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Which credit card should you use for online shopping in India?

Quick answer. Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra: HDFC Millennia, SBI Cashback and Swiggy HDFC Bank each earn 5%. Swiggy: Swiggy HDFC Bank or HSBC Live+, both 10%. Zomato and BigBasket: HSBC Live+, 10%. Petrol: no card in our data earns more than 1% on fuel, and eleven of the 23 earn nothing there — use whichever card waives the fuel surcharge. Hold none of these? Your card most likely pays 1% to 1.5%, and the gap is worth about ₹350 to ₹900 a year for every ₹10,000 you spend at one of those shops.

Based on the 23 Indian cards in our data — a subset of the market, not all of it; rates last checked between 2026-07-21 and 2026-08-16. Every figure below is computed, and every card name in a table links to the issuer's own page.

Which card should I use on Amazon, Flipkart and Swiggy?

If you hold HDFC Millennia, SBI Cashback or Swiggy HDFC Bank, at least one of the three cards below already earns the top rate in our data. The table shows the best card at each shop, what a typical card earns there, and what the gap costs.

Modelled on ₹10,000 of annual spend at each merchant. "Typical card" is the median card for that purchase — not the worst; half of the 23 cards earn that rate or less.

More than one card usually reaches the top rate. At Amazon, three cards in our data hit 5%: HDFC Millennia, Swiggy HDFC Bank and SBI Cashback. At Flipkart the four are Millennia, Flipkart Axis Bank, Swiggy HDFC and SBI Cashback. On Swiggy, HSBC Live+ matches Swiggy HDFC Bank's 10%.

Amazon Pay ICICI is missing on purpose. Its 5% on Amazon applies only if you have an Amazon Prime membership; without Prime it earns 3%. The table counts it at 3%. If you hold Prime, add it to the Amazon list.

"Brand-locked" means the rate applies at named shops only. Millennia's 5% covers Amazon, BookMyShow, Cult.fit, Flipkart, Myntra, Sony LIV, Swiggy, Tata CLiQ, Uber and Zomato, and nowhere else. HSBC Live+'s 10% is an ordinary category rate that happens to be high.

Watch the ceiling, not just the rate. Every top rate above stops at a monthly or annual ceiling, after which you drop to the card's base rate. That is where the "best card" quietly stops being best, and it means these gaps shrink as your spending grows.

Do this: check whether you hold any card in the winning group for the shops you use most. If yes, make it your default there. If no, your current card is probably fine — the gap is a few hundred rupees a year, not a reason to apply for a new card.

Which card wins by category — dining, groceries, travel?

The gap between the best card and the typical one runs from 2.3 to 9 percentage points, depending on where you spend. It is widest on food delivery, groceries and dining. Gaps here are measured at the typical annual spend shown in each row, with annual caps applied.

HSBC Live+ tops dining and groceries at 10%. SBI Cashback tops streaming at 5%. Rows marked ‡ carry a condition — see the caveats section below before relying on them.

Do this: if you hold none of the cards named above, do not apply for one on the strength of this table. If you hold a premium points card, read the caveats first: its rate assumes you redeem the points well.

Why is petrol missing from that table?

Because on the evidence in our data there is no good card for it. Eleven of the 23 cards in our data earn nothing at all on fuel, and the issuers say so in their own documents. Four examples:

• Axis Magnus — Axis excludes "Gold & Jewellery, Fuel, Cash advances and Repayments" from earning.
• Axis ACE — "Cashback shall not be eligible on fuel spends, EMI transactions".
• HDFC Regalia Gold — "Reward points will not be accrued for fuel transactions".
• HSBC Live+ — HSBC's own worked example prices a fuel purchase at nothing: "Fuel INR 500 0% INR 0".

The best fuel rate left in our data is a 1% base rate on cards whose fuel terms have not been checked, so none of them is called a winner here either.

Do this: put petrol on whichever card gives you a fuel surcharge waiver, and stop optimising for rewards there — a surcharge waiver refunds a fee rather than paying a reward, but on the cards checked it is the only thing fuel earns you. If you use the Beni app, we suggest trusting the issuer's terms over the app for petrol on the five cards named on the methodology page until its data is updated — details there.

Does paying online change which card wins?

Yes, for one card in particular. SBI Cashback pays 5% on online transactions and 1% at a point of sale, so the rate turns on how you pay, not what you buy. Tables like the ones above have one row per category and cannot tell an online payment from an in-person one, so three rows have a better answer than they show:

• Entertainment. Book tickets online with SBI Cashback and you earn 5%, not the 3.3% in the entertainment row.
• Transit, and the Uber row. A cab booked and paid in an app is an online transaction. HDFC's own terms list Uber among ten "online merchants". Our data does not record Uber as online, so the table gives that row to Millennia at 5% against 1%; read it as a tie.
• Streaming. SBI Cashback tops it at 5% for the same reason, and there the table can show it — a subscription cannot be bought in a shop.

