If you’ve spent any time searching “AU Bank vs Axis vs SBI vs Kiwi credit card,” you’ve probably noticed the same thing I did: every result either pushes you toward whichever card pays that site the most, or buries the actual numbers three clicks deep behind “apply now” buttons. Four decent cards, real differences between them, and no honest side-by-side that just lays out what each one costs and who it actually suits.
So I went and checked. This isn’t a ranked “best card overall” — I don’t think one exists here, and I’ll say so plainly where it doesn’t. It’s a side-by-side of what AU Small Finance Bank’s Altura card, Axis Bank’s ACE card, SBI’s SimplyCLICK card, and the Kiwi RuPay card actually charge and offer, checked against each issuer’s own page or app on September 20, 2026, with a “check with the issuer” wherever I couldn’t confirm a figure at the source.
A couple of things up front. This article carries affiliate links — if you open a card through one, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you, and every link is marked. What follows is general information based on publicly available issuer terms, not personalised financial advice — your own approval depends on your specific income, credit file and the bank’s internal assessment, none of which I can see. And terms on all four of these cards change without much notice, so treat every number below as “true as of the date stamped,” not permanent.
How I compared these four cards
Each card has dozens of variants at its issuer, so I picked one comparable, mass-market variant per bank rather than comparing an entry card to a premium travel card: AU Bank’s Altura Credit Card (an everyday cashback card, not AU’s FD-secured Nomo card), Axis Bank’s ACE Credit Card (their well-known Google Pay–linked cashback card), and SBI’s SimplyCLICK Card (their online-shopping rewards card). Kiwi doesn’t have “variants” in the same sense — it’s a single RuPay/UPI card issued through whichever partner bank underwrites your application.
Every figure below comes from the issuer’s own fees page, terms document, or official site/app — not from Cuelinks’ own affiliate program terms, and not carried over from a comparison aggregator unless I say so. Where I couldn’t independently confirm something on the issuer’s own page, it says “check with the issuer” instead of a guessed number. That’s not a cop-out — it’s the difference between what I could verify and what I couldn’t, and on a money page I’d rather tell you which is which.
The comparison, dimension by dimension
| AU Bank Altura | Axis ACE | SBI SimplyCLICK | Kiwi RuPay | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Issued by | AU Small Finance Bank | Axis Bank | SBI Card | Partner bank — AU Small Finance Bank, Punjab National Bank, or YES Bank, depending on your application (gokiwi.in, checked 2026-09-20) |
| Network | Check with the issuer — AU issues cards on more than one network and I couldn’t confirm Altura’s specific network on aubank.in | Visa (per Axis’s own ACE launch page, checked 2026-09-20) | Visa or Mastercard depending on when/where you apply — check at application | RuPay, linked to UPI (gokiwi.in) |
| Joining fee | ₹199 + applicable taxes (aubank.in, checked 2026-09-20) | ₹499 + GST, reversed if you spend ₹10,000 within 45 days of card issuance (axisbank.com, checked 2026-09-20) | ₹499 + GST (sbicard.com states the same figure applies as the “annual membership fee,” checked 2026-09-20) | ₹0 (gokiwi.in) |
| Annual/renewal fee | ₹199 + applicable taxes; waived in year 1 if you spend ₹10,000 in retail purchases within 90 days of card setup, and from year 2 onward if you spend ₹40,000 in retail purchases in the previous card-anniversary year (aubank.in, re-checked 2026-09-20) | ₹499 + GST, waived if your annual spend crosses ₹2,00,000 (axisbank.com) | ₹499 + GST, reversed if your spend in the previous year was ₹1,00,000 or more (sbicard.com, re-checked 2026-09-20) | ₹0 for life, no spend condition (gokiwi.in) |
| Welcome benefit | Check with the issuer — current welcome offers weren’t confirmable on the page I could load | Check with the issuer — offers rotate | Check with the issuer — offers rotate | Check with the issuer |
| Base reward rate | 1% cashback on retail spends outside the categories below (aubank.in) | 1.5% cashback on spends outside the categories below (axisbank.com terms) | 5X reward points on all online spending, capped at 10,000 points a month; 1 point per ₹100 after the cap (sbicard.com terms) | 1.5% cashback on UPI scan-and-pay, 0.5% on online transactions (gokiwi.in) |
| Accelerated reward rate | 2% cashback on grocery, departmental store and utility bill spends (aubank.in) | Up to 5% cashback on bill payments via Google Pay, and cashback on named partners including Swiggy, Zomato and Ola; capped at ₹500 cashback per statement cycle across those categories (axisbank.com terms) | 10X points on named partners — currently Apollo 24x7, BookMyShow, Cleartrip, Domino’s, IGP, Myntra, Netmeds, Swiggy, Yatra, Gyftr and Tata CLiQ, re-checked on sbicard.com 2026-09-20 (Amazon.in was moved from 10X to 5X in Jan 2023, and is no longer on the list at all) | Up to 5% cashback with the paid Kiwi Neon membership (₹999/year), once your spend for the year crosses ₹1.5 lakh; below that, Neon raises UPI scan-and-pay to 2% (gokiwi.in) |
