Standard Chartered Visa Infinite Credit Card Review (India)

By | January 30, 2017

Standard Chartered Visa Infinite Card is SC’s top of the line card which stands above Manhattan credit card but unfortunately doesn’t have any extraordinary benefits to be positioned under Visa Infinite variant. Though, it has decent features to consider holding one, if issued for free. If you’re holding other SC cards, you may request to issue this card for free, but you need to meet their high limit criteria. Lets dive into the benefits,

Standard Chartered Visa Infinite Credit Card

Standard Chartered Visa Infinite Card Benefits:

Airport Lounge Access:

It has lounge access via two program, one with Visa infinite Lounge program and the other with Priority pass and here are the benefits you get from each with this card.

  • Visa Infinite Benefit: 4 complimentary airport lounge access per quarter
  • Priority Pass Benefit: Only Membership is free, visits are paid, $27/access

5X Reward Points:

Here are the Reward Points you earn on your spends

  • 5 reward points on every Rs.100 at Retail Fashion, Supermarkets & Overseas spends
  • 2 reward points for every Rs.100 on all other categories
  • Approx Point Value: ~ 30Ps

That means, with 5X category, you get 1.5% reward rate and on other categories you get 0.6%. So this simply means, its not worth calling it as a Premium card. Wish Visa has strict rules to issue cards under “Infinite” variant.

Other Benefits:

  • Complimentary travel and medical insurance of up to USD 200,000 whenever you go overseas.
  • 12,000 Bonus Points for spends over Rs10,000 a month for the first three months. (temporary offer)
  • Enjoy 20% cashback* on Uber rides. Save upto Rs 600 every month. (temporary offer)

Standard Chartered Visa Infinite Credit Card Features:

  • Card Expert Rating: 3.5/5 [yasr_overall_rating]
  • Reward Rate: 0.6% – 1.5%
  • Joining Fee: Free for Standard Chartered Bank Priority Banking Customers
  • Fuel Surcharge Waiver: Yes
  • Complementary Airport lounge access: Yes, 4 per Quarter via Visa Lounges
  • Foreign Exchange Markup fee: 3.5% + Service Tax
  • Special Benefit: 20% off on Uber is worth it

As you can see, apart from the Uber benefit and Visa lounge access, it has nothing much to offer. As mentioned earlier, its good to hold as long as its given for free. Else, skip it. Also, holding SC cards does help at festive times, like, in 2016 they ran an offer with which you can get 10,000 INR back on spending 3 Lakhs in a span of 3 months (oct-dec’16).

So, in such cases the reward rate shoots up to 3.3% which puts in in par with premium credit cards. Hence, never say “no” to the credit cards given for free, it will help some day or other 🙂

What’s your take on Standard Chartered Visa Infinite Credit Card? Share your views in comments below.

Author: Siddharth

Helping Indians to choose right credit cards, pick right offers and enjoy luxury vacations for less. Day & night exploring the spiritual reality of our human existence.

26 thoughts on “Standard Chartered Visa Infinite Credit Card Review (India)

  1. Kapil Khurana

    Uber cash back is very lucrative and is the most attractive benefit of charging my uber rides up to 3k on stanC (20% of 3k = 600 cap) from the last 3 months. Infact that is the only charge I was taking on my However just today I received a bummer from them where three have tweaked the criteria – cash back is only posted if “other spends” in the month cross 8000.

    It seems it’s time I route my uber spends to my hdfc diners premium instead of stanC

    Reply
    1. Prashant Agrawal

      Hey Kapil, where did you find the 8K on other spends criteria? I am too merely routing only my Uber spends there and would be really bummed if they changed the T&Cs :/

      Reply
      1. Gagan

        This new rule of min Rs 8000 spends is a bummer. The link is here. Guess they revised from 1 Feb 2017

        Reply
    2. Abhishek

      I did not know about this new criteria that the Tyler spends have to be more than ₹8K/month for the cash back to be posted. If this is the case, I’ll rather not use this offer again. As of now, I see more value in the “MasterCard offer” where in every fourth ride is free. So that is much better. Yes, Diners Card is also a great offer but problem is, the reward points are accrued only if you spend more than ₹150 in a single ride, else you won’t get a single point on those spends. But if you have Diners Premium and your ride costs more than ₹150, then do charge it to your Diners Premium card as that will give you 20% cash back in the form of points with the Diners 10X (Uber is a 10X) partner of Diners. Hope this helps.

      Reply
      1. Mani

        @Abhishek. Even Mastercard offer is reduced now. Every 6th ride and only upt 75 off. Check in the Uber app -> Payments -> Offers -> Mastercard offers

        Reply
    3. Abhishek

      Can you provide me a link where they have mentioned about the extra ₹8K/month to be spent to qualify for the Uber Cashback?

      Reply
    4. Prashant Gupta

      Same here, many are going to route transactions to other cards. Rs.8000 is too much. Their reward rate is also not good.

      Reply
  2. Anoop E S

    Your observations are right. It cannot be called as a premium card. Features look like a regular card but with Visa Infinite.

