IDFC FIRST credit cards compared

IDFC FIRST Wealth is a Visa Infinite that never charges a fee, yet still packs in lounge visits, golf, travel cover, a 10X earn engine and a comparatively thin 1.5% forex markup — the sort of spec sheet that makes paid mid-premium cards hard to justify. A category-based earn structure took over from the old flat ₹20,000 spend tier on 18 June 2026: dining, travel, international and birthday spending earn 10 reward points per ₹200 (about 1.25% back at ₹0.25 a point) right from the first swipe, other spends earn 3 points per ₹200, and utilities, insurance, FASTag and railway payments earn 1 point per ₹200 (in-app travel bookings redeem at the same ₹0.25 rate). This year's changes shaved off some edges rather than gutting the card: since 18 June 2026, points now lapse after 24 months, the movie perk requires meeting a spend threshold, and rewards earned are capped against your credit limit; separately, from 1 April 2026, lounge and golf access was scaled back to one domestic and one international visit each quarter, unlocked only after ₹20,000 of spend the prior month. For anyone who clears the ₹3 lakh monthly income requirement, approval is close to a formality.

Rewards on the IDFC FIRST Classic are unremarkable, and the card costs nothing to hold, but its real edge is buried where hardly anyone advertises it: interest that starts at just 0.71% a month (8.5% p.a.) and rises to 3.85% a month (46.2% p.a.) depending on risk profile, with the low end running roughly a fifth of what most issuers charge (~3.5%/month is the norm). If you sometimes carry a balance, that interest saving outperforms any rewards scheme. Since the 18 June 2026 update, spending on dining, travel and international transactions earns 10 reward points per ₹200 (about 1.25%), other purchases earn 3 per ₹200, and utilities, insurance, FASTag and railway spends earn 1 per ₹200 — with points now lapsing 24 months after they're credited. Foreign spends carry the usual 3.5% markup, so don't mistake this for a low-forex product. Pay your bill in full every month and you get a decent, if ordinary, free card — the trick is knowing which type of user you actually are.

You won't find an apply button for Gaj anywhere — IDFC FIRST Bank hands this card out only to Private Banking customers with a long enough relationship history, by invitation alone. What you get is a Visa Infinite in metal, built squarely around travel: a true 0% forex markup, quarterly lounge access of 4 domestic (with 1 guest) plus 4 international visits, as many as 24 golf rounds annually, and reward points that convert at ₹1 apiece toward flights and hotels booked inside the IDFC FIRST app (₹0.25 apiece anywhere else). Everyday spending earns 5 reward points per ₹150 — roughly 0.83% back at the ₹0.25 rate, climbing to about 3.3% if redeemed on travel — while international transactions bring 3 points per ₹150, and categories like rent, utilities, insurance, government payments, wallets, railway tickets, FASTag and education sit at 1 point per ₹150. Hotel bookings get a 45-bonus-point kicker per ₹150 and flights a 20-bonus-point kicker, though bonus points top out at 15,000 in a month. A free companion RuPay card, FIRST Digital, rides along for UPI spending at 1 point per ₹150, and new cardholders start with 12,500 welcome points. As for the ₹12,500 fee, spending ₹10 lakh in the year before your card anniversary wipes it out.

Think of the IDFC FIRST HPCL Power+ as a fuel card with a specific job: at HPCL pumps it returns 30X reward points, working out to roughly 5%, on up to ₹12,000 of fuel spend in a statement cycle, capping out at 2,400 points (₹600). What sets it apart from typical fuel co-brands is a RuPay/UPI layer that makes it genuinely usable for everyday spending, all for a ₹499 fee that's waived once annual spend crosses ₹1.5 lakh. Separately, HPCL's own HP Pay app adds about 1.5% more in Happy Coins — a distinct HPCL loyalty currency, unrelated to the card's own reward points — capped at 600 coins a month for ₹10,000 of app spend. Beyond fuel, the 30X rate also applies to groceries, utility bills and FASTag, and cardholders get one domestic lounge visit per quarter (unlocked by spending ₹20,000 or more that month) plus a welcome benefit valued around ₹2,500. Bookings made through the IDFC FIRST app also carry accelerated travel rates — 26.67% on hotels and 13.33% on flights — though these portal-specific rates are deliberately excluded from how we score the card. For anyone who fuels up at HP on a regular basis, there isn't much reason to keep shopping around.

