The Best Credit Cards by AU Small Finance Bank

The Bottom Line

The Zenith Credit Card offer the best rewards for high spending AU SFB customers. We estimate the Zenith gives a net reward yield of 1.8% if you spend more than ₹50,000 a month with this card.

This card gives an effective reward of 5% on dining and 2.5% on grocery and foreign spending. All other transactions earn 1.25% effective rewards.

The Zenith has annual fee of ₹7,999, which gets waived if you charge more than ₹5 lacs in a year.

With a net rewards yield of 1.5 – 1.7% on monthly spending up to ₹50,000 a month, the Xcite Credit Card is the best option for most AU Bank customers.

The Xcite gives 3.75% effective reward on grocery, departmental stores, movies & dining and 0.50% on all other retail spending. You also earn 1% effective rewards on all your spending between 1st to 5th of each month.

The Xcite is a lifetime free credit card.

The Altura Credit Card is the best entry level credit card from AU Small Finance Bank. You can earn a net reward yield of 0.5-1.2% on all your spending up to ₹20,000 a month, with this credit card.

The Altura gives 2% cashback for spending on grocery, department stores and utility bill payments. All other spending earns 1% cashback. However, the cashback earned at 2% and 1% are each capped at ₹50 a month.

This card has an annual fee ₹199, which gets waived if you charge more than ₹40,000 to the card in a year.

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%) across spending levels, than anything from AU SFB 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 AU Small Finance Bank (SFB) 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, AU SFB only offers 5 credit cards and juggling more than one of those will not meaningfully increase your rewards.

So we do not recommend any card combos for AU SFB.

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 AU SFB 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 AU SFB 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 ₹20,000

The Altura Credit Card is the best entry level credit card from AU Small Finance Bank. You can earn a net reward yield of 0.5-1.2% on all your spending up to ₹20,000 a month, with this credit card.

The Altura gives 2% cashback for spending on grocery, department stores and utility bill payments. All other spending earns 1% cashback. However, the cashback earned at 2% and 1% are each capped at ₹50 a month.

This card has an annual fee ₹199, which gets waived if you charge more than ₹40,000 to the card in a year.

While this is the best entry level credit card from AU SFB, the absolute reward yield of 0.5-1.2% or less is much lower than what the best cards in the market offer. If you have a choice we recommend you consider entry level credit cards from other providers such as RBL Bank or Axis Bank.

Those cards offer rewards yields as high as 2.5-3.0%, a difference that adds up to thousands of rupees every year for you.

Table 4: Feature Summary – AU SFB Altura Credit Card

The Best Credit Card for Monthly Spends up to ₹50,000

With a net rewards yield of 1.5 – 1.7% on monthly spending up to ₹50,000 a month, the Xcite Credit Card is the best option for most AU Bank customers.

The Xcite gives 3.75% effective reward on grocery, departmental stores, movies & dining and 0.50% on all other retail spending. You also earn 1% effective rewards on all your spending between 1st to 5th of each month.

The Xcite is a lifetime free credit card.

However, this card is only available on AU Bank’s Swipe Up platform, which means it is not for their existing credit card customer or for customer looking for their first credit card.

It is only available to customer who have a card from another bank that they would like to upgrade to one on the Swipe Up platform.

Table 5: Feature Summary – AU SFB Xcite Credit Card

The Best Credit Card for Monthly Spends of  ₹50,000+

The Zenith Credit Card offer the highest reward yield for high spending AU SFB cutomers. We estimate the Zenith gives a net reward yield of 1.8% if you spend more than ₹50,000 a month with this card.

This card gives an effective reward of 5% on dining and 2.5% on grocery and foreign spending. All other transactions earn 1.25% effective rewards.

The Zenith has annual fee of ₹7,999, which gets waived if you charge more than ₹5 lacs in a year.

Overall, while the Zenith is certainly more competitive in its category than the Altura or Vetta, high spenders can earn reward yields as high as 2.5-3.1% with the best credit card from Axis Bank or Standard Chartered. That is significantly higher that the Zenith and if you can, you should get those higher yielding cards and save thousands of rupees a year.

Table 6: Feature Summary – AU SFB Zenith Credit Card

Table 6: All AU SFB Bank Credit Cards Ranked by Rewards Yield

Table 7: Key Terms for AU SFB Bank Credit Cards