    Visa should be very careful, they should not allow infinite brand to get used for such useless or cheap cards.

    Not even a remote competitor for HDFC Infinia.

    Priority pass membership free… I could not control laughing… A normal HDFC signature card offers this.

    And reward points very less.

    No disrespect, but Feels really pathetic for standard chartered priority customers.

    Reply
  3. Arjun Jayasimha

    I have this card under lifetime free. It is definitely overrated considering the criteria for approval is a gross salary in excess of 1.75 lacs per month. 1 good feature that isn’t mentioned in the review is the bookmyshow VIP program where we get 1 free ticket on 1 purchased ticket any time we want. Usually on Visa Signature cards, the number of free tickets are limited and typically get exhausted within a few minutes of the purchase window opening. Another good feature is 20% discount on non-movie tickets on bookmyshow (helps for high ticket purchases such as concerts/plays)

    Reply
    1. Siddharth Post author

      Thanks for mentioning, i’ll get it updated about the Visa infinite offer 🙂

      Reply
  4. Niranjan

    I also have this card life time free. I can confirm that it provides 4 free priority pass access per quarter (atleast for lifetime free variant). Since I lost my priority pass access because of upgrade from Regalia to Diners Black, and since there might be a chance some lounge is not covered in Diners vs Priority Pass, I took this card. Uber discount is useful. Otherwise, It is not worth putting your majority spends on this card

    Reply
    1. Abhishek Roy

      Is there a salary requirement for application of Diners Black from Regalia or you can apply for it once you have a very high credit limit (read 4-5L/month or above) even if your annual salary is say below 10L/annum?

      Reply
      1. Niranjan

        I have a preferred account with HDFC so it helped. I know people who have applied recently and got the card or got rejected (in equal numbers). I would say generally salary should be closer to or above 18L per annum + good previous history with HDFC credit card.

        Reply
  5. Niranjan

    It also gives golfing privileges, though don’t use it personally.

    Reply
  6. Ar Arbit

    As you have mentioned, “you need to meet their high limit criteria. Lets dive into the benefits”. What is the limit criteria?

    Reply
    1. Siddharth Post author

      Am unsure, support guys said the same “high” limit, not mentioned any number. Lets see if other readers who holds it shed some light on it.

      Reply
      1. Niranjan

        If you try to compare cards on SCB website, it does show the requirement which says “Funds under Management of INR 2 mio/ Mortgage loan of INR 10 mio/ Net Monthly Salary Credit of INR 2,00,000”. Though, they do relax the criteria based on credit limit on other cards, CIBIL score etc.

        Reply
    2. Gagan

      For SC Visa Infinite Salary requirement is gross > 1.75 lacs pm but they do reduce for Corporates. For us, they issued life time free. I just grabbed it as was free and it offered good complimentary travel insurance etc.

      A query regarding “Complimentary travel and medical insurance of up to USD 200,000 whenever you go overseas.” Is this applicable only when flight ticket booked using this card or even otherwise? It is not clear from their website…

      For Yes Exclusive First Card – the insurance is applicable only when ticket booked by same card as well as card was active before hand…so many fine prints.

      Reply
      1. Siddharth Post author

        Most insurance has hidden terms. Possibly this too will have it the same way, on bookings done on the card.

        Reply
  7. Jay

    Even though I have a low credit limit of 3.2l, SCB still approved me this Infinite Card card. I mainly use this card for overseas spends.

    Reply
  8. Vikram

    I have this card. Like you said it’s no where near as beneficial as the HDFC Infinia or Diners Black. But I too am a card freak and wanted an Visa Infinite. The only worthy option was HDFC Infinia but getting that had 2 problems, first was I didn’t know if I was eligible. But I could’ve still pursued if it wasn’t for the second problem, it would have mean that I should surrender the Diners Black which I didn’t want to as it’s the most beneficial I have right now. So I went for this card as it was also life time free.

    Reply
  9. babhishek

    well i ended up getting this card along with a priority pass.
    do ppl holding this card use the PP or the card itself? i dont want to carry another card (PP) making my wallet bulky., hence the question!

    Reply
  10. A kundu

    I have sc visa infinite credit card & PP CARD . I want to know if I can use this card and access free lounge services at Colombo & Male airport with my husband & daughter ( 18yrs). It would be the first use of my card.
    Also I have HDFC BUSINESS REGALIA FIRST CARD & PP CARD. I have 2 PP CARD

    Reply
  11. Sourav

    Vanakkam Siddharth !

    Could you please review SCB Ultimate Visa Infinite Card? Launched very recently.
    And thank you for this wonderful website.

    Regards
    Sourav

    Reply
  12. Ashish

    I have been using CC of many banks but I have found worst service of Standard Chartered bank. The way of communication with customer & bank staff are highly unprofessional.
    Bank has designed its customer communication channel is such a way that if customer raised any complaint then he/she automatically get fed up and give up to its complaint.
    HIGHLY NOT RECOMMEND SC BANK CREDIT CARD AND BANK ACCOUNT.

    Reply

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