PhonePe SBI Card PURPLE

A month on PURPLE, in points

Say you pay ₹5,000 of electricity, mobile and DTH bills through PhonePe, spend ₹6,000 online and put ₹5,000 on everything else. PURPLE earns 3 points per ₹100 on the PhonePe spend, 2 per ₹100 online and 1 per ₹100 on the rest. That is 150 + 120 + 50, so 320 points a month, or about 3,840 a year.

If a point is worth ₹1, as SBI states for the sibling SELECT BLACK, that covers the ₹589 annual fee with GST six times over. Our record does not state PURPLE's point value separately, so confirm it on your first statement.

This is PURPLE, SBI's entry PhonePe card at ₹499 + GST. The higher tier is the PhonePe SBI Card SELECT BLACK, and HDFC runs its own PhonePe cards with different rules.

Where the month falls apart

That example assumes PhonePe adds nothing to your bills. Users report that it often does. One thread title sums it up: "PhonePe eating my rewards: 3% down to almost 1%". On a ₹1,000 bill, 3 points per ₹100 is 30 points, and users report the fee can take most of that back.

Users also say some billers, such as Jio Fiber and some health insurers, are not on PhonePe's bill portal at all, so they cannot earn the PhonePe rate.

What helps:

• Check the final payable amount at checkout every time.
• If a fee shows up, pay that bill on the biller's own site.
• Use the 2 points per ₹100 online bucket for regular online shopping.

Caps, fee and extras

SBI's page confirmed the earn grid in October 2026. Our record shows a 750 cap on the PhonePe bucket and another 750 on the online bucket each month, reached at about ₹25,000 and ₹37,500. The base rate has no stated cap.

The ₹499 fee is reversed if you spend ₹1 lakh in the previous membership year, about ₹8,300 a month. You also get a ₹500 PhonePe gift card as a welcome benefit, a ₹3,000 Yatra voucher at ₹3 lakh of annual spend, and a 1% fuel surcharge waiver up to ₹100 a cycle. There is no lounge access. A recent thread says points can only be redeemed in multiples of 4,000, so let them build up.

Pick RuPay, not Visa

Credit card UPI only works on RuPay. Our record lists PURPLE on Visa, but users report choosing a RuPay variant through a network preference option when applying. If you want to scan QR codes at shops, choose RuPay at the start.

"I applied for BLACK and got PURPLE"

This is the most common story about the card. Users who applied for SELECT BLACK report SBI approving PURPLE without asking, with the ₹499 fee in the approval message. Some refused activation. One user says you can request an upgrade by calling customer care, but SBI does not describe that route in our data.

Who PURPLE works for

It is a reasonable low-fee SBI RuPay card if you want UPI and can clear ₹1 lakh a year. Users like the easy waiver and the approval odds.

It is not a bill-payment winner once PhonePe fees are counted. For online shopping, users overwhelmingly preferred SBI Cashback. For 10% on PhonePe and lounges, SELECT BLACK is the card people actually wanted.

Credit Card Information Compiled by: Abhijeet Kumar | Reviewed by: Anmol Ratan Sachdeva