| Minimum income stated by issuer | Check with the issuer — not stated clearly on the page I could load | Check with the issuer — not published on axisbank.com’s own fees/eligibility page | Check with the issuer — SBI’s own eligibility text I could access speaks only of “a regular source of income,” no figure | Check with the issuer/partner bank — depends on which bank underwrites your card |
| CIBIL score stated by issuer | Not stated as a specific number on aubank.in | Not stated as a specific number on axisbank.com | Not stated as a specific number on sbicard.com — described only as “a good credit score” | Not stated as a specific number on gokiwi.in |
| Secured or unsecured | Unsecured — income/credit-assessed. (AU’s separate Nomo card is the FD-secured option, not this one.) | Unsecured | Unsecured | Not described as FD-secured on Kiwi’s own pages — assessed by the partner bank like a standard unsecured card |
| Best for | Everyday grocery/utility cashback from a smaller, newer bank | Bill payments and food-delivery spenders who want a simple flat-rate card | Frequent online shoppers who use the named partner sites | UPI-first spenders and anyone who wants a genuinely free card to try |
A cross-cutting note worth being upfront about: you’ll see “780+ CIBIL” or “720+ CIBIL” thrown around on comparison and affiliate sites for cards like these. I went looking for where each issuer states that on its own page and didn’t find it stated as a hard number on any of the four. Those figures tend to come from an affiliate program’s internal terms or a third-party estimate, not the bank’s own published bar. Treat “good credit history” as what the issuers themselves actually say, not a specific score you either clear or don’t.
What each card actually is
AU Bank Altura is the entry cashback card from AU Small Finance Bank — a relatively young, licensed small finance bank that’s been building out a full card lineup. The pitch is simple: 2% back on the spending categories most households repeat monthly (groceries, department stores, utility bills) and 1% on everything else, for a fee low enough (₹199) that the math works even if you never hit the waiver spend. It’s not flashy, and I couldn’t confirm its exact card network on AU’s own site — worth checking before you apply, since not every merchant terminal takes every network equally well.
Axis ACE is Axis Bank’s answer to the Google Pay–linked cashback trend — built around the idea that most people’s recurring spend is bills, food delivery and cab rides, and rewarding exactly that. The ₹499 fee sounds steeper than Altura’s, but it’s reversed on a fairly low first-year spend (₹10,000 in 45 days), and the ongoing waiver at ₹2 lakh a year isn’t a stretch for a salaried spender. The catch is the cashback cap — ₹500 a statement cycle across the bonus categories — so past a certain spend level you’re back to the 1.5% flat rate.
SBI SimplyCLICK leans hard into online shopping specifically, with a points system rather than flat cashback. The 5X-on-everything-online, 10X-on-named-partners structure rewards you more if your shopping habits already match SBI’s partner list — and less if they don’t. It’s also the card here from the bank with by far the largest branch network in India, which matters if you ever want to resolve something in person rather than through an app or call centre.
Kiwi is the odd one out structurally — it’s not a bank, it’s an app that gets your card issued through a partner bank. What you’re actually applying for depends on which of those partners underwrites you: AU Small Finance Bank, Punjab National Bank, or YES Bank, per Kiwi’s own site. The appeal is real, though: a genuinely free RuPay card built around UPI scan-and-pay, which none of the three traditional bank cards here are designed for in the same way. I’d want anyone applying to understand that “Kiwi” on the app icon isn’t who’s actually extending you credit — the partner bank is.
Which one is actually best for you?
Not a single “winner” — a set of honest picks by situation, tied back to the table above.
If you’re a first-time applicant with no credit history at all — none of these four is built for that specifically. All four are standard income-and-credit-assessed cards, not FD-secured ones. If that’s genuinely your situation (it was mine, once), a secured card against a fixed deposit is still the faster, more reliable route in — I’ve written about exactly that in a separate guide for beginners. If you have even a thin file — a few months of some credit activity — it’s still worth trying one of these, since three of the four cost little or nothing to apply for.
