▲ 13 r/CreditCardsIndia
Hey guys, there are good cards for HNIs and there are good cash back cards. But for a people in the salary bracket of 1L to 2.5L, we are kind of the ugly ducklings in the credit card lineup for reward cards. Nothing really feels good especially after the devaluations.
Anyways, I have compared the cards that are accessible to us and have them arranged in order of most rewarding to least rewarding. Hard rewards only -> I am not a fan of counting soft rewards.
Note:
- This is as per my spending habits (you can see the break down above the category name) and average of 7L to 8L spends per year, some cards that are good for my pattern might not be suitable for you .
- There is Millinia (a cash back card) in this list, ignore it. Kept it there as a reference point (because people here seems to love this card).
- The point value assigned in column "K" is an average extractable value -> For example with Amex you can get as low as 0.4 Rs per point and if you smartly optimize, you can touch 1.5 Rs per point, so, it's fair to give it 0.8 Rs per point because we use points where we need, not plan our trips so that does maximum point optimisation -> I hope you get what I am saying. Same with TravelOne, you can get upto 2 Rs at Accor, but if you're planning a trip to a place where Accor doesn't exist, then what use is assigning Rs.2 value and calculating? So have given it a 1 Rs value. Similar for other cards....
- DO NOT fall for HSBC Travel One, it looks good on paper BUT their terrible service is going to be a forever pain in the a**. Also, they randomly block cards and then takes 1 to 2 months to unblock it -> My father faced this issue with HSBC Premier CC. I am currently closing my salary account (non-premier) with HSBC because of their terrible service. Fun fact: They treat Premier and non-premier customers equally sh*tty.
- ICICI cards keep getting worse as you upgrade and go from RubyX to Emeralde. Any ICICI Card except Times Black and EPM (not considering ICICI AmazonPay which is a cash back card) are worthless and worse than a PSU card like SBI Elite.
- No BOB or Yes or such banks because their hard rewards never felt worth of comparing, ICICI was also not worth it, but wanted to show everyone how terrible their card game is despite being second largest private bank in India.
- You can extract more value out of Amex, HDFC cards and ICICI cards by buying vouchers, but I have only considered normal guy spending normally without thinking much, not people optimising every penny.
Did this comparo to see which card should I go for after saying bye-bye to HSBC. Turns out, I am better off just keeping my Plat Travel and routing all spends to it.
u/Euphoric_End6161 — 8 days ago