SBI Simply Save credit card is yet another entry-level credit card from SBI. If one imagines the Simply Save and Simply Click credit cards as the actors in the popular sitcom Two and a Half Men Simply Save would be the poor younger brother Alan Harper and Simply Click would be the popular and suave Charlie Harper.
What makes the Simply Save credit card poor Alan Harper? Read on to find out.
About SBI Simply Save Credit Card
Fees and Eligibility:
- Joining fee and Annual fees of INR499 + GST. Annual fee reversal on spending INR100,000 in a year.
Rewards and Benefit:
- Joining Benefit:
- Spend INR2000+ in the first 60 days and get 2000 reward points
- Recurring Benefit:
- None
- Reward Points:
- 1 Reward point on every INR100 spent. 1 Reward point = 0.25 paisa (0.25% reward rate at the best)
- Accelerated Reward Points:
- 10X Reward points (2.5% reward rate) on every 100 spent offline on Dining, Movies, Departmental Stores and Grocery Spends.
- 1% fuel surcharge waiver
Why SBI Simply Save Credit Card is the poor brother Alan?
At first, SBI Simply Save appears to be a decent credit card offering 10x reward points on nearly all offline spends. However, what it means is most of the recurring spends such as utility bills, mobile bills and insurance premiums whether done online or offline will earn only 0.25% reward rate. Besides, all the online spends will earn a meagre 0.25% reward rate, which is pathetically low.
Also, I don’t remember when was the last time I bought movie tickets from the box office. What it means that it is one less category where I will 10x reward points.
Further, there are no milestone benefits whatsoever to encourage higher spending on this card and to improve reward rates.
That’s not all, for this credit card most of the redemption vouchers value 1 reward point at less than 0.25 paisa. And surprisingly, Amazon vouchers are not a redemption option for Simply Save credit card. The only decent redemption option, I found was the Big Bazaar e-voucher giving a value of 25paisa for every reward point. [Edit: One can always opt for statement credit, which gives a value of 25paise. Thanks Prathmesh for pointing this out.]
All this when compared to SBI Simply Click Credit Card, makes it clear that Simply Save Credit Card is an inferior option.
Conclusion
In case you have an SBI Simply Save Credit Card, talk to customer care and exchange it for SBI Simply Click at the earliest. If you are planning to get the Simply Save credit card, I would say don’t settle for poor Alan when you can get the popular and suave Charlie Harper. Having said that, the best thing would still be getting the ICICI Amazon Pay credit card, provided one gets an invite for it.
Disclaimer
In the interest of full disclosure, Credit Cardz may earn a referral bonus for anyone that’s approved through some of the links in this post. However, opinions and views expressed here are of the author's alone and not those of the bank, credit card issuer, or anyone else and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.
Even though the reward points give poor value for the vouchers (I don’t understand why though), it is possible to convert the points into statement credit at a rate of 0.25 rs/point. I think this is what you should always go for.
I have used this redemption multiple times, but they do charge Rs 99 for each redemption. If you wait for your points to accumulate the value lost will not be that high percentage wise.
This cannot be your primary card, but if u have another card to take care of your online transactions, this fits quite well in your wallet for your offline transactions.
Thanks Prathmesh for pointing this out. Have updated the post accordingly.
Further, to your point why reward points on this credit card gives poor value; my thought here is since this card is targeted at offline users, the MDR (Merchant Discount Rate) that flows to card issuer on offline transactions is lower than that on online transactions. This is because the acquirer takes relatively higher cut as the acquirer has to bear the cost of PoS machines and other infra.
Thus, by offering lower value on reward points for this card, SBI Card is trying to maintain its own profit margin.
I agree the card doesn’t seem to offer much and considering they weren’t offering any online rewards here I believe they would have done a lot better had there been milestone rewards or better reward value. Personally I feel it isn’t a bad card at all.
And if you think in that direction there aren’t many cards available which offer good rewards on dining spends and offline purchases. (Not a fan of SBI Elite or Prime)
I have hope maybe SBI will come soon with few more new cards offering such benefits.
SBI simply click credit Card are currently the SBI credit card services provider told since 14th th September 2022 the rewards points program are forfeited,if any reward points given by system and you have used redeemed the rewards points then they debited my credit card account by 320.00 Rs. Without any information given me and i complaint on the SBI card app but they not given the reasonable answer or any fruitful solution so i told the SBI card services are totally “Bakwass and fraudulent services” and also Nodal officer escalation are also no given any solution in this matter to me.