SBI Card on Thursday 1st September 2022, launched Cashback SBI Card much to the delight of Card enthusiasts with its industry leading reward rate on almost all kind of online merchant spends.
It’s an amazing product from SBI Card. Focus to tiny things visible in its simple yet eye capturing design, even name too “CASHBACK SBI CARD”.
One of the most important aspect of the card pleasing to me is the list of lounges applicable on this card is fairly big, covering Tier 2 & 3 cities as well (includes everybody’s favourite 080 Bangalore lounge currently).
My Experience
I previously applied for the SBI SimplyCLICK credit card in July 2022 under SBI Sprint FYF offer and got approved. SBI allows multiple credit cards to individual customer with separate credit limit, but generally minimum 3 months cooling off period is required.
Once this Cashback card was launched on 1st September 2022, I tried applying on SBI Card website. As my existing credit card was only 1 month old, SBI Card systems did not allow me to proceed during that time.
Neither escalated further nor tried to apply offline, as it anyway can’t be applied offline.
Once cooling off period was over, on SBI Card app I saw an option to apply for additional card (as “avail new card”). Options were SBI BPCL card & strangely SBI SimplyCLICK card again.
Once again started application via SBI Sprint online and this time the CASHBACK SBI Card was approved immediately. It hardly took 5-10 minutes for me post some KYC details.
Interestingly SBI Card deposited Re 1 to savings account of my choice and asked me to reverse Re 1 from the same account to SBI Card. This can be a hassle for not so techno savvy person.
No further VKYC / verification required and Virtual card generated instantly, but with low credit limit as expected. CIBIL enquiry happened as well, because SBI Card provides separate limit on each of its credit cards.
Drawbacks
Biggest limitation of the Cashback SBI Card is– mostly you won’t be able to use this card for 10% kind of instant discounts on Amazon/ Flipkart or any merchant offers.
Lucky were the ones who received instant discounts as well as cashback in recently concluded Amazon Great Indian Festival sale. If any reversal happened afterwards or not- can be best spoken by users who took advantage of the same during the sale.
Final Thoughts
Cashback SBI Card gives a run for their money to even Super Premium credit cards from competing banks with its amazing default Cashback reward rate. If your spends are decent and mostly on online merchants throughout the year, nothing beats this card with its 5% auto-statement credit.
SBI Card runs instant discount offers on several online platforms throughout the year. Hence it can’t be a solo SBI Card in your wallet due to its inability to provide instant discounts during online sales of Amazon/ Flipkart etc.
And logical set of exclusions makes sure that card devaluation will take little longer to happen.
Even for me the VKYC is surprisingly smooth. Surely SBI card is on right track.
How many days it took to get the virtual/hard card?
As next week im travelling and im worried if i apply now then im able to get it or not.
Virtual Card- 10 minutes
Card in hand- 5/6 days
That’s for me. For some it took more than 15 days.
Got my SBI cash back card with 1L+ limit, I think it needs to improve a lot, we never get sms of cash back notification like I get in my Axis back ace card, you will never know whether you have received 5% or just 1% till your monthly statement gets generated, I paid one Airtel bill through Gpay (using SBI card) and one direct payment through Vodafone website, but I am not sure what will I get and no intimation on APP, even customer service executive seems confused he does not know the difference between merchant and non merchant.. so overall not so user friendly card, on paper looks good but by user experience its not up to the mark.
I am already holding SimplyClick card and applied cashback card through sprint on 23 Nov 22. I was expecting vKYC but physical biometric authentication was done on 26 Nov 22. Got verification call on the same day but the application was still under processing. Again on for a verification call on 13 Dec 22 and finally the card got approved on 13 Dec 22. I have a CIBIL Score of 805. Don’t know why it took so much time for me.
Additional verification is done for existing customers.
For me it wasn’t. Card generated instantly while applying. So it’s selective, based upon some unknown criteria only SBI knows.
For me the sprint website didn’t accept my Permanent address pincode in the final step, but still processed it after 2 months while diwali when I wasn’t at temporary location.
After few back and forth, I got the card after almost 3 months from applying. I was able to access the virtual card only after when I received the physical one.
For verification, they made me more than 10 calls in span of 2-3 weeks. Each time they only ask one verification question and end the call.
Biggest con for me is they kept my credit limit to ₹10,000. It can only be increased after 6 months of usage and if they push the offer in website/app to you for increasing it.
If you have any other SBI Card, transfer some of the limit to this card. Otherwise minimum 6 months of waiting.
Or else if your Salary/ ITR is good enough, send an email attaching Payslip/ ITR and try your luck
How nps is coming in utility bills. They gave only 1% cashback
Mostly NPS, School fees, Insurance premium, Income Tax type of transactions fall under it, so as to attract lower RPs.
Almost all the banks do this to minimize loss, as they get less MDR from these type of transactions.
How do you pay NPS and income tax via credit card?
NPS- NPS app via payment gateway has option to pay via credit card
Income tax- eportal of income tax- then under epay choose advance tax etc. which will be having payment gateway option to pay through credit card.
This is the message I’m getting for the last 10 days:
We would need some additional information from you to process your application. Our representative will contact you shortly.
And the CC on the phone says there is tremendous backlog of applications for this card and asked me to wait for 21 working days for someone to get back to me! Guess when my card will finally be processed, SBI would have started to taper down the benefits.
Did you get the call back? What are the pending things to be done with this message?
For me in the customer care call with application number status says it is approved. But in the tracking i see the same message
Its the worst card in India. The card gets blocked repeatedly even for 1000 rs txn.
That’s really sad. Many are facing this issue on Cashback card. Hope SBI sorts it out soon.
Agreed. My transactions on DMart Ready are not going through.
It gets blocked for GYFTR transactions in my case. Recently faced this issue with simply click which is 6+ yrs old and cashback card which I got in September 22.
My application got rejected due to some policy. Is there any possible way to resolve this ?
I applied for the card in December and was approved instantly with a credit limit of 2L. Strictly using it for online shopping. The lounge program is also great with all the premium lounges covered with a limit of 1/qtr though.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I am currently using SBI Prime card and my main spend is in online Grocery category(Flipkart wholesale, Meto, JioMart) for my business and yearly spend is min 5 lakh. Prime card is giving me 2.5% rewards for this. I am thinking of switching to Cashback card and can you confirm if my spend category(Online Grocery) will fall under 5% cashback.
Mostly yes. If SBI & Merchant doesn’t mess up on MCC used for those transactions.
Gets rejected due to internal policies don’t know why
You can ask them to tell the exact reason for rejection quoting RBI guideline. They are bound to tell.
Hello Satish,
Can you pls elaborate a little on these guidelines ?
I too am frustrated when they simply hide behind the cloak of “internal policies” without educating us about the detail.
Getting our card application approved is not our right, of course.
But wanting to know the reason is certainly well within my rights, right ?
Thanks!
They provided instant discount plus cashback. Later reversed the cashback amount.