Amex SmartEarn Credit Card Review

Amex SmartEarn credit card is an entry-level offering from American Express, it comes with low annual fees and low annual spend threshold for fee waiver. This card is primarily targeted towards the masses, who want to own a American Express credit card, but don’t want to pay high annual fees or don’t want to spend a lot using credit cards. Here is everything you need to know about the card.

Fees and Eligibility

• 495+GST per annum, which get waived on spending 40,000 in a year
• The annual income of 4.5lakhs for salaried and 6lakhs for self-employed. The eligibility criteria are similar to one for Amex MRCC card.

Rewards and Benefits

• 1 reward point for every 50 spent. 1 reward point would typically equal 25-40 paise depending on redemption options.
• Welcome Benefits
  • INR500 cashback on spending 10,000 in the first 90 days.
• Accelerated Rewards
  • 10x rewards on spends on Flipkart and Uber capped at 500 rewards points at each partner. Resulting in an earn rate of 5%.
  • 5x rewards on spends on select partners capped at 250 reward points in all. Resulting in an earn rate of 2.5%. Current partners include Amazon, Myntra/Jabong, Grofers, Swiggy, BigBazaar, More, PVR, Reliance Fresh, DMart and BookMyShow. Detailed list of merchants is available here.
• No reward points on spends on fuel, insurance, utilities, cash transactions and EMI at PoS.

Verdict

Amex SmartEarn credit card is targeted towards users who don’t yet have a credit card or don’t spend much using credit cards or spend much less than 150,000/annum. Amex Membership Reward credit card offers annual fee waiver on spending 150,000/annum, so if one can spend that much, MRCC from Amex stable is a better credit card to go for.

The highlight of this credit card is the accelerated rewards with certain merchants. However, the low cap on this feature is a big bummer. While for 10x merchants, the cap is 2500/month each for Flipkart and Uber, which may be just fine. But, for 5x merchants the cap at 2500/month for all merchants put together is a big disappointment. As one would easily spend more than 2500/month on monthly groceries at DMart, BigBazaar, Reliance Fresh etc.

I tried comparing Amex SmartEarn credit card with a previous comparison I did for Flipkart Axis, ICICI Amazon Pay and HDFC Millennia credit cards. Pretty obvious from the comparison that Amex SmartEarn card offerings could be improved a lot when compared to other cards in the same category.

Overall, anyone looking for reward benefits should stay away from Amex SmartEarn credit card. For someone, who want an American Express card, but has low annual spends and not in reward points game, can surely consider this. Nonetheless, I would strongly recommend considering other credit cards in the same segment; reviewed here and here before zeroing on Amex SmartEarn credit card.

Do you own an Amex SmartEarn credit card? Would love to hear your experience of using it.