New: SBI IRCTC Premier Credit Card Review

SBI Cards is in full swing when it comes to co-branded credit cards. Recently they launched the SBI Vistara credit cards and now they’ve added another premium travel credit card named IRCTC SBI Card Premier with IRCTC which just went for IPO a couple of months back.

Basically for most “frequent” train travellers, this would replace the SBI IRCTC PLatinum card which seems to have had a very good traction which probably led them to launch a premium variant of it.

Joining Fees

Joining/Renewal Fee: Rs.1500+GST (Renewal fee will be reversed on 2L spend)
Welcome Benefit 1: 1500 reward points
Welcome Benefit 2: BookMyShow Movie voucher worth 500 on spends of INR 2000 within first 60 days

The welcome benefits very well cover the fee you pay for the card. Remember that you will not get the welcome bonus on renewal if it works the same way as their IRCTC platinum card.

Rewards

IRCTC Train Bookings: 10% as points (AC1, AC2. AC3 and AC CC)
IRCTC Flight Bookings: 5% as points
Dining & SI on Utility spends: 2.4% as points
All other spends: 0.8% as points (1 Reward point for every Rs. 125)
1 Reward point = Rs.1

I never know until now that even flights could be booked on IRCTC. So that’s definitely a good marketing for IRCTC and 5% on air tickets is also generous, especially because there is no capping, as of now.

Note: To be eligible for the rewards, booked ticket must have one Traveller same as the name on the card

Milestone Rewards

2,500 Points on annual “travel” spends of Rs. 50,000
5,000 Points on annual “travel” spends of Rs. 1,00,000

This gives additional 7.5% return on “travel spend” and I’m yet to check if they mean only IRCTC travel spends or anywhere travel spends. I assume its latter for now.

Technically speaking, IRCTC train bookings are also a “travel spend” so if it works that way, its basically double dipping and you could save as close as 20% (10%+7.5%+1.8%) on train bookings if you can spend 1L on train tickets, but well, hardly few does that, so the bank won’t bleed anyway even if it works this way.

Features & Benefits

Save 1.8% transaction charges on railway & Air ticket bookings
1% fuel surcharge waiver, on txns of Rs. 500 – Rs. 4,000, exclusive of GST and other charges (maximum surcharge waiver of Rs. 250 per statement cycle)
Complimentary insurance Cover: 10L Rail Accident / 50L Air Accident

That aside, the card runs on Visa Signature platform but it doesn’t seem to come with airport lounge access. That aside, Railway lounge access is something they could have added to the product but that’s not a downside yet as there are very few Railway lounges in the country.