SBICard to issue its Premium Credit Cards on American Express Network
Its been a while since SBI (primary shareholder of SBICard) got into partnership with American Express India with respect to acceptance of American Express cards on SBI terminals (if merchant wishes so).
And now the partnership seem to have got expanded to issuing SBI Credit Cards under amex network, along with Visa/Mastercard/Rupay. Here’s everything you need to know about this partnership.
Why does it matter?
Currently AmEx has tie-ups with ICICI & IndusInd banks to issue credit cards under Amex network.
When we look into such bank issued amex cards, we could see that the reward earn rate is slightly higher on the Amex variant, compared to the same card under Visa/Mastercard network
But then if a customer takes the Amex variant instead of Visa/Mastercard for its rewards and platform benefits, he may do so but it comes at a cost: relatively poor acceptance.
That aside, many Amex merchant offers that are usually available for proprietary cards are applicable to bank issued super-premium Amex cards too.
One such offer is the complimentary calm membership that’s not only eligible for Amex proprietary cards but also eligible for ICICI Emeradle Amex and Indusind Celesta Amex cards.
What are the SBICards on Amex network?
As of now SBICards has confirmed that they will be issuing only premium & super-premium credit cards under American Express Network. That means we can soon get SBI Prime & SBI Elite under American Express network.
However they haven’t commented anything on the accelerated rewards yet. We may know the same in sometime.
What to expect in Future?
A Super-premium credit card from SBICard (finally!)
Amex currently issues super premium cards both with ICICI & Indusind which are ICICI Emeralde Amex (good one) and the IndusInd clesta Amex (useless) respectively.
So we may likely expect a Super-premium credit card from SBICard under Amex network.
I hope that card is not a flop like Indusind Celesta and wish it comes with benefits like ICICI Emeralde and even much better, perhaps a taste of Amex platinum.
Speaking of Amex banking cards, I wish it would be great if SBICard & even ICICI/IndusInd have separate Amex trained support team to handle queries from such Amex cardholders, at least for the super-premium cards.
