Last Updated on July 19, 2019 by Gopal Gidwani
In this article we will review SBI Prime Card that can help you save up to 8.4% on regular monthly payments like utility bills, rent (residential or commercial) payments, insurance premiums etc. through standing instructions. Apart from that, the card has lot many other benefits.
1) Premium card with very good benefits
This is one of the premium cards from SBI. If you are looking for a credit card with high reward points, spending based good milestone benefits, hotel and airline memberships, airport lounge access and other benefits etc., then this card is for you.
2) Benefits of SBI Prime Card
a) Welcome e-gift voucher worth Rs. 3,000 on payment of annual fees. You can choose the voucher of one of the following brands: Bata, Hush Puppies, Pantaloons, Shoppers Stop, Yatra.com etc.
b) Reward points: 10 reward points on every Rs. 100 spent on dining, groceries, departmental stores and movies resulting in 2.5% value back.
c) 15 reward points on every Rs. 100 spent on BigBasket resulting in 3.75% value back
d) 20 reward points on every Rs. 100 spent through standing instructions. This is a very interesting feature of this card using which you can get 5% value back on regular monthly payments like utility bill payments, rent, insurance premiums etc. More on this feature in the later part of this article.
e) 2 reward points on every Rs. 100 spent on all other retail spends resulting in 0.5% value back
f) 1% fuel surcharge waiver across all petrol pumps on transactions between Rs. 500 – Rs. 4000
g) Milestone benefit: Pizza Hut e-voucher worth Rs. 1000 on spending Rs. 50,000 in a calendar quarter. You can get 4 vouchers of Rs. 1000 each in a year with quarterly spends of Rs. 50,000
h) Milestone benefit: E-voucher worth Rs. 7,000 from Yatra.com or Pantaloons on achieving annual spends of Rs. 5 lakhs
i) Airport lounge access: 8 complimentary visits per year (maximum 2 visits per quarter) to domestic airport lounges in India
j) 4 complimentary visits per year (maximum 2 visits per quarter) to International Priority Pass airport lounges outside India
k) Birthday special: 20 reward points on every Rs. 100 spent on your birthday resulting in 5% value back.
l) Trident privilege membership and Club Vistara Membership
m) Access to various Mastercard / Visa privileges
So that is a long list of benefits that come with this card and hence you must go for this card.
3) Card fees
Joining fee: Rs. 2,999 (Welcome e-gift voucher worth Rs. 3,000. You can choose one of the following brands: Bata, Hush Puppies, Pantaloons, Shoppers Stop, Yatra.com etc.)
Annual fee: Rs. 2,999 (waived off on annual spends of Rs. 3 lakhs and above in the previous year)
4) How to make the best use of SBI Prime card
SBI Card comes up with regular discount / cashback offers for all its card holders. Some of these are exclusive offers that are introduced during festival sale or monsoon sale or Republic Day Sale or any other sale etc. This is where you can make the best use of the SBI Prime Card.
Let me explain this with an example. Suppose SBI Card comes up with a 10% instant discount offer with a department store during the Diwali Sale. You can avail this offer for purchasing groceries and daily use household products and get very good benefits as follows:
a) Up to 50% direct discount on product MRP (During such sale, departmental stores give offers like Buy 1, get 1 free or buy 2, get 1 free or buy 3, get 1 free etc. or direct discount of 5% to 50% on MRP. In my personal experience, during such events the total saving on MRP is 25% or above)
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b) 10% direct discount for all SBI credit cards including SBI Prime Card
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c) 5% value back for SBI Prime cardholders (10 reward points for every Rs. 100 spent on groceries and Departmental stores. Each reward point is equivalent to Re 0.25 resulting in 2.5% value back)
When your quarterly spends exceed Rs. 50,000, you get a Pizza Hut e-voucher worth Rs. 1,000. This gives you additional value back of 2%
When your total annual spends exceed Rs. 5 lakh, you will get a Yatra / Pantaloon e-voucher of Rs. 7,000. This will result in additional value back of 1.4%.
If we take the total of all the above benefits, your savings will be in the range of 40% or above during sale events. So on your purchases of Rs. 3,000 you will save Rs. 1,200 or above. This is huge savings! From my past experience, I have observed that these sale events happen around 4 times a year, around once in a quarter. These sale events usually happen on 26th Jan, 1st May, 15th August and 2nd Oct (or Diwali). So, if you plan your purchases systematically, you can shop for most of the groceries and daily use household items with huge savings, once in a quarter and stock them up.
Similarly, you can use the SBI Prime credit card and plan your online purchases on partner websites by clubbing it with merchant partner direct discount on MRP, credit card discount and other benefits (third party cashback, coupon discount, reward points, milestone benefits etc.). This will result in huge savings of 30 - 60% for you.
5) Save up to 8.4% on regular monthly payments like rent, utility bill payments and insurance premiums
This is the most interesting feature of the SBI Prime Card. If you make regular monthly payments (like utility bill payments, rent, insurance premiums, or all of them), then the SBI Prime Card can help you save up to 8.4% on these regular monthly payments. The utility bill payments can include prepaid and postpaid mobile, DTH, electricity, broadband, piped gas etc.
The SBI Prime Card can help you save up to 8.4% on regular payments through standing instructions:
- You get 20 reward points for every Rs. 100 payment that you make through standing instructions.
