The Best Credit Cards by IndusInd Bank

The Bottom Line

The Legend Credit Card is the best credit card from IndusInd Bank for most customers. We estimate it offers a net reward yield of 1.0% on all your spending.

The Legend Credit Card gives effective rewards of 0.75% when you use it on weekdays and 1.50% when you spend on weekends.

You can redeem the rewards in form of cashback against your statement balance or you can convert them to airmiles or gift vouchers. We recommend converting to cash or Club Vistara points.

If you spend more than ₹1 lacs a month on your card, you should get the Club Vistara IndusInd Bank Explorer Credit Card. This card offers a net reward yield of 1.3% which is better than the Legend at this level.

The Explorer offers an effective reward of 3.60% for Vistara flight bookings and 2.70% for other travel bookings. Utility bills are rewarded at 0.45% while all other spending earns 0.9%.

This card also offers up to 4 business class flight tickets to high spenders and a zero Forex markup for foreign currency transactions.

If you have the option, consider getting your credit card from another card company like Axis Bank or SBI Card. The best cards and card combos from these providers offer much higher reward yields (2.3-3.0%) than anything from IndusInd Bank. That difference can add up to thousands of rupees in a year.

Table 1: All our recommendations

Table 2: Recommended Reward Redemption Options

Everything we recommend

Who this is for

If you are an IndusInd 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, IndusInd Bank offers more than 20 credit cards in India but juggling more than one of those will not meaningfully increase your rewards.

So we do not recommend any card combos for IndusInd 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 IndusInd 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 meaningfully better rewards with IndusInd 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 Credit Card for Monthly Spends up to  ₹ 1 Lacs

The Legend Credit Card is the best credit card from IndusInd Bank for nearly everyone. We estimate most people will get a net reward yield of about 1.0% using this card for all their spend.

The Legend Credit Card gives effective rewards of 0.75% for all your spending on weekdays and 1.50% when you spend on weekends.

You can redeem the rewards in form of cashback against your statement balance or you can convert them to airmiles or gift vouchers. We recommend converting to cash or Club Vistara points but not to Intermiles.

When claimed against statement balance, IndusInd values 1 Reward Point at ₹0.75. This is the value we use when computing the total rewards you can earn with the Legend.

However you can improve your net reward yield by about 0.2% if you are willing to convert the reward points into Club Vistara (CV) points and use them to book flights on Vistara.

This is because we estimate that one Club Vistara point is worth about ₹0.90 and IndusInd lets you convert 1 reward point to 1 CV Point. If you do that, you earn effective rewards on 0.9% on weekdays and 1.8% on weekends with the Legend.

You get the same 1-for-1 conversion rate with Intermiles too but we estimate one Intermile is only worth about ₹0.30, so it does not make sense to take this option.

We did not use the conversion to CV points as our base case because Vistara still has relatively few domestic flights and not everyone may be able to redeem flights on their network.

Table 4: Feature Summary – Legend Credit Card

It is worth repeating that while the Legend is the best credit card from IndusInd Bank, cards from other banks offer much higher rewards yields and you should consider those if it is possible for you.

The Best Credit Card for Monthly Spends of  ₹ 1 Lacs +

The Club Vistara Explorer Credit Card is the best credit card from IndusInd Bank for most high spenders. It offers a net reward yield of 1.3% on all your spending, if you spend more than ₹1 lacs on the card in a month.

You earn an effective reward of 3.60% for Vistara flights and 2.70% for other travel spending. Utility bill payments earn 0.45% and all other spending earns an effective reward of 0.9% with no caps.

This card also comes with a zero forex markup. This represents a substantial saving if you travel overseas or shop on foreign websites frequently. The typical credit card charges a forex markup of 2.0-3.5%.

You can also receive up to 4 Business Class tickets with this credit card in year, one each when your annual spending crosses ₹3 lacs, ₹6 lacs, ₹9 lacs and ₹12 lacs.

We have valued these tickets at ₹10,000 in total when estimating the net reward yield or only about ₹2,500 per ticket.

There are a couple of reasons why we put such a low value on these business class tickets. First, most people would not pay out of pocket for a business class ticket. So while these tickets may make your journey more comfortable, they are only really saving you the price of an economy class ticket.

Second, not everyone maybe able to use all the tickets. This could be because many people may not fly at all or because Vistara may not offer flights on their preferred leg.

If you do fly business class and are confident of being able to use these tickets, the net reward yield of the Club Vistara Explorer card could be much higher for you than the 1.3% we estimate.

For example, if you value the tickets at ₹8,000 each and can use all four, the estimated net reward yield on this card can hit up to 3%, making it one of the most attractive cards from any bank.

On the other hand, if you cannot fly Vistara or do not fly at all, you should stick to the Legend even if you monthly spending exceeds ₹1 lacs.

You can use the rewards earned on Club Vistara Explorer to redeem flights on the Vistara website. Apart from Vistara, the earned CV points can be used with partner airlines like Singapore Airlines and United Airlines.

The Club Vistara Explorer has a non-waivable annual fee of ₹10,000. We have reduced this amount from our rewards calculation and despite that it is the highest yielding card for those spending above ₹1 lacs in a month.

This card also has a joining fee of ₹40,000. We did not include this in our calculations because this is a one off and also because card providers typically offer gifts and incentives in return for joining fee that usually offset this fees.

If you are considering this card, you should carefully evaluate whether the gifts you are getting are in fact worth ₹40,000 to you. If not, you may want to consider another credit card.

Table 5: Feature Summary – Club Vistara Explorer Credit Card

As with the Legend, the Club Vistara Explorer offers a much lower net reward yield than the best credit cards from other providers and if possible, we recommend you prefer one of those. You could earn thousands of extra rupees in rewards each year by doing that.

Table 6: All IndusInd Bank Credit Cards Ranked by Rewards Yield

Table 7: Key Terms for IndusInd Bank Credit Cards