As IDFC FIRST Bank's flagship metal card, the Mayura sits at the top of its publicly available lineup — a Visa Infinite built around a genuinely zero forex markup, a generous lounge allowance (16 domestic plus 16 international visits annually) and as many as 2 golf rounds every month. Spending earns 5 reward points per ₹150 on the first ₹20,000 of monthly spend (about 0.83%), climbing to 10 points per ₹150 on anything above that threshold and on your birthday (roughly 1.67%), while rent, education, government payments and wallet loads earn 3 points per ₹150 and insurance, utilities, railway and FASTag earn 1 point per ₹150. Points convert to ₹0.25 apiece toward vouchers or statement credit, or ₹0.50 apiece when used for flight and hotel bookings inside the IDFC FIRST app — the source of the "40X / up to 13% back" figure in the bank's marketing. The fee is offset somewhat by a 12,000-point welcome benefit paid out in three 4,000-point instalments, plus an annual-fee milestone that hands back 7,500 points at ₹8 lakh of spend and 15,000 at ₹15 lakh. The card is available on either Visa Infinite or Mastercard World, and the network you're issued determines part of the benefit list: Mastercard cardholders get that network's own golf programme and hotel-club partnerships, whereas Visa cardholders get ITC stay privileges, airport meet-and-greet and concierge service. International spending was scaled back from 10X to 5X on 18 January 2026, though points still carry no expiry. Given the ₹5,999 fee, the card really only earns its keep for someone who will put the lounge access, golf and 0% forex to actual use — it's built for frequent travellers rather than as a general rewards-maximiser.

As a lifetime-free entry-level card, the IDFC FIRST Millennia offers reasonable rewards on online spending, but what really sets it apart is one of the lowest interest-rate floors available in India — starting at 0.71% a month (8.5% p.a.) and rising, based on risk profile, to as much as 3.85% a month (46.2% p.a.), against an industry norm closer to 42% p.a. Dining, travel and international purchases earn 10X (about 1.25% back), other spending earns 3X, and utilities, insurance, railway and FASTag payments earn 1X, with each point worth ₹0.25. For someone getting their first card, that cushion against high interest charges arguably matters more than chasing a marginally better cashback rate. The June 2026 update cut both ways: points now expire after 24 months and monthly earning is capped at your credit limit, but the 10X rate on dining, travel and international spend no longer requires hitting a minimum spend first. (Separately, the 6X online accelerator had already been trimmed to 3X back on 1 May 2024.) Choose this card for the interest-rate safety net, and pair it with a category-specific card if pure rewards maximisation is the goal.

Reserved for a select audience, the IDFC FIRST Private is the bank's invite-only super-premium offering, handed out mostly to customers with existing Wealth or Private Banking relationships. Domestic spending earns a flat 10 reward points per ₹150 with no monthly ceiling and points that never expire, while international spending earns at 5X. The card combines zero forex markup with unrestricted domestic and international lounge access plus unlimited golf, and throws in up to ₹1,500 in monthly savings on BookMyShow movie and event bookings, round-the-clock concierge support, and rent payments free of surcharge. True to IDFC's fine-print-free approach, there are no late-payment or over-limit charges either. New cardholders issued on or after 17 July 2026 have the steep ₹50,000 commencement fee (₹25,000 annually thereafter) partly cushioned by a 50,000-point commencement bonus, though spend-linked milestone rewards were dropped at the same time. Because it's invite-only, there's no application form to fill out.

IDFC FIRST Select carries no annual fee for life, bundles in lounge access, keeps forex costs down at 1.99%, and rewards spending at up to 10X — a strong package on paper. That said, 2026 brought a round of trims: the point base slipped from ₹150 to ₹200 (roughly a 25% cut), and as of 18 June 2026 the earlier ₹20,000 spend-tier structure gave way to a category model — dining, travel and international purchases now earn 10 reward points per ₹200 (about 1.25% at ₹0.25 per point) right from the first rupee spent, other purchases earn 3 points per ₹200, and utilities, insurance, FASTag and railway spends earn 1 point per ₹200. Domestic lounge visits were cut in half to one per quarter and now require ₹20,000 of monthly spend to unlock, though the railway lounge allowance holds steady at four per quarter, and the movie buy-one-get-one offer shifted to the District platform (available once a month, gated behind ₹20,000 of spend the previous month). Applicants who qualify for the FIRST Wealth card would find that one supersedes this.

