SmartSpend FAQ: your questions, answered

Tell it what you are buying and roughly what it costs. It looks at the cards you already hold and finds you the best way to pay: swiping one particular card, buying a discounted gift card first and paying with that, or booking a restaurant through the platform that leaves you paying least.

SmartSpend does not sell credit cards and is not a bank. It cannot see your money or move it. You get an answer in rupees, and you decide what to do with it.

The same card can give you 5% back at one shop and almost nothing at a petrol pump, on rent, or on a wallet top-up. Most cards also stop paying the good rate once you have earned a few hundred rupees in a month, and plenty of everyday spends are quietly left out altogether.

That is why "the best card" is the wrong question and "the best card for this purchase" is the right one. SmartSpend checks the cards in your wallet against the shop you named and the amount you are spending, and shows you what each one is really worth in rupees.

A comparison table quotes the headline rate from the brochure. SmartSpend tells you what you will actually get: after the monthly limit on that rate, after the categories your card leaves out, and after the fees that come off the top.

It also checks whether there is a cheaper route to the same purchase, which a comparison table never does.

Three things account for nearly every disappointing statement:

• Monthly caps. A "5% cashback" card often stops at a few hundred rupees a month. Everything after that earns the base rate.
• Excluded spends. Rent, fuel, wallet top-ups, insurance and government payments earn nothing on most cards.
• The shop is registered differently than you would guess. Card rewards follow the category a shop is registered under, which is not always the one on the signboard, so a restaurant inside a hotel can pay the hotel rate instead of the dining rate. There is a plain-English explanation in our guide to this.

SmartSpend accounts for all three before it recommends anything.

Most Indian banks run a rewards site that sells brand gift cards at a discount. Buy a ₹10,000 voucher at 5% off, then spend it at the shop, and you have paid ₹9,500 for ₹10,000 of shopping — and your card still earns on the ₹9,500.

SmartSpend checks these prices live across HDFC SmartBuy and Gyftr, ICICI iShop, American Express ShopWise, Woohoo, Kotak Instant Vouchers and RBL Bank Offers, and compares that route against simply swiping your card. It will tell you when swiping directly is the better deal.

Restaurant offers in India move constantly. The same place can run a different deal at lunch than at dinner, and a different one for walk-ins than for bookings, so the biggest advertised percentage is often not the one that saves you the most rupees.

SmartSpend adds the restaurant's own discount, the best bank offer your card qualifies for, and what your card earns, then gives you one final number per platform.

Every recommendation accounts for monthly caps, excluded categories, fuel and utility surcharges, annual fee waivers, spend milestones, and memberships you already pay for such as Swiggy One, Zomato Gold and Amazon Prime. Rewards are converted into rupees at what they are genuinely worth, so a card that pays in points is not flattered against one that pays cash.

They are still estimates. Card terms and offers change without notice, so confirm the final benefit with your bank before a large purchase.

One optimise query is one purchase you look up. Checking the same shop again, or switching between payment options on a result, does not use another one.

Two paid plans exist for people who use it more often:

• Pro, ₹99 a month — 30 optimise queries a month, 10 Dine Out searches, up to 10 cards.
• Pro+, ₹299 a month — unlimited optimise queries for ordinary personal use, 20 Dine Out searches, up to 30 cards.

You are paying for how often you use it, never for features: gift-card deals and your full history are on every plan, free included. Cancel any time, with a seven-day full refund. The pricing page has the current plans.

HDFC Bank, SBI Card, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, American Express, IDFC FIRST, Kotak, RBL Bank, HSBC and BOB Financial — the everyday cards and the premium ones, co-brands included.

Each card is kept up to date with its real terms, including the ones people get caught by: the monthly caps, the excluded categories, the spend levels that unlock a voucher, and the annual spend that gets your fee waived. If your card is missing, you can ask for it from inside the app and it usually gets added.

Get it on Google Play for Android or the App Store for iPhone. The website runs exactly the same thing if you would rather not install anything.

The cards, the banks, the gift-card sites and the restaurant platforms are all Indian. Spending abroad is handled to the extent that it affects an Indian card — the foreign currency fee is taken off, and cards that charge no such fee are pointed out — but cards issued outside India are not covered.

SmartSpend never asks for a bank username, password or card PIN, and never records a card number, CVV, expiry date or billing address. It does not read your messages, your statements or your transactions.

Because it is never connected to a bank account, there is no version of the app that can see your balance or move your money. Your card list and your searches are never sold — not to credit bureaus, not to banks, not to advertisers.