- Each reward point is worth Rs. 0.25. So the 20 reward points that you get by making payments of every Rs. 100 using the card are worth Rs. 5.
- Thus, you get 5% value back (reward points) for payments through standing instructions
How to make payment using standing instructions
- Once you login to your dashboard on the SBI Card website, select the “Utility Bill Payment” link.
- Click on the “Pay Now” link. You will be taken to the Billdesk website in a new window.
- Click on the “Add Biller” link. Select category like electricity or mobile or insurance or rent or any other regular payment that you want to make through standing instructions.
- Fill the required details for that utility
- Please note that you need to enable the “Autopay” option for any category if you want to get 20 reward points for every Rs. 100 payment for that category
- Without “Autopay”, you can still make adhoc payments as and when you want. As payment is NOT happening through standing instruction, you will get only 2 regular reward points for every Rs. 100 payment.
So that was all about how you can get 5% value back for payments like utility bills, rent, insurance, donations, subscriptions etc. Now let us see, how can the value back go up from 5% to up to 8.4%.
You can get savings of up to 8.4% on your regular monthly payments as follows:
a) 5% value back through standing instructions as explained above
b) 2% additional value back (Rs. 1000 Pizza Hut e-voucher) on quarterly spends of Rs. 50,000 or more
c) 4% additional value back (Rs. 7,000 Yatra.com/Pantaloons voucher) on Rs. 5 lakhs annual spends
That’s how you get up to 8.4% value back for standing instruction payments. Interesting isn’t it?
6) Making rent payments using SBI Prime Card and saving up to 8.4%
You can make your home rent payment or corporate / commercial rent payments using SBI Prime Card through standing instructions and earn 20 reward points for every Rs. 100 payment. This will provide you 5% value back as explained above. If you include 2% additional value back (Rs. 1000 Pizza Hut e-voucher on Rs. 50,000 quarterly spends) and 1.4% additional value back (Rs. 7,000 Yatra.com or Pantaloons e-voucher on Rs. 5,00,000 annual spends), then the total value back goes up to 8.4%.
7) What is Redgirraffe Property ID and how to generate it?
To make rent payments through SBI Prime Card, you need a RedGirraffe ID. RedGirraffe is a financial technology (Fintech) company that facilitates rent (residential and corporate / commercial) payment through credit cards. You need to create a RedGirraffe ID by registering on their website by filling details like tenant personal details i.e. your personal details, rent details and upload a copy of the rent agreement. To create a RedGirraffe ID use my reference link: www.RedGirraffe.com.
How to make rent payment using standing instructions
Once a RedGirraffe id is generated, login to the SBI credit card website and follow these steps:
- Login to your SBI Card website dashboard and select the “Utility Bill Payment” link.
- Click on the “Pay Now” link.
- You will be taken to the Billdesk website in a new window.
- Click on the “Add Biller” link
- Select “Rent” category for making regular monthly payment through standing instructions.
- Select “Redgirraffe” from the drop down list
- Fill the required details like Redgirraffe Property ID for rent payment
- Please note that you need to enable the “Autopay” option for rent payment if you want to get 20 reward points for every Rs. 100 rent payment
If you don’t enable “Autopay”, you can still make adhoc rent payments as and when you want. In such cases, as the payment is NOT happening through standing instruction, you will get only the regular 2 reward points for every Rs. 100 payment.
For rental payments made through credit card, RedGirraffe charges a small fee of 0.39% (39 paise only for every Rs. 100 rent paid). For every Rs. 100 you pay as rent through RedGirraffe with SBI Prime Card, you pay a fee of 39 paise, but you can earn value back of up to Rs. 8.4. Interesting isn’t it?
So that was all about how you can get up to 8.4% value back for rent payments through standing instructions using SBI Prime Card.
8) Which credit card should you select?
If you are not sure on which credit card to choose from all the SBI credit cards and all the credit cards from other banks, don’t worry. You can email me at [email protected] with your details. I will call you and do analysis of your regular monthly expenses and suggest the most appropriate credit card/s for you. This may help you save Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 50,000 in a year. I will give you an assurance of minimum savings of Rs. 10,000 or more in a year.
9) Consultancy on saving 10% to 80% on some of your regular monthly expenses
I will also provide you one time consultancy and guidance on how you can save 10% to 80% on some of your regular monthly expenses like groceries, daily use household items, recharges and other utility bill payments, medicines, dining, movies, travel and others. This will help you save a couple of thousand Rupees every month, depending on your monthly expenditure. Before applying for the credit card, you can write to me at [email protected] and I will guide you on the credit card application process.
Conclusion
To conclude, the SBI Prime Card is a very good credit card to have for your regular offline and online purchases. It can help you save lot of money through direct discount by merchant on MRP, direct discount or cashback on card usage, reward points, milestone vouchers etc. It can also help you save lot of money (up to 8.4% value back) on your regular payments like rent, insurance premiums, utility bills etc. through standing instructions. Based on all the above benefits, I will recommend that you go for this card.
To read about comparison of 15+ credit cards from 12 banks click here. Learn how to save Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 50,000 per year through a combination of discount / cashback on credit card usage, direct discount on MRP by merchant, reward points benefit from credit card, spend based milestone benefit from credit card, additional coupon based discount / cashback from merchant, additional cashback from wallet companies, cashback from third party cashback companies etc.