Built for people who can't easily qualify for an unsecured card, the IDFC FIRST Hello Cashback pairs a fixed-deposit guarantee with genuinely useful cashback. Online spending brings 3% back on up to ₹10,000 in a statement cycle, stepping up to 5% on anything spent online beyond that (with online cashback itself capped at ₹1,000 per cycle); UPI payments made via the IDFC FIRST app and offline card swipes return 1%, as do essentials such as utilities, rent, insurance, education, wallets, FASTag, railway bookings, government payments, jewellery and gift cards. In-app hotel and flight bookings pick up an extra 1% bonus, pushing in-app travel to roughly 4% overall (6% once online spending passes ₹10,000), though total cashback in a cycle tops out at ₹1,500. Because a fixed deposit starting at ₹10,000 secures the card, your income and CIBIL score don't factor into approval, and that deposit continues earning interest the whole time. There's a handful of protective extras thrown in too — a 1% fuel-surcharge waiver up to ₹100 per cycle, personal accident and lost-card cover, a credit shield, purchase protection, and roadside assistance available four times a year. On the downside, the ₹1,000 fee is real, though an introductory offer brings the joining fee down to ₹0 for cards issued up to 31 August 2026, and the annual fee disappears entirely once you spend ₹2 lakh in a year (or gets halved between ₹1–2 lakh). Forex sits at a standard 3.5% and there's no lounge access. In short: a strong cashback tool, not a card built for travel.

Built specifically for IndiGo flyers, this IDFC FIRST co-brand comes as a single account issued on both Mastercard and RuPay rails. Rewards accrue as IndiGo BluChips, the airline's proprietary currency, which we peg at roughly 42 paise apiece when redeemed against IndiGo fares. IndiGo does not publish a fixed conversion rate, BluChips only ever cover the base fare while taxes and surcharges must still be paid in cash, and the older "1 BluChip = ₹1" shorthand actually describes 6E Rewards, the discontinued HDFC co-brand currency — not this program. Spending on IndiGo itself earns 6 BluChips per ₹100, with a further 16 per ₹100 available through IndiGo's own loyalty tiers; other eligible purchases earn 3 BluChips per ₹100, while fuel, insurance, utilities, rent, wallet top-ups and UPI transactions earn a reduced 0.5 per ₹100. Cash withdrawals and EMI conversions don't earn anything. Both the joining and renewal fees sit at ₹4,999, each triggering 5,000 BluChips and an IndiGo meal voucher; spend ₹1 lakh within the first 90 days and you unlock an additional 3,000-BluChip voucher, on top of a 3-month EazyDiner Prime membership and a ₹3,000 Postcard Hotels voucher bundled in at joining. Spend milestones of ₹2/5/8/10/12 lakh each unlock 5,000 more BluChips, totalling as much as 25,000 in a year. Throw in a competitive 1.49% forex markup, Mastercard World golf privileges (12 green-fee rounds, 12 lessons, and 4 guest rounds annually) and up to ₹25,000 a year in trip-cancellation cover, and this card delivers real value to anyone who flies IndiGo regularly. Those who don't qualify for the unsecured version can opt for an FD-backed secured variant instead — no joining fee, the same ₹4,999 annual charge, and no joining perks; IDFC's own page mostly cites a ₹50,000 minimum deposit, though a ₹1 lakh figure also appears in a couple of spots.

Positioned below the metal Ashva and Mayura in IDFC FIRST's lineup, the Diamond Reserve is a mid-premium travel card built around zero forex. Its ₹3,000 fee (waived once you cross ₹6 lakh in annual spend) buys a true 0% foreign-currency markup, 8 domestic plus 8 international lounge visits a year (unlocked only if you spent ₹20,000 the previous month), up to 2 golf rounds or lessons a month gated behind the same ₹20,000 prior-cycle spend, and a twice-monthly buy-one-get-one movie ticket offer worth up to ₹250. The everyday earn rate is unremarkable — 3 reward points per ₹150 for the first ₹20,000 spent monthly (around 0.5%), rising to 10 per ₹150 beyond that threshold and on your birthday (around 1.67%), with each point worth ₹0.25 at redemption. Oddly, international spends earn zero points despite the zero-forex positioning, and the strongest travel earn is locked behind the IDFC FIRST app — a 20% reward-point bonus on hotels and 10% on flights booked there, pushing app-based travel returns to roughly 27%. This is a card whose value lives in its perks — forex savings, lounges, golf, movies — rather than in day-to-day rewards.

