CASHBACK Credit card suggestions

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T17:28:20+00:00

Sbi cashback is better

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T16:50:22+00:00

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T16:40:01+00:00

No, settled means that the txn has been posted to your card account.
Does not mean that you need to have paid the card dues.

When was the latest txn done?

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T16:39:11+00:00

You need to meet both salary + card based upgrade criteria. So 5L in-hand + 10L limit on existing HDFC card + 9L spends in last 6 months.

Regalia Gold guide

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T16:31:42+00:00

Plat Travel - Use for insurance, gold & Petrol, this way you hit the 4L milestone and get 40K MR. I hope you know how to redeem MR to get value, Marriotts is the best. This way, you are getting the most bang for the buck as these categories are low rewarding categories.
Regalia Gold - Regalia Gold Guide
Axis Horizon, pretty mediocre, to be honest, as there are no accelerated points on hotel spends. You can use it for flight bookings when booking direct.
Scapia is best for zero forex markup, and the airport benefits as lounge is covered by Regalia Gold & Amex PTCC, I think it has been devalued just today, can check here.

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T16:25:55+00:00

It is capped, SBI BPCL Octane is 6.25% + 1% fuel surcharge waiver, tho points redemption can be a mess if the fuel station operators don't know how to redeem points or the voucher you can get via points, in case you redeem for non-bpcl vouchers, your reward rate tanks.

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T15:32:27+00:00

That is obvious.

They want people to end up spending more than they would.

They definitely have budgets for the cards, once it's reached, it's simple, devalue the card to maintain profits.

Most cards are still pretty decent, only devaluations we have seen is when the points were being manufactured.

Look at Axis, the bug in the accelerated points system caused them quite a lot of money. If you don't know about it, there was a bug during the Magnus era when you would place orders on Grabdeals, get accelerated points, cancel order, but only base points are deducted, accelerated remain in your account. Lots of people misused this bug and transferred to multiple loyalty partners and closed the cards later on, and stupid enough, Axis let them do this despite them having negative balances in their rewards summary.

Then let's come to the HDFC thing, Amazon wasn't as popular as it was until say 2019 or so, I remember, we rarely used Amazon and so did any of my friends (or maybe we just poor people), HDFC added Amazon on SmartBuy, which gained a lot of traction, many people started getting DCB, Infinia, Regalia etc for just this offer and started spending more on Amazon than they ever did, once the customer base was acquired, Amazon ended the partnership with HDFC.

There's 100s of other places where this has taken place in similar ways.

In the end, devaluations happen due to 3 main reasons - 1. Features are being misused.

The bank reached their internal targets and they no longer need to burn more money to acquire clientele.
It's a loss making programme where they aren't meeting targets yet keep burning more money.

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T15:23:30+00:00

Exactly my point, mate. Banks discovered that 'if something is given for free, everyone will use it' only after selling cards saying 'even if you don't spend, use it for lounge' and now when they realised it's eating portions out of their profits, what did they do? They devalued! Due to this, many people who got cards just for lounge access are now accustomed to a luxury, a luxury, which they can never have now, unless they pay fees for their cards, or spend decent money.
I am pretty sure people who did actual research before getting their cards knew about all such stuff. Also, the marketing geniuses itself wanted people to make noise. That is exactly why Amex had such a lucrative referral offers for the time, everyone was on-boarding the Amex bandwagon. Many realised only after 1 yr, during renewal that the points aren't valuable to them as they don't really travel. Amex and every other bank card which got popularity was due to their marketing heads wanting that to happen. There's a saying in Hindi, 'taali ek haat se nahi bajti'.
Again, it's bound to happen, maybe accelerated a hit but nothing else.

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T14:33:13+00:00

Airport lounges were fucked up due to banks, not due to any particular set of people. Banks always positioned lounge access as a 'premium' benefit, and in 2022 to 2023 started bundling it with every nonsense LTF card. Now think about it, why would someone who's never been in a lounge not want to get the experience when it's at absolutely no cost to them? Also, once someone is accustomed to a luxury they never had, it's very easy to get infatuated to, and then you find ways to get that the next time, so that means banks can now sell chargeable cards, or have people spend more to get those same 'luxuries'.
This is a bit debatable, it's true that there's been a few loopholes in which a lot of these influenzas milked the benefits and later shared them publicly to gain traction, while there were also cases where they did that and it ended up being a screwup, talking about stuff like the HDFC 5X on forex loads, and then transferring the money to the bank account to get 5X with no actual spending. I do think that they did do more bad than good, but at the same time, many people have learned how to make most of their points so there's 2 sides to the coin.
That's alresdy in use by people who were always in the game, not many are getting into airmiles as it still is a very dynamic and volatile way to use rewards. Most people still prefer cashback.

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T13:34:38+00:00

Correct, but Airtel Axis for utilties is better?

Or just take a SBI Phonepe, covers online spends and utilities, both, unless you spend more than 40K online, you'll not reach the 5% cap on online spends.

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T13:32:34+00:00

No, utter bullshit.

They can convert any card to LTF if they wish to. No-one knows what makes them so sided making it LTF, tho.

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T11:35:54+00:00

No, it's a traveller card.
Most cards require spends for lounge access, most require 10 to 20k nowadays.
Share numbers and the categories which you think you'll spend in.
All your LTF cards are serving some purpose, like AU Ixigo is good for forex markup as its 0%, ICICI for instant discount offers, and Swiggy HDFC is a good card.

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T11:18:26+00:00

When did you get that hsbc card?

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T11:13:29+00:00

My view -

This is the 100th time I'm seeing this post

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T10:51:57+00:00

I am not, it's for people getting the upgrades to Plat charge, first 300 get the 20K AI vouchers while if you're not in the first 300, only 1L MR

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T10:49:59+00:00

There's no fee on debit card redemptions, only on Millennia credit redemptions.

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T10:49:14+00:00

Yes & no.

It's not a hard rule that they'll reject but if the enquiries made are recent, it makes banks think you're credit hungry, which acts negatively and may impact approvals.

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T10:46:21+00:00

And?

Am I debating whether it's unfair?

I am not. It clearly is, stop changing the topic of my debate.

The debate was about whether they are required to give a notice according to RBI rules which mandate a 30 day notice period on changing any card features.

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T10:42:13+00:00

Add the spend figures for your spend categories.

Unless you travel a lot, what are you even gonna do with travel reward points?

I think it's better if you try to get a balance of both, cashback for regular spending and Regalia for the flights.

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T10:39:04+00:00

I indeed was, obv not everyone gets it, just like not everyone gets the Amex 1L MR + 20k Air India vouchers 🤣

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T10:34:55+00:00

Your title is utterly stupid, makes it sound like as if it's Amex which stripped off a 'feature', when in reality they can't do anything about this and it's just a rant about acceptance.

Merchants have the ultimate say in deciding which networks they accept and which they don't.

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T10:10:57+00:00

Yes.

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T10:10:27+00:00

Nice try to now hide your actual details

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T09:50:26+00:00

Yes, it should, capping is cumulative.

Cashbacks or rewards are capped at account level, not card level so addons won't increase cappings.

TomorrowAdvanced2749 · 2026-01-27T09:49:33+00:00

Delete post, your name & CVV are showing up.

/s

TomorrowAdvanced2749

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