But online is not enough on its own. SBI names thirteen categories that earn nothing at all, whatever channel you use — fuel, rent, wallet loads, utilities, insurance, education, jewellery, railways, tolls, gift and novelty shops, digital gaming, quasi-cash and government payments. An electricity bill paid online earns 0%, not 5%.

Do this: if you hold SBI Cashback, use it for anything you buy online that is not on SBI's excluded list. Keep a different card for bills, rent and fuel.

The caveats behind the ‡ marks

• HSBC Live+'s ₹1,200 monthly ceiling is shared across all its 10% categories — HSBC's page offers "10% accelerated cashback, up to INR1,200 a month, on all dining, food delivery, grocery, shopping". Live+ tops four rows on this page, and they draw on the same allowance: use it for two of them and the ceiling arrives roughly twice as fast as any one row suggests.
• IRCTC SBI Card's 10% is "up to 10%* value back of your AC class ticket fare", and "Reward Points are not earned on 3E and SL Class tickets" — so a Sleeper booking or a cab earns nothing at that rate, which is why its transit row shows 5.78%: our data caps the 10% at ₹10,000 of spend a year, and the rest of the category earns the card's 0.5% base rate.
• Axis Magnus's 4.8% assumes booking through the Travel EDGE portal and redeeming points at travel-transfer value — a note in our own card data that we have not confirmed against Axis's terms; redeemed for statement credit it is materially lower.
• Any rate shown for a points card assumes the points are redeemed well. Infinia, Diners Black, Magnus and the Amex cards all fall under this; cashback cards do not.

What is choosing well actually worth? Three real wallets

Modelled on ₹5,22,000 of annual spending across ten categories — the nine above plus an "everything else" bucket.

The premium wallet earns more than twice the rewards of the cashback wallet and still the premium wallet finishes ₹7,702 behind after its own fees, because ₹25,000 of annual fees is a lot to earn back at this level of spending. Premium cards can be worth it — here is exactly when — but not at ₹5,22,000 a year.

Fewer cards can be better. A single SBI Cashback Card carrying this whole profile returns ₹7,980 before its ₹999 fee, against ₹6,341 for the three-card cashback wallet after its two fees. The two extra cards add ₹360 of rewards and bring Millennia's ₹1,000 fee. These wallet figures charge every annual fee in full; if your issuer waives yours above a spending threshold, the picture improves — check your own terms.

Most of the money is in not defaulting to a bad card. Using each card where it earns most, instead of putting everything on the worst card you hold, is worth ₹3,480 a year for the cashback wallet, ₹2,227 for the no-fee wallet and ₹12,078 for the premium wallet. Splitting spend by category accounts for only ₹360, ₹504 and ₹1,260 of those totals. The category calculation cannot see brand-locked merchant rates; counted on their own, across the eight merchants above at ₹10,000 each, the best-versus-worst gap inside each wallet is ₹3,000, ₹604 and ₹1,700 a year.

Keeping all of that in your head — which card wins at which shop, and whether you have already hit a ceiling this month — is the hard part. It is the one thing Beni does: you name the cards you hold, and it tells you which one to use for each purchase.

Do this: know your default card, and know the handful of places where a different card wins by a mile. That is a small thing to remember, and it is where most of the money is.

Questions people ask

Is Amazon Pay ICICI the best card for Amazon? Only if you have Amazon Prime: then it earns 5% on Amazon; without Prime it earns 3%. HDFC Millennia, SBI Cashback and Swiggy HDFC Bank earn 5% there regardless.

Which card is best for Swiggy? Swiggy HDFC Bank and HSBC Live+ both earn 10% on Swiggy in our data. SBI Cashback earns 5% there as an online purchase.

Which card is best for petrol? No card in our data earns more than 1% on petrol, and eleven of the 23 earn nothing. Our advice: use the card that waives the fuel surcharge.

Do more cards mean more rewards? Not necessarily. On this spending profile a single SBI Cashback Card out-earns a three-card cashback wallet once fees are counted. See the wallets section above.

How these numbers were made

Every rate, median, gap and wallet total on this page is computed by Beni's own engine over 23 Indian cards, with annual caps and stated fuel exclusions applied; issuer quotes are from the documents linked. Reward rates are estimates compiled from public issuer information and change without much warning. Every India card in our data was last checked between 2026-07-21 and 2026-08-16 — confirm with your issuer before you rely on a rate here. Four cards cannot be checked automatically and carry a † marker. Full method, and the corrections applied to the data: how these guides are made.

No affiliate links — Beni earns nothing whichever card you use. Beni is not a bank, takes no payment, and never asks for card numbers.

Related

• Is your credit card's annual fee worth it? Break-even for 19 Indian cards
• HDFC Millennia vs SBI Cashback: what actually separates them

If you would rather not memorise any of this: Beni asks which cards you own — names only, never card numbers — and tells you which one to use, purchase by purchase.