The business of co-branded credit cards is getting serious. Since 2018, ICICI Amazon Pay credit card has reigned supreme in terms of pure cashback value. Then there is the Axis Bank and Airtel co-branded card which delivers genuine value for bill payments, particularly for Airtel customers. Many more cards, but none noteworthy. We’re witnessing a concerted effort to draw collective value, in the past few weeks, with co-branded card launches in a deluge. Good news for customers? Perhaps, but avoid FOMO (or fear of missing out, as the cool kids call it) and ruining your financial planning. I wanted to chat about the scope with co-branded cards, and for sake of simplicity, focus on e-commerce focused ones (there are fuel, airline and travel ones too; we’ll discuss those at some point).
A question you must be asking, are these cards complex with layered cashback conditions? Can they beat traditional stalwarts, such as SBI Cashback card? There’s a reason I point this out is to make you think — would you prefer value-back in the form of reward points, or simple cashback posted to the card statement? I’ll illustrate that complexity sheepishly holding up an HDFC Bank Tata Neu Infinity card (lapse in judgement, when I have THE Infinia), to point to a complex rewards structure — 5% rewards get posted coinciding with statement generation, while remaining 5% on some spends gets posted one calendar month later. Yes, actual month. Does a co-branded card work for users? Perhaps. Only apply, if you see genuine value in what these cards potentially shovel back for expenses.
Data perspective: Numbers by Redseer Strategy Consultants suggest co-branded cards account for between 12% to 15% of credit cards in circulation in India at this time, and are projected to exceed 25% share by FY28, growing to as high as 40% share.
Flipkart SBI co-branded credit card: Prime benefit is an uncomplicated cashback structure, with no shenanigans (as you’d witness later with some other new cards) and straightforward computation, as actual money posted to your card bill. As a Flipkart co-brand, there is of course 5% return reserved for spends there, and on Cleartrip, alongside Myntra spends that get 7.5% returns. ‘Select merchants’ get 4% straight returns — these are Zomato, Uber, PVR and Netmeds), with cycle limits set at ₹4000 each. I’d mark this as a good card to have for high-value electronics purchases on Flipkart.
Unity Bank BharatPe credit card: Positioned as an EMI card, where customers can either pay for a purchase in full or convert to up to 12 instalments, with no processing fee or foreclosure charges. No fee card, and is on the RuPay network which makes it relevant for UPI payments. You may find utility particularly with big ticket purchases such as home appliances or furniture, expenses which often arrive unexpectedly and there isn’t always immediate financial headroom to work with. Interest rate varies based on tenure, but not having to pay any extra charges, is still more money saved.
SBI PhonePe co-branded cards: There are two cards, PhonePe SBI Card SELECT BLACK and PhonePe SBI Card PURPLE ( ₹1,499 and ₹500 annual fee respectively). Option of RuPay or Visa networks, the latter’s still a better bet for international travel. SELECT BLACK delivers up to 10% value back, when used on PhonePe and Pincode platforms, while PURPLE gives 3% back. Returns come in the form of reward points. The former also has up to 5% value back for other online spends. Value back caps are up to 2000 points per billing cycle, depending on the card. I would peg this as the best value for bill payments; ideally look at cashback in terms of annual savings.
HDFC PhonePe co-branded cards: A few weeks before SBI cards joined the PhonePe fray, it was HDFC Bank setting the tone. There are two variants, Ultimo and UNO ( ₹999 and ₹499 per year), and returns include up to 10% reward points for PhonePe spends such as bill pay and travel bookings, 5% points for all other online spends and more. Capping per category for returns is lower than the SBI variants — PhonePe spends limited to 1,000 points per month, while 5% returns on online spends are limited to 500 points. This is the reason I’d rate HDFC co-branded cards a peg lower than SBI iterations.
Swiggy HDFC Bank: Though around since 2023, a new dimension has been added this week — a 6% discount on domestic and international flight bookings and bus bookings made via Paytm Travel. This, in addition to 10% cashback across Swiggy usage (food delivery, Instamart, and Dineout; capped at ₹1,500 per month), 5% cashback on a wide range of online spends (also capped at ₹1,500 per month), and 1% cashback on other eligible spends (maximum of ₹500 per month). Currently offered as lifetime free or first year free ( ₹500 per year thereafter), depending on how much or how little HDFC Bank likes you. Best for Swiggy spends, I’d say.