For IDFC FIRST customers who fuel up at HPCL, the Power card offers a workable, low-cost way to pick up fuel-and-bills rewards. On its own it credits 21X reward points (about 3.5% back) on HPCL fuel, though that's capped at 700 points (₹175) per statement cycle — the pricier ₹499 Power+ climbs to 30X (roughly 5%) — and adds 15X (about 2.5%) on grocery, utility and FASTag transactions, alongside roadside assistance and accident cover, for a modest ₹199 fee that's waived once annual spending hits ₹50,000. Running payments through HPCL's own HP Pay app brings in an additional ~1.5% as Happy Coins (capped at 600 coins monthly on ₹10,000 of app spend) — worth noting that these coins belong to HPCL's separate loyalty programme, not the card's own points system. New cardholders can expect roughly ₹2,250 in welcome perks: a ₹250 HPCL voucher, 5% cashback on the first EMI (capped at ₹1,000), and over ₹1,000 in merchant offers. Travel booked via the IDFC FIRST app also picks up bonus points (26.67% on hotels, 13.33% on flights), though we exclude these portal-only rates from our scoring. This card won't beat dedicated fuel cards on raw earn rate, so it makes most sense as a combination of low cost, HPCL loyalty perks, and an existing IDFC banking relationship. One thing to double-check before applying: this is the HPCL co-brand, not BPCL.

IDFC FIRST WOW! Black sits above the lifetime-free WOW as the premium option in IDFC's fixed-deposit-backed secured lineup. Because the card is secured against an FD starting at ₹20,000 (with a credit limit that can run up to 100% of that deposit), applicants get approved without an income or CIBIL check, and the underlying deposit continues to earn interest the whole time. What sets it apart is a true 0% forex markup — unusual for any card, let alone a secured one. Reward-wise, it pays 4 points per ₹150 spent online, offline or internationally, up to 3 points per ₹150 on UPI transactions, and 1 point per ₹150 on insurance and utility payments; on top of that, app bookings earn bonus points worth 16.7% of hotel spend and 10% of flight spend, capped at 8,000 bonus points monthly. Points can be redeemed at ₹0.25 apiece, doubling to ₹0.50 for in-app travel bookings, though each redemption incurs a ₹99 fee. Beyond rewards, cardholders get four domestic lounge visits annually (one per quarter, each requiring ₹20,000 of spend the month before), golf access (four rounds plus twelve lessons a year), a monthly District by Zomato movie discount, membership in the Little Emperors luxury-hotel programme, insurance coverage, a bundled RuPay card for UPI payments, and welcome benefits exceeding ₹5,000 in value. Fuel purchases, EMI conversions and cash withdrawals don't earn any points. The annual fee is ₹750, waived once you spend ₹1.5 lakh in a year.

The IDFC FIRST Ashva holds its own as a semi-premium metal card, offering a genuinely low 1% forex markup, lounge access, golf privileges, Postcard Hotels perks and points that never expire — its real handicap is the sibling it's compared against. Spending earns 5 reward points per ₹150 up to ₹20,000 in a given month, jumping to 10 points per ₹150 once you cross that threshold, while rent, wallet loads, education and government payments earn a flat 3 points per ₹150 (worth ₹0.40 a point when redeemed on in-app travel, or ₹0.25 elsewhere). Lounge privileges run to 16 domestic and 8 international visits annually, though they require ₹20,000 of spend in the preceding month to unlock. New cardholders also get a 7,500-point welcome bonus split into three instalments of 2,500 points, plus a further 7,500-point bonus for reaching ₹8 lakh of annual spend. The real complication isn't the usual list of fine print — it's that IDFC FIRST's own lifetime-free Wealth card matches the Ashva feature-for-feature (Visa Infinite network, lounges, golf) at zero cost, just with a weaker rewards engine. On everyday spend, the Ashva returns 0.83% below the ₹20,000 gate and 1.67% above it, compared to the Wealth's 0.375% — a two-to-four-times advantage — though the Wealth actually pulls ahead on dining, travel and international spending at 1.25%. Whether the Ashva's ₹2,999 fee is worth paying then comes down to volume: general spending needs to reach roughly ₹33,000 a month before the extra earnings justify the cost, and the 2026 reduction of the international rate from 10X to 5X has only made that case weaker.

IDFC FIRST WOW is a fixed-deposit-secured credit card, and the one route to a card that asks for neither income proof nor an existing credit history. There's no joining or annual fee for life, it works with UPI, and it earns rewards the same way an unsecured card would. Meanwhile, the FD backing it keeps accruing its own interest even as the card itself helps build your credit score.

