Federal Bank Celesta
KeepA free card you hold for the two international lounge visits — never for the quarter-percent it pays back.
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: ₹600 Amazon Pay gift voucher on ₹10,000 spend within 30 days
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 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 #176
Why #176 A lifetime-free card with eight domestic and two international lounge visits a year, and 0.3% back in Federal Reward Points. Priced on the points it is one of the weakest cards we carry; priced on two international doors for ₹0 a year it is one of the cheapest ways onto this board at all. The rank follows the doors.
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.
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
₹700 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹1,400 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹2,800 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹8,500 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹14,100 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
Federal 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.
What has changed under this card
- 1 Oct 2025 Federal puts a quarterly spend gate on lounge access across Signet, Imperio and Celesta issuer-wide
We price what is in force today — a change that has not happened yet is not in these numbers. the full archive for this card →
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 — 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 worth up to ₹100
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
- ₹99 per redemption request; 'cash' redemption credits just ₹0.10 a point; insurance earn capped at 250 points a month (both eff. 15-Jul-2024)
- Domestic lounge access needs ₹60,000 of spend in the previous quarter
- Points expire 3 years from accrual
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes Federal 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
14 sourced rules · 5 pay zero
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
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.
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 board by what you can get →
The fine print
5 of 7 MITC rows published
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
6 dated changes
Devaluations and buffs that touch this card directly, its issuer, or the points and programs it earns and transfers to. Every one is dated here; the tracker carries each one's before → after and the write-up.
- 23 Aug 2026Federal Bank discontinues the Jupiter Edge and Fi co-brand programmesFederal Bank issued co-branded credit cards with Europa Neomarketing (Federal Edge, sold as Jupiter Edge) and Fi Brand (AmpliFi, SimpliFi, MagniFi). → Both programmes discontinued. Federal's co-branded index carries two support mailboxes for existing holders and nothing else.
Federal Bank's co-branded credit-card index, stamped "Last Updated On : 23 Aug 2026", says it plainly: the programmes run with Europa Neomarketing and Fi Brand "have been discontinued". The three Fi siblings were already carried as closed on this board; the Jupiter Edge was the row nobody flipped, and it sat at `availability: open` until today. Recorded as a launch-class event because what changed is the PROGRAMME, not a price — no fee moved and no rate was cut. The card simply stopped being something a reader could get, which is the one fact a shelf must never be wrong about. Note the disagreement rather than resolving it: jupiter.money still sells the card with a live apply funnel, so a reader can currently apply for a product the issuing bank says is discontinued. The issuer's word governs the shelf; the partner's page is recorded in the card's watchOut. Federal's notice does NOT name the CSB-issued Edge cards, so nothing here reaches them.
- 20 Mar 2026The Federal Fi credit-card programme ends and reward accrual stops
- 27 Feb 2026Scapia doubles the lounge bar and kills its easiest earn
- 1 Oct 2025Federal puts a quarterly spend gate on lounge access across Signet, Imperio and Celesta
- 20 Jun 2023Scapia launches: 0% forex and unlimited lounges, for free
- 3 Sept 2021Federal Bank deals its first own cards — Celesta on top
Every Federal Bank change we've dated → 6 events since 2021, 2 of them nerfs — worst year 2025.
Verified against Federal Bank's own documents on · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 6 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Federal Bank's INOX BOGO offer terms (archived 14-Jun-2026) — "Buy 1 Get Rs.100/- OFF on second Movie Ticket", with a per-variant table putting Celesta at once per month
- official Product page — LTF (w.e.f. 3-Apr-2023; the ₹3,000 AMC + ₹3L-waiver rows are still present but HTML-commented out of the Fees & Charges table)
- official Credit-cards MITC — Celesta 1 pt/₹100 at ₹0.25, ₹99 per redemption request, cash redemption 10p/pt and insurance earn capped 250 pts/month (both eff. 15-Jul-2024), 2% forex
- community CardInsider review — ₹0.25/point, 3-yr expiry, INOX BOGO; no monthly reward-points cap on base earn
- official Mastercard Celesta product page (twin of the Visa variant) — "Enjoy 2 International Lounge access in a year without any spend criteria"
- official Airport lounge programme page — settles the international programme: "Celesta Credit cardholders must identify themselves as 'LoungeKey' members to lounge staff"