CUB CSK RuPay Platinum
KeepLifetime free, RuPay, and a Chennai Super Kings face — at 0.33% it is a fan badge, not a rewards card.
a year at ₹40,000 a month, after the fee
Skip the arithmetic — the board, ranked → · nothing to sign up for
What it's worth to you, after the fee
Welcome: Not published — neither CUB's Key Fact Statement nor its CSK/SRH reward document states any welcome, activation or first-transaction bonus
Priced on the everyday mix — 30% groceries · 10% utilities · 20% travel · 6% fuel · 34% everything else — with this card's published category rules applied: it earns nothing on utilities and fuel here, so that spend is dropped, not paid at the headline, and stops pacing milestones and the waiver. Plus milestones, minus the fee. No accelerator credit — the ranking model on /compare adds ~20% of spend at the card's best accelerator, so its ₹ for this card reads higher.
How these numbers are computed — and why the rankings show a bigger one →
Spend tiers, milestones and fee waivers included, at our house ₹/point. Portal and category multipliers can push higher — run your exact number →
Pays from the first rupee
At ₹1,000 a month — ₹12,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹0 gross (earn ₹0) against its ₹0 fee = ₹0 net — at or above ₹0 from the first rung we price. The ladder runs in ₹1,000 steps to ₹1,00,000 a month and ₹10,000 steps to ₹5,00,000; figures are rounded to the hundred, and the accelerator is never credited.
3 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants · why it ranks #422
Why #422 Lifetime free is the entire argument. This is the slowest earner CUB makes — 1 RP per ₹150 on ordinary spend at ₹0.50 a point, which is 0.33% — but it costs nothing to hold, doubles to 0.67% on UPI, and pays 1% on Chennai Super Kings merchandise. It has no travel accelerator, no lounge access and 3.5% forex, so it ranks as a free fan card and nothing more.
CUB prices its Reward Point per VARIANT and this is the bottom rung: ₹0.50 per RP, against ₹0.75 on the Master Platinum and ₹1.00 on the Master World. Against the ₹1.00 house value that is a 50% haircut, and it is baked into earn.base — 1 RP per ₹150 is 0.67 RP per ₹100, which is 0.33 effective points per ₹100. Redemption is vouchers and merchandise at rewards.cub.bank.in; there is no transfer partner and no statement credit.
The take
The KFS names this variant "CUB CSK RUPAY PLATINUM CREDIT CARD (LIFETIME FREE)" and prints NIL in both the joining and the annual-fee columns, so the only thing you spend on it is opportunity cost. That matters, because the earn is the slowest CUB publishes. The reward document's §2.1 pays 1 RP per ₹150 on ordinary spend — 0.67 points per ₹100 — and §4.1 prices the RuPay Platinum's point at ₹0.50, the bottom of a three-rung table that runs to ₹1.00 on the Master World. Multiply and you get 0.33%. UPI is the fix CUB actually built for: 2 RP per ₹150 through UPI doubles it to 0.67%, and because this is the one variant issued on RuPay alone, it links to a UPI handle without the virtual-card dance the Mastercard variants need. The 2X list is "Apparel, Department Stores, and Food Delivery" — note it drops the Dining the Master Platinum gets — and franchise merchandise runs 3X, which is 1.0%, the best this card does. For a travel reader the omissions are the story. There is no travel or hotel accelerator; that 2X belongs to the Master World alone. Foreign spend pays CUB's full 3.5% markup, because the KFS exempts "(CSK/SRH Master World Variant)" and nothing else. No lounge access appears anywhere in either document. And the points are terminal: vouchers and merchandise at rewards.cub.bank.in, no airline, no hotel. Even the fuel-surcharge waiver is the smaller band — ₹400 to ₹3,000, capped at ₹300 a cycle, against the Master variants' ₹400–₹5,000 and ₹300 more headroom. Keep it because it is free and you support the team. Do not route real spend through it.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
This card is lifetime free. There is no fee due, no renewal to weigh, and nothing to cancel to save.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
nothing due at the anniversary · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹0 — lifetime free
At your spend
₹800 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹1,700 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹3,300 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹10,000 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹16,600 a year at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend
Everyday earn plus milestones, with no fee to subtract — the same model as the value panel above, so the two cannot disagree. run your exact spend →
The downgrade
City Union Bank publishes no document naming a card you can step down to, so we name none — an invented product change is a phone call you would waste. That leaves keep or cancel, and the numbers above are the whole of it.
