
We did not consider cards that earn you a lot of milestone rewards, even if using those to pay for online shopping would lead to higher overall rewards for you. Those cards are compared in our post on the best cards in India.
Many cards also offer discounts as high as 10-12% with their partner merchants. Examples include the Flipkart Axis Bank Super Elite (12% only for Flipkart Plus members) or Standard Chartered Bank’s DigiSmart (20% off at Myntra and 10% at Zomato).
If your favorite merchants are included in the list of partner websites, then these cards can save you a lot. However, we preferred cards that offered high rewards on all online transactions and not just on specific websites.
We think the CASHBACK SBI Card is the best credit card in India for online shopping. The CASHBACK offers 5% cashback on all online transactions with a very high monthly cashback cap of ₹10,000.
To be clear, this means you get 5% back on the first ₹2 lacs of online spend each month and for spends beyond that amount, you still earn 1% cashback.
There are no merchant restrictions on earning cashback online. However utility bill payments only earn the 1% cashback, even if you make the payment online.
All offline transactions with the CASHBACK earn 1% cashback with no cap.
We estimate most people will get a net reward yield of 1.9-2.3% using the CASHBACK SBI Card for all their spend. This also makes it a great general purpose credit card and it ranks in the top 10 best credit cards in India.
The CASHBACK SBI Card is, as the name says, a cashback card. This means you don’t need to worry about redeeming gifts vouchers, converting points or having the rewards expire. The reward is automatically credited into your account and offset against bills due.
It carries an annual fee of ₹999, which is waived for the first year and which can be waived again if you spend more than ₹2 lacs in a year on the card.
Table 2: Feature Summary – Cashback SBI Card
| Card | CASHBACK SBI Card |
|---|---|
| Rewards Features | – 5% cashback on all online spend (except Utility Bills) with no merchant restrictions
– 1% cashback for everything else |
| Rewards Caps | – ₹5,000 per month |
| Preferred Redemption Method | Cashback against statement balance |
| Annual Fee | ₹999, waived for the first year. |
| Min. Annual Credit Card Spend for Fee Waiver |
₹2,00,000 |
| Monthly Spend | Estimated Reward Earned |
| ₹5,000 ₹10,000 ₹20,000 ₹50,000 ₹1,00,000 |
₹90 ₹200 ₹440 ₹1,125 ₹2,340 |
The Ultimate Credit Card from Standard Chartered Bank does not offer any special rewards for online shopping. However, it offers unlimited 3.33% effective rewards on all your spending, including online transactions.
This makes the Ultimate a great general purpose card. That 3.33% is also more than what most other cards offer for online spending and the high overall net reward yield of this card makes it a good choice for online shopping too.
However, the Ultimate has a high and non-waivable annual fee of ₹5,000.
You do get reward points worth ₹5,000 every year when you pay the annual fee. Adding the value of these points, the card actually offers a net reward yield of 3%+, which makes it worth paying the fee.
Not everyone will be comfortable exchanging ₹5,000 into reward points. Excluding the value of these points, the Ultimate has a net reward yield of 2.3-3.0%. That is enough to make the Ultimate one to the best credit cards in India.
Table 3: Feature Summary – Ultimate Credit Card
| Card | Ultimate Credit Card |
|---|---|
| Rewards Features | – 3 Reward points / ₹150 on utility bills, at supermarkets, for insurance payments, school fees, rental and govt. payments
– 5 Reward points / ₹150 on everything else |
| Rewards Caps | No caps |
| Preferred Redemption Method | Redeem points on Standard Chartered Rewards Portal @ ₹1 / reward point |
| Income Criteria | N/A |
| Annual Fee | ₹5,000 |
| Min. Annual Credit Card Spend for Fee Waiver |
N/A |
| Monthly Spend | Estimated Reward Earned |
| ₹5,000 ₹10,000 ₹20,000 ₹50,000 ₹1,00,000 |
(₹280)*/ ₹130^ (₹125)*/ ₹285^ ₹170 / ₹585^ ₹1,050 / ₹1,450^ ₹2,500 / ₹2,950^ |
| * The negative figure means at this level of monthly spends, the rewards earned in a year will be worth less than the annual fee. This puts zero value on points received on payment of annual fee and is a very conservative estimate.
^ Assuming the points received for annual fee payment are valued at ₹1 / point. |
|
All the cards below offer good, often great, rewards for online shopping. However, we felt each of them missed out some critical feature compared to our pick. These cards may offer better value to some people than our picks.
Flipkart Axis Bank Super Elite Credit Card offers 12% effective reward (see Table 1) but this is restricted to transactions on Flipkart by plus members only and is capped at ₹400 a month.
While this may be a great option for dedicated Flipkart customers, we think this is too restrictive for most of us.
Standard Chartered DigiSmart Credit Card offers 10-20% rewards / discounts on a number of websites like Myntra, Yatra.com, Ola, Zomato & Blinkit.
However, again, while the rewards are attractive, we think the list of eligible websites is too small to consider this as a general online shopping card.
Paytm HDFC Bank SELECT Credit Card is in may ways similar to our pick, the CASHBACK SBI Card. It too offers 5% cashback and has an annual fee of ₹1,000.
However the 5% rewards on the Paytm SELECT are restricted to transactions via the Paytm Apps and the monthly cashback cap is ₹3,000, much lower than the ₹10,000 on the CASHBACK SBI Card.
This can be a great alternative if you are a dedicated Paytm user and if you spend ₹60,000 or less each month online – in which case the ₹3,000 monthly cap will not impact you.
Millennia Credit Card from HDFC Bank also offers 5% cashback on major online shopping websites like Amazon, Flipkart, Uber, Swiggy & Zomato.
Including both Amazon and Flipkart does bring the Millennia a lot closer to being a general purpose online shopping card but we still think the list of eligible websites it too small. The Millennia also has an even lower monthly cap on rewards of ₹1,000.
American Express SmartEarn Credit Card offers 10 MR Points / ₹50 spent on Amazon, Flipkart and Uber, which is equivalent to a 6% reward rate.
However the SmartEarn caps the total monthly rewards earned at ₹300 only – ₹150 at Amazon & Flipkart and ₹150 at Uber.
Infinia Credit Card from HDFC Bank also offers 3.33% unlimited rewards like the Standard Chartered Ultimate. However it is an invite only credit card and has a higher annual fee of ₹12,500 which is waived on reaching annual spending of ₹10 lacs on the card.
For very high spenders, this would be a better choice than the Ultimate but it may not be available to everyone.
Questions? Suggestions? See a mistake? Write to us!
Our analysis of 100s of flights shows that miles from international airlines are worth much less in India that they are globally, between 16-54% less. Their value in India is between ₹0.50/mile for the Etihad to ₹0.80/mile for BA & SQ.
2 Free Movie / Stream / Play / Events / Sports / Activities tickets up to ₹250 each and ₹100 off on F&B Spends on BookMyShow tickets.
8 reward points / ₹400 on bill payments & education and 1 point on all other spends. Fuel surcharge waiver of up to ₹100 per month.