Be warned! RBL Bank and Zomato’s card partnership, as well as the IndusInd Eazydiner credit cards are cautionary tales. The former no longer exists, though I’m sure Zomato would have loved to compete with Swiggy and HDFC’s proposition. The latter was likely misused far too often by IndusInd’s card holders, that restaurants platform EazyDiner’s dining benefits were curbed substantially alongside an annual fee hike for the Signature card, earlier this summer.
- What do co-branded credit cards mean for issuing banks and partnering platforms? For banks, there’s a chance to acquire a loyal and active customer base (of a particular platform, an airline or a fuel company), which further helps in clocking a certain level of monthly spends, and to a certain extent, cross-selling for other products. Certain banks may not have much loyalty to show to customers these days, but we tend to have some of that for banks where we place our savings and deposits.
- For partner platforms, there is the aspect of retention (you’ll stay with the platform for expenses, because the card returns value), and also banks also tend to share data insights with co-brand partners to better curate offers and understand consumer behaviour.
KNOW
Meta is believed to be experimenting with long-form posts on Threads. There is some chatter online about certain users seeing that option on their Threads apps, but the social media platform hasn’t formally announced anything at the time of writing. To be expected though, because their main rival X has this. But does it mean a subscription tier for Threads? That may be a bridge too far.
MAKING SENSE
This week, I sat down for a conversation with Canva’s Liam Fisher, who is Head of Pro Design Marketing, and someone who must decide what path Canva and their Affinity acquisition will take. It is pivotal, and the simple reason I say this is, we’re in the midst of a time when artificial intelligence (AI) has been massively overestimated by many folks. From AI supremacy not seeing a future for humans in the workplace, I’ve heard it all. Designers and creative professionals are often touted as at a lot of risk, because apparently ChatGPT and Gemini will take over image generation, video creation and media editing tasks of the world, rendering humans useless. That is not the approach Canva is taking with Affinity. ““It’s about craft, the creativity, a designer and their unique eye for detail. What we want to make sure is we’re not taking away anything from that craft,” Fisher tells me. Here’s everything he told us.
On creative apps with subscription models: “Subscription models have always been very restrictive. What we’ve found is that software in this space has always been quite bloated with lots of unnecessary features, and really those features are there to justify its ever increasing subscription. All that’s done is really slowed down creativity.”
Affinity’s approach to AI integration: “When we look at AI and how we’re going to integrate that into Affinity, it’s very much about improving the workflow of a designer. That’s what we did this year when we introduced our first machine learning features. We are providing a platform that allows professional designers to craft incredibly precise, well crafted designs and then scale them, adapt them and collaborate seamlessly in Canva.”
Does Canva have a target on its back? “I don’t think that puts a target on our back, and I don’t think the onus is on us, really. We’re very community focussed, and our aim is to build the best tools for that complete range of design needs from beginner to professionals. We’ve got a comprehensive suite of professional design tools, all optimised with the latest technology and the latest hardware. The pressure really isn’t on us.”
Advantages of community driven progress: “Innovation is guided by millions of people that use it every day, from teachers and small businesses, to pro designers, enterprise and teams, that ensures every update addresses real-world needs and not just trends. And that feedback loop helps us prioritise what matters most. Instead of building features in isolation, we can build with complete clarity, focus and speed, knowing it’ll have that immediate impact.”
SECURE YOUR PHONE
This week, I analysed smartphone security as it is, and where we go from here. Smartphones today hold some of our most sensitive data, making them prime targets for increasingly sophisticated attacks, and protecting them has become a multi-layered effort. Modern operating systems like iOS and Android now act as gatekeepers, using behavioural analysis and machine learning to detect suspicious app activity, silent location tracking, or unusual usage patterns, with Apple leveraging its hardware-software integration while Android often leans on third-party security and VPN apps.
A new frontier is the integration of quantum encryption into consumer VPNs like Proton, Nord and ExpressVPN, enabling detection of even AI-driven fraud such as tampered voice calls, though attackers are already stockpiling encrypted data to break in the future with quantum computing power. This defence-offense arms race is complicated by the privacy paradox—security systems need deep access to personal data to function effectively—and the growing but still immature use of AI-powered predictive models to anticipate threats before they happen. The vision is to move from reactive shields to proactive protection, but that future, while promising, remains some distance away.
