PhonePe SBI Card SELECT BLACK & PURPLE Devaluation: New Reward Caps and Exclusions (July 2026)

Effective 1 July 2026, SBI Card has revised the reward-earning rules on both the PhonePe SBI Card SELECT BLACK and the PhonePe SBI Card PURPLE. New monthly reward-point caps now apply to 10X, 5X, insurance and online spends made via PhonePe, and an expanded list of categories — from school fees to toll payments to non-PhonePe UPI — now earn zero points. If either card sits in your wallet, the effective reward rate you were planning around has just moved.

What exactly changed on 1 July 2026

Per SBI Card's own product update (PhonePe-Black terms PDF on sbicard.com, dated 27 April 2026, effective 1 July 2026) — corroborated by LiveMint, Card Maven, TradeBrains and Goodreturns coverage around 1 July 2026 — the two co-branded cards now have hard monthly caps on almost every high-earn bucket, plus a broader exclusion list.

SELECT BLACK: new monthly caps

• 10X-rewards-eligible PhonePe spends: capped at 1,500 reward points per month
• 5X-rewards category spends: capped at 1,000 reward points per month
• Insurance spends made via PhonePe: capped at 500 reward points per month
• Online spends: capped at 1,000 reward points per month

PURPLE: new monthly caps

• Online-spend cap reduced from 1,000 to 750 reward points per month
• Insurance payments via PhonePe: capped at 250 reward points per month
• Other eligible PhonePe transactions: capped at 750 reward points per month

Categories now earning zero reward points

On top of the caps, both cards now earn zero reward points on a much wider set of everyday spends from 1 July 2026:

• Education, school and college fee payments
• Toll and bridge payments
• Jewellery purchases
• Gift cards and vouchers
• Utility bill payments made outside the PhonePe app
• Insurance premiums paid outside PhonePe
• UPI transactions made through any app other than PhonePe

What this does to your effective reward rate

The headline 10X/5X multipliers are still intact — but a per-month points ceiling flattens your effective rate the moment you cross the cap. On SELECT BLACK, hitting the 1,500-point 10X cap in a month means every additional 10X-eligible rupee earns at the base rate, not 10X. On PURPLE, a 25% haircut on the online-spend cap (1,000 → 750 points) does the same, silently, to anyone who was already close to the ceiling.

Catalog-verified alternatives for UPI and everyday spend

If the new caps and exclusions push your effective rate below what you expected, here are CardAgent-scored options worth comparing for UPI and everyday online spend:

Frequently asked questions

Does this affect all SBI Cards or just these two? Just these two co-branded products — the PhonePe SBI Card SELECT BLACK and PhonePe SBI Card PURPLE. Other SBI Card products (Cashback SBI Card, SBI SimplyCLICK, SBI PRIME, etc.) are not covered by this 1 July 2026 change.

Is UPI spend outside the PhonePe app still eligible for rewards? No. From 1 July 2026, UPI transactions made through any app other than PhonePe earn zero reward points on both the PhonePe SBI Card SELECT BLACK and PURPLE.

Is CardAgent tracking these two cards yet? Not yet — neither the PhonePe SBI Card SELECT BLACK nor the PURPLE is in the current CardAgent catalog, so there is no live /cards/ page or CardIQ score for either card today. We will add scored entries once we have reliable card-level data. For now, use the catalog-verified alternatives linked below.