The Best Credit Cards by IDFC FIRST Bank

The Bottom Line

The HPCL IDFC FIRST Power+ is the best entry-level credit card for IDFC FIRST Bank customers. It offers an average net reward yield of 1.2 – 2.0% on monthly spending up to ₹20,000.

The Power+ offers 5% effective rewards on groceries and utility bills, 6.5% on fuel & LPG from HPCL and 0.5% rewards on everything else.

The rewards are only earned on grocery and utility bills of up to ₹2,000 per month, while the rewards on HPCL transactions have a complex cap and are earned up to a monthly spend of ₹5-10,000.

The Power+ has an annual fee of ₹499, which is waived on charging ₹1.5 lacs to the card in a year.

If you charge more than ₹20,000 a month to your card, you should choose the FIRST Wealth Credit Card instead. The FIRST Wealth offers a net rewards yield of 1.1 – 2.1% on monthly spends above ₹20,000.

For the first ₹30,000 spent in a month, this card gives effective rewards of 1.5% for all online purchases while offline spending earns 0.75%, for an average net reward yield of 1.1%.

However, this card really shines if you spend more than ₹30,000 in a month. All spending in excess of this amount each month earns a flat 2.50% reward making this a great general purpose card for high spenders.

The FIRST Wealth has no annual or joining fee.

You can redeem the reward points for vouchers of Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra etc. at a rate of ₹0.25 / reward point. Reward points earned with IDFC FIRST credit cards have no expiry.

Table 1: All our recommendations

Table 2: Recommended Reward Redemption Options

Everything we recommend

Who this is for

If you are an IDFC FIRST Bank customer and you want to get a credit card this guide is for you. We recommend the best credit cards, no matter what your spending level is.

We have friends who have raised maximizing credit card rewards to an art form. However not everyone wants put so much effort tracking deals, discounts, reward caps and spending categories.

Most of us simply want a solution that is easy to manage – good enough, not perfect. If that’s you, you are in the right place.

In our guides for other credit card providers (HDFC Bank, SBI Card etc.) we have also recommended card combos that help you supercharge your rewards without a lot of micromanaging.

However, IDFC FIRST Bank offers only 8 credit cards and juggling more than one of those will not meaningfully increase your rewards.

So we do not recommend any card combos for IDFC FIRST Bank customers.

How we picked

Banks and credit card companies in India offer hundreds of credit cards. Each credit card has a different set of rewards and other terms and conditions, which makes it difficult for most of us to figure out which card is best for us.

We cut through this complexity by ranking each card on its Net Reward Yield, which measures the total effective discount you receive in form of rewards, when you charge your expenses to the card.

To calculate the net reward yield of a credit card, we create 5 standardized spending profiles of a typical customer with different income levels. We then simulated the total rewards a customer with each spending profile would get on that card, based on the reward schedule for that card.

Table 3: Standardized Spending Profiles

Our reward calculations attempts to account for different types of rewards (cashback, points, miles etc.), reward caps by spending category, bonuses, fees and differences in realizable value of the rewards depending on how you redeem them (e.g. on Bank website as statement credit vs. for flight bookings).

We prefer cards with higher rewards yields, lower income thresholds and lower fees.

We apply this standardized methodology for every IDFC FIRST Bank credit card, allowing you to zoom in to the best credit cards for you.

If you’re willing to manage multiple cards, you can supercharge your total rewards compared to using a single card.

However, managing multiple credit cards requires some effort.

At a minimum, you need to:

• Sign up for the card
• Set up the monthly credit card bill payments (monthly effort or one-time depending on the banks involved)
• Review your statement periodically
• Remember to claim the reward (in some cases)
• Remember to get the annual fee waived (in many cases)

More work is also required to figure out which card to use where and possibly change the setup on various sites and apps to use a different card.

So while adding more and more cards to the mix can keep increasing the potential benefits (at least for high spenders), we think most people would want to manage another card only if the additional benefit is meaningful and the additional mental load low.

With that in mind we decided to identify sets of 2 credit cards that will work well together for most people i.e. so that you can easily remember which card to use where, meet the minimum spend & other conditions and not lose track of all the admin stuff like paying the bill and getting annual fee waived.

To find the best card combinations, we considered 100’s of card pairs for to figure out the combos that work best with each other to maximize rewards.

In testing a pair of cards, we assumed that only one card will be used for each spending category and it would be the one with the higher rewards in that category.

We think this is reasonable as you only need to know which card to use in which situation and don’t need to keep track of your spending on each card through the month.

We think most people do not want to obsessively track their spend by card and category on a daily basis. So we have tried to avoid a situation where you need to switch from one card to other based on how much you have spent on it during the month, in total or for a specific category. That’s too much work for most people.

As mentioned above, we found that combining multiple cards strategically did not give better rewards with IDFC FIRST Bank cards. We found that most people would do just fine by selecting our top pick in their spending category and using it for all spending.

You can read more about our credit card recommendation methodology here.

The Best Card for Monthly Spend up to ₹20,000

The HPCL IDFC FIRST Power+ is the best entry level credit card for most IDFC FIRST Bank customers. It offers an average net reward yield of 1.2 – 2.0% on all your spending.

The Power+ offers 5% effective rewards on groceries & utility bills and on FASTag recharges, 6.5% on fuel & LPG from HPCL and 0.5% rewards on everything else.

The 5% rewards earned on grocery and utility bills are capped at spends of ₹2,000 per month, while the rewards on HPCL transactions have a complex cap.

The 6.5% rewards on HPCL transactions include 4% as IDFC FIRST reward points, 1.5% as Payback Rewards via the HP Pay App and 1% fuel surcharge waiver.

The IDFC Reward Points and fuel surcharge waiver is available up to first ₹10,000 spent on HPCL fuel each month while the Payback Rewards are earned on the first ₹5,000 each month.

The Power+ has an annual fee of ₹499, which is waived on charging ₹1.5 lacs to the card in a year.

Table 4: Feature Summary – HPCL IDFC FIRST Power+ Credit Card

You can redeem the reward points for vouchers of Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra etc. at a rate of ₹0.25 / reward point. Reward points earned with IDFC FIRST credit cards have no expiry.

The Best Card for Monthly Spend of ₹20,000+

The FIRST Wealth Credit Card is the best credit card for high spending IDFC FIRST Bank customers. We estimate it offers a net reward yield of 1.1 – 2.1% on monthly spending above ₹20,000 a month.

For the first ₹30,000 spent in a month, this card gives effective rewards of 1.5% for all online purchases while offline spending earns 0.75%, for a net reward yield of 1.1%.

However, the FIRST Wealth really shines if you spend more than ₹30,000 in a month. All spending in excess of this amount each month earns a flat 2.50% reward making this a great general purpose card for high spenders.

A few categories like fuel, insurance, EMI transactions etc. do not earn the 2.50% reward, similar to all other credit cards.

The FIRST Wealth also has a low Forex markup of 1.5% for all foreign currency transactions, which is lower than most other cards which charge between 2.0-3.5%. However, there are a few cards in the market which do offer zero Forex markup.

The Wealth has no annual or joining fee and no caps on rewards you can earn.

You can redeem the reward points for vouchers of Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra etc. at a rate of ₹0.25 / reward point. Reward points earned with IDFC FIRST credit cards have no expiry.

Table 4: Feature Summary – IDFC FIRST Wealth Credit Card

Table 6: All IDFC FIRST Bank Credit Cards Ranked by Rewards Yield

Table 7: Key Terms for IDFC FIRST Bank Credit Cards