If you call to cancel
What the bank offers to keep you is the one fact this desk cannot compute. We are collecting those reports — dated, and only in aggregate — before publishing any: an offer one reader was made is not one you are owed. Called about this card? Tell us what they offered →
The desk publishes subscribable .ics feeds for the dates it knows — offer deadlines, devaluations, expiry audits. Your renewal date is not one of them: only your statement knows it.
What's good
- Lifetime free — the KFS prints NIL in both the joining and the annual-fee columns, and puts '(LIFETIME FREE)' in the variant's own name
- 2 RP per ₹150 on UPI, double the ordinary rate — 0.67% at CUB's ₹0.50 RuPay Platinum redemption rate
- RuPay-only, so it links straight to a UPI handle with no virtual-card step
- 3X on CSK merchandise and match tickets, worth 1.0% — the card's best rate
- 2X on apparel, department stores and food delivery, worth 0.67%
Watch out
- 0.33% on ordinary spend — 1 RP per ₹150 at ₹0.50 a point is the slowest earn CUB publishes
- ₹0.50 per Reward Point, the bottom rung of CUB's three-variant table, against ₹1.00 on the Master World
- 3.5% foreign-currency markup — the KFS's 0% exemption names the Master World variant alone
- No travel accelerator: the 2X on travel, flights and hotels is World-only, and this variant's 2X list drops even the Dining the Master Platinum gets
- No lounge access is published anywhere — CUB's Key Fact Statement and reward document are both silent
- The points are terminal: vouchers and merchandise at rewards.cub.bank.in, with no airline or hotel transfer partner published
- The smaller fuel band: the 1% surcharge waiver covers ₹400–₹3,000 transactions only, capped at ₹300 a cycle, where the Master variants get ₹400–₹5,000 and ₹500
- A long exclusion list earns nothing at all — fuel, rent, utilities and telecom, insurance, education, wallet loads, gold and jewellery, gambling, government payments and cash
- Surcharges stack on top of the exclusions: 1% on rent, 1% on wallet loads, and 1% on fuel, utility or skill-gaming spend once the cycle crosses ₹50,000 / ₹25,000 / ₹10,000 respectively
- Revolves at 3.5% a month — 42% a year — on both purchases and cash advances, which is steep for a card marketed as free
- Reward Points round DOWN to whole numbers on every transaction, and at 1 RP per ₹150 the fractions are large: CUB's own example turns 1.96 RP into 1
- CUB reserves the right to modify or withdraw the reward programme, and says points 'may expire as per the Bank's policy' without publishing that policy
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes City Union Bank Reward Points into a programme that publishes an award chart. These points buy catalogue and portal redemptions, not award seats — so this page has no flight to show you, and will not invent one.
what the cards that DO reach a chart can fly — 2,196 corridors priced →
What earns, what doesn't
13 sourced rules · 9 pay zero
THE SHORTEST ACCELERATOR LIST OF THE THREE VARIANTS, AND THE ONLY ONE WHERE THE PAYMENT RAIL IS THE BENEFIT. §2.1 pays "2 RP per ₹150 spent via UPI transactions" and "1 RP per ₹150 spent on other transactions", then accelerates 2X on "Apparel, Department Stores, and Food Delivery" — note it drops the Dining the Master Platinum's §2.2 list carries, and has no travel of any kind (that is §2.3, Master World only). At the ₹0.50 RuPay Platinum redemption rate from §4.1, ordinary spend is 0.33%, UPI and 2X categories are 0.67%, and franchise merchandise at 3X is 1.0%. The §5 exclusion table is written once for all six variants and is unusually WIDE: "Insurance 5960–6399" sweeps in the whole 6000-block of financial institutions, "Government Payments 9000–9999" covers every government MCC, and "Utilities & Telecom 4800–4999" swallows 4900, 4814, 4899 and 4816 alike. §6's "Each transaction qualifies for only one reward category" means the UPI double and the 2X never stack, and the whole-number rounding bites hardest here — a ₹149 UPI spend earns nothing at all.