If you’re UPI-first and want a card that fits how you already pay — Kiwi is the honest pick. It’s the only one of the four designed around scan-and-pay rather than bolted onto a traditional card, it’s free, and the 1.5% base cashback beats what you’d get on a plain debit-linked UPI transaction. I’ll say directly: Kiwi pays us less per approved card than the other three do. That’s not why it’s ranked here — it’s ranked here because, for this specific reader, it’s the one that actually matches how they spend.
If you’re a salaried professional who wants a simple, low-fuss rewards card — Axis ACE. The flat 1.5% plus predictable bonus categories (bills, food delivery, cabs) doesn’t require you to shop at a specific list of partner sites the way SimplyCLICK’s 10X tier does. You don’t have to think about it much, which is the point.
If a meaningful share of your spend is fuel or daily commuting — none of these four is a dedicated fuel card, and I wouldn’t pretend otherwise. Axis ACE is the closest of the four, with a fuel surcharge waiver around 1% (axisbank.com), but if fuel spend is your main driver, it’s worth looking outside this specific four-card set for a dedicated fuel co-branded card instead.
If you want online-shopping rewards and already shop at SBI’s named partners — SimplyCLICK, specifically if Apollo 24x7, BookMyShow, Cleartrip, Domino’s, IGP, Myntra, Netmeds, Swiggy, Yatra, Gyftr or Tata CLiQ are already in your regular rotation. Outside that list, the 5X base rate is decent but not exceptional next to Axis ACE’s flat 1.5% once you account for SimplyCLICK’s monthly points cap.
If you’d rather deal with a large, traditional bank than a fintech app or a smaller bank — SBI or Axis over AU or Kiwi. SBI’s branch network is the widest of the four by a large margin; Axis is a large, established private bank with a mature app and support structure. AU is a real, licensed bank, just a newer and smaller one. Kiwi isn’t a bank at all — it’s a layer on top of one.
If you’re optimising purely for the lowest all-in annual cost — Kiwi, at a confirmed ₹0 with no spend condition attached. AU’s Altura is close behind at ₹199, with a confirmed waiver path in year one (₹10,000 retail spend within 90 days of setup) and again from year two (₹40,000 in the prior card-anniversary year). Axis ACE and SBI SimplyCLICK both start higher and depend on you hitting a spend threshold to get back to zero — read that as “likely to cost you something in a slow year,” not as a guaranteed waiver.
The eligibility ground rules nobody puts on the comparison page
Every one of these four issuers wants to see “a regular source of income” and “a good credit history” in some form — I found that language, in some version, on all four, but not one of them published a specific income figure or CIBIL number on the pages I could load. That’s worth sitting with for a second: a lot of what gets repeated as a hard cutoff online is someone’s estimate, not the bank’s own stated rule.
What I can tell you from having gone through this myself: I was turned down for my first credit card because I had no credit history to show at all — not a bad one, none. Banks aren’t set up to take a chance on an unknown quantity, and “no file” reads as risk the same way a thin file does. If that’s where you are, none of these four cards solves it directly; a secured card against a fixed deposit does, because the bank’s risk is covered by your own deposit rather than by trusting your file. I’d rather point you there honestly than have you collect four rejections trying these first.
If you do have some credit history and get declined anyway, it’s rarely random — a mismatched income document, an existing high utilisation on another card, or a recent flurry of applications from you (each one shows up as a hard inquiry) are the usual, boring reasons. I went through the actual causes in more detail in why credit card applications get declined, and if you want to understand what the score itself is even measuring before you apply anywhere, this breaks down what a CIBIL score is and how to improve it.
What to have ready before you apply
Regardless of which of these four you go for, the paperwork is largely the same: PAN, Aadhaar or another accepted address proof, and either your last 2–3 salary slips or 6 months of bank statements if you’re salaried (self-employed applicants typically submit ITRs instead). For Kiwi specifically, expect the process to run through the app end-to-end, with the partner bank’s own verification happening in the background rather than through a branch.
Don’t apply to more than one or two of these in the same week if you’re not confident about approval — each application is a hard inquiry on your file, and stacking rejections hurts you more than spacing out two applications a few months apart ever would.
Where this leaves you
Four cards, four different reasons to pick each one, and — genuinely — no single “best.” If I had to sum it up in one line each: Altura is the low-fee everyday cashback card from a smaller bank, Axis ACE is the simplest flat-rate pick for a Google Pay–heavy spender, SimplyCLICK rewards a specific kind of online shopper, and Kiwi is the free UPI-native option worth trying almost regardless of what else you’re carrying, because there’s nothing to lose in applying.
Whichever one you’re leaning toward, reverify the fee and reward numbers on the issuer’s own current page before you apply — I checked all of these on September 20, 2026, and cards like this get revised more often than most people expect.