Federal Bank Imperio
KeepA free card you hold for eight lounge doors — and for nothing else it does.
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
Read the ₹0.4L figure carefully: ₹1,200 of its ₹2,000 gross is a voucher or a hotel night, not points — worth that only if you would have bought it anyway.
Welcome: ₹400 Amazon Pay e-voucher on ₹5,000 spend in the first 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. 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 #152
Why #152 Lifetime free, so the score sees pure upside; at 0.17% back with a closed-loop point and no international lounge, the eight gated domestic visits are the only reason to carry it.
The take
Imperio is what happens when a bank gives away lounge access and pays you in confetti. The card is lifetime free — Federal's published ₹1,500 joining and ₹1,500 annual fees have been switched off since the 3-Apr-2023 offer — and it opens eight domestic lounge doors a year, two a quarter, provided you pushed ₹40,000 through it the quarter before. That is the whole case. The rewards are the thinnest in this index: 1 point per ₹150 at ₹0.25 a point is 0.17% back, rising to a still invisible 0.5% on healthcare and groceries, redeemable only on Federal's own portal for a ₹99 fee, with no airline or hotel partner anywhere. And unlike its sibling Celesta — also lifetime free — Imperio charges the full 3.5% abroad and opens no international lounge at all. Keep it in the drawer for the quarterly lounge run; swipe literally anything else.
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
₹1,700 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹2,200 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹3,200 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹7,200 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹11,300 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 — ₹0 joining, ₹0 annual under Federal's offer running since 3-Apr-2023
- 8 domestic lounge visits a year (2 a quarter, gated on ₹40,000 of previous-quarter spend)
- ₹400 Amazon Pay welcome voucher on ₹5,000 in the first 30 days
- 3X on healthcare and groceries, 2X on utility bills; ₹300 BigBasket voucher every ₹50,000 quarter
- 1% fuel surcharge waiver and a quarterly INOX buy-one-get-one worth up to ₹100
Watch out
- 0.17% base earn — the thinnest reward rate in this index (1 point per ₹150 at ₹0.25 a point)
- Federal reward points are closed-loop: portal catalogue only, ₹99 a redemption request, 'cash' redemption at just ₹0.10 a point, no transfer partners
- 3.5% forex — Celesta, the other lifetime-free Federal card, charges 2% and adds international lounges
- No international lounge access at all
- Domestic lounge access needs ₹40,000 of spend in the previous quarter — miss it and the card does nothing
- 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 →
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.
Published fee is ₹1,500 joining / ₹1,500 annual (waived at ₹1.5L annual spend), but Federal has run the card lifetime free since 3-Apr-2023 — the MITC's waiver wording applies to pre-April-2023 customers. Earn is 1 Point per ₹150 at ₹0.25 a point (Celesta earns 1 per ₹100 and charges 2% forex). Points expire 3 years from accrual (community).
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 — 5 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 Imperio at once per quarter
- official Credit-cards MITC — Imperio 1 Point per ₹150 spend, point valued ₹0.25, 3.5% foreign-currency markup, ₹99 redemption fee
- official Mastercard Imperio product page — lifetime free (limited-period offer w.e.f. 3-Apr-2023), 3-2-1 rewards (3X healthcare/grocery, 2X utilities, 1X other)
- official Visa Imperio product page — the twin variant, identical benefit sheet
- community CardInsider review — 1X RP/₹150 base, ₹0.25 a point, 3.5% forex, ₹99 redemption fee, ₹300 BigBasket voucher at ₹50,000 quarterly spend, 3-year point expiry