- Fuel · excluded MCCs 5172, 5541, 5542 and 5983 earn nothing, plus a 1% fuel transaction fee above ₹50,000 cumulative in a cycle. The 1% fuel surcharge waiver is the SMALLER band CUB assigns by name to the "Rupay Platinum Lifetime Free" variants — ₹400–₹3,000 transactions only, to a maximum ₹300 per cycle
- Rent & property management · excluded MCC 6513 earns nothing and carries a 1% rental surcharge on every transaction
- Wallet loads · excluded MCCs 6538–6542 earn nothing and carry a 1% wallet load transaction fee
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · excluded The whole 4800–4999 "Utilities & Telecom" range earns nothing; a 1% utility fee also applies above ₹25,000 cumulative in a cycle
per City Union Bank T&C · rank every card by spend category →
Lounge access
0 of 793 tracked doors
No lounge access. This card opens exactly 0 of 793 tracked lounge doors — board with the crowd, or find a card that doesn't →
Can you get it?
the route in — no cutoffs published
The cutoffs and the actual route in — not the "apply now" button, the door that opens.
Direct application — no invite list, no banking relationship required.
A City Union Bank co-brand with the Chennai Super Kings, applied for through CUB's own credit-card funnel — CUB issues on its own licence, so this is not a partner-bank product and there is no invitation list. CUB publishes no income or age criteria for the variant in its Key Fact Statement, and the eligibility panel on its product page is served by script rather than in the page source, so we do not state a threshold we have not read. The identical SRH variant is the same card with a Sunrisers Hyderabad face.
City Union Bank publishes no income or age cutoffs for this card. Blank means blank — we don't invent numbers to fill a grid.
per the official City Union Bank MITC — figures marked (community) aren't in the PDF; the issuer won't say · filter the board by what you can get →
The fine print
7 of 7 MITC rows published
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
LIFETIME FREE, IN THE KFS'S OWN WORDS. Section A.1 of KFS v5 (13 April 2026) prints the row "CUB CSK RUPAY PLATINUM CREDIT CARD (LIFETIME FREE)" with NIL in the "Joining Fee (INR) (Will be levied after card activation)" column AND NIL in "Annual Fee 2nd year onwards (INR)". Both zeroes are published, so the card carries `annualFee: 0` — our no-guess rule's real zero, not an unsourced absence — and no joiningFee key, because a nil joining charge beside a nil renewal adds nothing. THE FOREX ROW EXCLUDES THIS VARIANT: the 0% markup is an exemption for "(CSK/SRH Master World Variant)" and nothing else, so this card pays 3.5%. THE FUEL BAND IS THE SMALLER OF THE TWO THE DOCUMENT PRINTS, and the KFS says so explicitly — 1% waiver "Valid on transactions between ₹400 ~ ₹3,000 only", "Max benefit of ₹ 300 per statement cycle (For CSK/SRH Rupay Platinum Lifetime Free Variant cards)", against the Master pair's ₹400–₹5,000 and ₹500. Four separate 1% surcharges sit outside the waiver: rent (MCC 6513) on every transaction, wallet loads (6538–6542) on every transaction, fuel once cumulative fuel spend crosses ₹50,000 in a cycle, utilities (4814/4899/4900) above ₹25,000 and online skill-based gaming (5816) above ₹10,000. Other charges: limit enhancement ₹200, cheque return ₹300, card re-issue or replacement ₹300, statement retrieval ₹50 beyond three months, charge slip ₹250, ATM balance enquiry nil at CUB and ₹50 elsewhere, keychain FOB ₹400, EMI conversion 2% (minimum ₹200, maximum ₹1,000) and EMI foreclosure 5%. The ₹250 physical-RuPay-card fee is stated for "Master Platinum and Master World" holders and does NOT apply here — this variant is itself a physical RuPay card. Grace period 20 to 48 days. The card cannot be used in Nepal or Bhutan for foreign-currency withdrawal. NO LOUNGE CLAUSE APPEARS ANYWHERE IN THE DOCUMENT.
per the official City Union Bank MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
What's changed for this card
nothing tracked yet — which is itself a fact
No tracked devaluations or changes yet — this card's history starts here.
Verified against City Union Bank's own documents on · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 4 of them, each with the day we read it
- official CUB's credit-cards page — the live shelf that names the CSK and SRH co-brands and links every document this card is priced from
- official CUB's Key Fact Statement (KFS v5, 13 April 2026) — the lifetime-free fee row, the 3.5% foreign-currency charge and the smaller RuPay fuel-surcharge band
- official CUB's CSK/SRH Card Product Reward Document — the RuPay Platinum's UPI earn table, the ₹0.50 redemption rate and the MCC exclusion list
- official CUB's Chennai Super Kings co-brand product page