Polo Brain, how the AI ranks cards by real value, not headline rate (2026)

Short answer: Polo Brain takes a plain-English question like "best card for a ₹2,500 Swiggy dinner?", works out the merchant's spend category, checks every card in your wallet against our catalog's earn rates and caps, and returns the card that pays the most, with the rupee or dollar value and why it beats the runner-up. It answers from the cards you saved in My Cards, or from a three-card demo wallet if you have not saved any. No account, no bank login.

The problem it solves

At a checkout with three cards, the best choice depends on several things at once: the card's rate for that category, any monthly cap already used, whether the merchant is excluded, the forex markup on foreign merchants, and what the points are worth when you redeem them. Nobody runs that in their head, so most people use whichever card is on top.

What happens to a question

1. Reading the question

Polo Brain picks out the merchant, the amount and the currency. A known merchant maps to a spend category (a food delivery app to dining, an online store to shopping). If the merchant is vague, it uses the general category rather than guessing a bonus.

2. Loading your cards

It uses the cards saved in My Cards on your device. With an empty wallet it uses a demo wallet of three popular Indian cards, and says so.

3. Scoring each card

For each card it takes the catalog rate for that category, or the card's general rate if there is no category rate, applies the card's cap where we hold one, and converts the result into money.

4. Picking and explaining

It returns the highest-value card, the amount you would earn, and a short explanation of why it beats the runner-up. The reasoning is meant to be checkable: you should be able to redo the math from what it tells you.

What it deliberately does not count

• Portal-only multipliers. Some cards pay much higher rates only when you book through the bank's own portal. Polo Brain does not assume you will, so it scores the normal rate.
• Limited-time offers. Sale-day bank discounts and short promotions are not in the catalog.
• Unverified figures as facts. Where a card's rates have not yet been checked against the issuer, the card page says so, and the answer can be wrong in the same way the catalog is.
• Your cap usage this month. It does not know how much of a monthly cap you have already used, so near the end of a month a capped card may pay less than shown.

Example

With the demo wallet, a ₹2,500 food delivery order usually goes to the online cashback card, because its online rate beats the premium cards' general rates on that merchant, while a large hotel booking made directly with the hotel often goes to a premium travel card. The point is not the specific winner, it is that the answer changes with the merchant, and a headline rate does not tell you which way.

Try it

Ask Polo Brain. You get 10 questions a day. Add your cards to My Cards first so it answers from your own wallet.

Related reading

• Net annual value vs headline rate
• Credit card stacking