The IDFC FIRST EA₹N is built for people who live on UPI — a secured RuPay card backed by a fixed deposit starting at ₹5,000, with the credit limit set at 100% of that deposit. Because it's collateralised this way, approval doesn't hinge on income or credit history, and the underlying FD continues earning its own interest throughout. On the rewards side, UPI payments routed through the IDFC FIRST app earn 1% cashback, dropping to 0.5% when made via third-party apps like GPay, PhonePe or Paytm, with the same 0.5% applying to utilities, insurance, wallet loads and general online spending. Somewhat unusually for an Indian card, fuel purchases aren't excluded and earn cashback like everything else — the only categories that earn nothing are cash withdrawals and EMI conversions. This everyday cashback tops out at ₹500 per statement cycle. Separately, bookings made through the in-app FIRST Rewards Gallery earn extra — a 5% bonus on hotels and 2% on flights stacked on top of the 0.5% base, working out to 5.5% and 2.5% all-in respectively, subject to its own ₹2,000 monthly ceiling — and there's a District by Zomato tie-in offering 25% off movie tickets, capped at ₹100 a month. For cards issued from 16 December 2025 onward, joining is free and comes with a 10% welcome cashback (up to ₹250) on the first transaction within 15 days, plus 5% cashback (up to ₹1,000) on the first EMI conversion. The card ships virtual-only by default — getting a physical card costs ₹199 plus GST — and from the second year, a ₹499 annual fee kicks in, waivable by spending ₹1 lakh in the year. The tradeoffs are a fairly modest 0.5% base rate outside the app-UPI channel and a standard 3.5% forex markup.

IDFC FIRST SWYP is a Mastercard-branded lifestyle and EMI card built for younger, first-time cardholders, set apart by one unusual structural choice: there's no ongoing interest charge at all. Cardholders must either settle the Total Amount Due in full each due date or convert purchases above ₹2,500 into EMIs for a flat monthly fee — the option to revolve a balance simply doesn't exist here. Rewards accrue through monthly spend milestones measured against total cycle spend rather than incremental amounts: 200 points once you cross ₹5,000, 500 at ₹10,000, 1,000 at ₹15,000, 2,000 at ₹30,000 and 4,000 at ₹60,000, with a separate track offering 400 points at ₹20,000 (rising to 800 at ₹40,000) of spend on education, FASTag and railway categories per cycle — each point valued at ₹0.25. Note that UPI, fuel, education, FASTag, railway and cash transactions don't count toward the main milestone tiers. Booking hotels or flights through the in-app FIRST Rewards Gallery earns a bigger payout, at 25% of the booking value for hotels and 12% for flights. Beyond rewards, the card layers in ongoing discounts with partners like Zomato, Goibibo, Domino's, Zepto, Nykaa, EaseMyTrip and Tata CLiQ Fashion, a movie offer through District by Zomato, as many as 16 railway lounge visits annually, and a welcome package that includes a ₹500 Amazon voucher (on ₹5,000 spent within 30 days), 1,000 points for your first EMI conversion, ₹1,500 off at MakeMyTrip, three instances of ₹700 off at EaseMyTrip, Lenskart Gold Max, and a 10% Mokobara discount. On the cost side, be mindful of the ₹499 fee, a ₹99 charge per reward redemption, a 3.5% forex markup, and late-payment charges that can climb as high as ₹6,000 if the full amount goes unpaid.

The IDFC FIRST Digital RuPay Credit Card exists purely as a companion product — a virtual RuPay card riding on the credit limit of whatever IDFC FIRST card you already hold. Its whole purpose is convenience: it plugs into UPI apps such as BHIM, Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm, letting you scan-and-pay against a credit line instead of a bank balance. The rewards reflect that modest ambition — 3 points per ₹200 spent (roughly 0.4%) on UPI transactions over ₹2,000, dropping to 1 point per ₹200 (about 0.13%) on smaller UPI payments and on utility or insurance transactions, with the denominator widening to ₹150 for cardholders whose primary card is a FIRST Private, Ashva, Mayura, Diamond Reserve or FIRST Business. Each point converts to ₹0.25, and redeeming them costs a ₹99 fee. Eligibility comes down to a single requirement — already holding a qualifying IDFC FIRST primary card — and most other terms, including interest and forex charges, simply follow whatever applies to that primary card; note that it can't be used for international online purchases. Unlike many IDFC cards, this one isn't free: a ₹199 joining fee and ₹199 annual fee apply, though a first-year welcome cashback of ₹200 (capped at ₹50 per transaction, on your first four UPI payments within 15 days) largely cancels that out. Overall, this is best understood as a low-key add-on for moving UPI spending onto credit, not something to rely on as a primary earner.