Federal Bank Celesta
KeepA free card you hold for the two international lounge visits — never for the quarter-percent it pays back.
What it's worth to you — net annual value
Welcome: ₹600 Amazon Pay gift voucher on ₹10,000 spend within 30 days
How these numbers are computed →
Spend tiers, milestones and fee waivers included, at our house ₹/point. Portal and category multipliers can push higher — run your exact number →
The take
Celesta is Federal Bank's lifetime-free travel card, and the honest read is that its rewards barely exist: 1 point per ₹100 at ₹0.25 a point is 0.25% back, rising to a still- thin 0.75% on travel and 0.5% on dining. Nobody should carry it to earn. What it gives away for free is rarer than the points suggest — two complimentary international lounge visits a year and eight domestic (two a quarter, once you have pushed ₹60,000 through it the previous quarter), plus a 2% forex markup that undercuts the 3.5% most banks charge. As a no-fee card that opens an international lounge door twice a year, it earns its place in the wallet. As a rewards engine it is wallpaper — pair it with something that actually pays.
What's good
- Lifetime free — no joining or annual fee, ever
- 2 international + 8 domestic lounge visits a year (domestic gated at ₹60k prior-quarter spend)
- 2% forex markup — better than the 3.5% most banks charge
- ₹600 Amazon Pay welcome voucher; 1% fuel surcharge waiver; monthly INOX buy-one-get-one
Watch out
- 0.25% base earn — among the weakest reward rates in this index; 0.75% even on travel
- Federal reward points are closed-loop at ₹0.25 on the bank's portal — no transfer partners
- Domestic lounge access needs ₹60,000 of spend in the previous quarter
- Points expire 3 years from accrual
What earns, what doesn't
Celesta earns 1 RP/₹100 base (0.25%), 3X on travel/international (0.75%), 2X on dining (0.5%); points ₹0.25 on the Federal Rewards portal. Federal's fee/exclusion MCCs mirror the Scapia KFS (fuel/rent/wallet fees). 'full' = the 1 RP base; travel/dining are the 3X/2X accelerated tiers.
- Fuel · excluded Zero RP; 1% fuel surcharge waiver ≤₹5,000 (Federal standard) — community, flag
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero RP + Federal's 1% convenience fee per rent txn (as on Scapia KFS) — community, flag
- Wallet loads · excluded Zero RP + 1% fee per wallet-load txn (Federal standard) — community, flag
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · reduced Base 1 RP/₹100 or excluded; 1% fee past ₹50k/month (Federal standard) — community, flag
per Federal Bank T&C (community-sourced) · rank every card by spend category →
Lounge access
Gate: ₹60k prior-quarter spend (domestic)
Opens 588 of 644 tracked lounge doors across 245 airports — see the full map →
Can you get it?
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.
Federal 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 Federal Bank MITC — figures marked (community) aren't in the PDF; the issuer won't say · filter the ranking by what you can get →
The fine print
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
Lifetime free — no joining or annual fee. 1 RP/₹100 base (0.25%); 3X on travel/international (0.75%), 2X on dining (0.5%); points ₹0.25 on the Federal Rewards portal, no transfer partners, 3-yr expiry. 2 international lounge visits/yr with no spend criteria + 8 domestic (2/quarter, gated at ₹60k prior-quarter spend) — both per the official card page. 2% forex; ₹600 Amazon Pay welcome on ₹10k/30d; 1% fuel surcharge waiver; monthly INOX buy-one-get-one. APR range published on the official page; late-fee/cash-advance from Federal's standard KFS schedule; Federal publishes no income/age cutoff — app-led onboarding. There are Visa and Mastercard variants of Celesta.
per the official Federal Bank MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
What's changed for this card
Full tracker →Devaluations and buffs that touch this card directly, its issuer, or the points and programs it earns and transfers to.
- 27 Feb 2026Scapia doubles the lounge bar and kills its easiest earnUnlimited domestic lounges at ₹10k prior-month spend; insurance and utility payments earned coins and counted → Lounge gate doubled to ₹20k/month; insurance, utility, rent and fuel earn nothing and don't count toward the gate
Scapia's first real devaluation lands on both sides of the same trade: the unlimited-lounge threshold doubles to ₹20,000 a month just as the insurance and utility spends that most easily cleared it stop earning or counting at all. The card is still lifetime-free with 0% forex — but the era of paying your electricity bill for a lounge pass is over.
- 20 Jun 2023Scapia launches: 0% forex and unlimited lounges, for freeZero-forex travel cards were a paid, premium privilege → Lifetime-free Federal Bank co-brand: 0% forex, unlimited domestic lounges, 10–20% coins on spends
A fintech co-brand on Federal Bank rails resets the entry price of the zero-forex trade to nothing: no joining fee, no annual fee, 0% markup abroad and unlimited domestic lounge access. The 10% 'rewards' headline is really 2% in coins that only spend inside Scapia's own travel app — but as a free forex-and-lounge tool, nothing at launch came close, and half the fintech card industry spent the next two years copying it.
- 3 Sept 2021Federal Bank deals its first own cards — Celesta on topFederal customers had no in-house credit card → Celesta, Imperio and Signet launch on Visa with 3-click digital issuance; Celesta brings 2 international + 8 domestic lounge visits
Federal Bank's September-2021 entry put three Visa cards in front of its existing customers, with Celesta as the HNI flagship — instant issuance inside FedMobile, dynamic interest from 0.49% a month, and lounge access rare at the price. The rewards were an afterthought then and remain one now (1 point per ₹100 at ₹0.25), but the free international lounge visits and 2% forex gave Celesta a reason to exist that the points never did.
Go deeper
Sources
Every fact on this page is checked against these documents — the issuer's own paperwork first. Spot something stale? The PDF wins, and we re-verify.
- official Product page — LTF (w.e.f. 3-Apr-2023), 3X/2X/1X earn, 2 int'l (no spend gate) + 8 domestic (₹60k/quarter) lounge, 2% forex, ₹600 welcome, INOX BOGO checked 12 Jul 2026
- community CardInsider review — ₹0.25/point, 3-yr expiry, INOX BOGO; no monthly reward-points cap on base earn checked 13 Jul 2026
- official Mastercard Celesta product page (twin of the Visa variant) checked 12 Jul 2026
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