IDFC FIRST Ashva
KeepThe budget Mayura — metal, 1% forex and 40 lounge visits for ₹2,999.
Ashva redeems the same IDFC points at ₹0.40 on app travel bookings and ₹0.25 everywhere else — a 20% haircut on Mayura's ₹0.50 house value that earn.base already bakes in.
What it's worth to you — net annual value
Welcome: 7,500 RP — 2,500 on fee payment + 2,500 each on ₹20k in cycles 2 and 3 (once per customer)
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
Ashva is Mayura with the numbers filed down: same 12-gram metal, same 5X/10X earn split at ₹20,000 a statement, same app-portal theatrics — but every point is worth ₹0.40 instead of ₹0.50, forex is 1% instead of 0%, and the honest base rate is 1.3% until the 10X tier kicks in at 2.7%. What you get for half Mayura's fee is a genuinely fat benefits sheet: 4 domestic, 2 international and 4 railway lounge visits every quarter, two golf rounds a month, BOGO movie tickets — all gated on ₹20,000 spent the previous month. At ₹1L a month it nets ₹28,789 a year against a ₹2,999 fee. Buy it as the cheapest serious metal travel card in the country; just know the points live and die inside IDFC's portal at a discount.
What's good
- 1% forex on a ₹2,999 metal Visa Infinite
- 10 RP per ₹150 above ₹20k/statement ≈ 2.7% effective
- 40 RP per ₹150 on app hotel bookings ≈ 10.7% effective
- 4 domestic + 2 international + 4 railway lounge visits per quarter (spend-gated)
Watch out
- ₹0.40/pt is the ceiling — Ashva points are worth 20% less than Mayura's, ₹0.25 outside app travel
- Closed loop: no airline or hotel transfer partners at all
- Lounge, golf and movie perks all need ₹20k spend the previous month
- International spends fixed at 5X; no points beyond your credit limit; 1L/month + 2L/yr redemption caps, ₹99 fee
What earns, what doesn't
Same category architecture as Mayura, cheaper tier: 3X on rent/govt/wallet/education and 1X on FASTag/railways/insurance/utilities, none of which count toward the ₹20k trigger for 10X. Points redeem at ₹0.40 (app travel) / ₹0.25 (elsewhere) — every rate below is worth 20% less than the same rate on Mayura.
- Fuel · excluded Zero RP (official exclusion list); 1% surcharge waiver on ₹200–₹5,000 txns, cap ₹300/cycle
- Rent & property management · reduced 3 RP/₹150 (~0.53% at ₹0.40); doesn't count toward the ₹20k 10X trigger
- Wallet loads · reduced 3 RP/₹150 — one of only four cards of the 24 earning on wallet loads
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · reduced 1 RP/₹150 (~0.18%); official T&C groups FASTag, Railways, Insurance and Utilities at 1X
per IDFC FIRST Bank T&C · rank every card by spend category →
Lounge access
Gate: ₹20k spend in the previous calendar month
Opens 93 of 644 tracked lounge doors across 59 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.
per the official IDFC FIRST 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.
Fee ₹2,999 joining and annual, NO spend waiver — the ₹8L milestone pays 7,500 RP instead. Metal card replacement ₹1,500 (vs Mayura's ₹3,500). Fuel surcharge waiver capped ₹300/cycle. IDFC publishes no income cutoff for Ashva; age from community coverage. MITC effective 18-Jun-2026.
per the official IDFC FIRST 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.
- 18 Jun 2026Mayura's app-travel multipliers cut to 40X hotels, 25X flights60 RP/₹150 on app hotels, 40 RP/₹150 on flights (Jun-2025 boost) → 40 RP/₹150 hotels, 25 RP/₹150 flights; movie BOGO needs ₹20k/month; rewards capped at credit limit
The Jun-2025 boost is rolled back: IDFC's 18-Jun-2026 notice re-states the app bonus as '20%/10% Bonus Reward Points' — 30 and 15 bonus RP per ₹150 — dropping hotel bookings from a 20% effective return to 13.3% and flights from 13.3% to 8.3% at the ₹0.50 travel value. The same notice gates the BOGO movie perk on ₹20,000 of previous-month spend and stops rewards on spends beyond your credit limit. The 0% forex and 5X/10X base survive untouched.
- 18 Jun 2026Ashva's app-travel multipliers cut to 40X hotels, 25X flights60 RP/₹150 on app hotels, 40 RP/₹150 on flights (Jun-2025 'up to 50X Bonus' boost) → 40 RP/₹150 hotels, 25 RP/₹150 flights; movie BOGO needs ₹20k/month; rewards capped at credit limit
Ashva rides the same 18-Jun-2026 notice that hit its sibling Mayura: IDFC re-states the mobile-app Travel & Shop bonus as '20% Bonus Reward Points on hotels, 10% on flights' over the base earn — landing at 40 and 25 total RP per ₹150, down from the Jun-2025 boost's 60/40. At Ashva's ₹0.40 app-travel value that drops app hotels from ~16% to ~10.7% and flights from ~10.7% to ~6.7%. The same notice stops rewards on spends beyond the credit limit and gates the Buy-One-Get-One movie perk on ₹20,000 of previous-month spend. The 1% forex and 5X/10X base survive; the 15,000 bonus-RP/month cap is unchanged.
- 6 Jan 2026IDFC FIRST launches zero-forex Diamond Reserve cardNo 0%-forex travel card at the ₹3,000 fee tier → Diamond Reserve: 0% forex, 4 lounge visits/quarter
IDFC FIRST's Diamond Reserve, launched 6 January 2026 at ₹3,000+GST, undercuts the premium travel-card field with genuinely 0% forex markup, 60 RP per ₹150 on app hotel bookings and 40 RP per ₹150 on flights (both worth ₹0.25/point), plus 2 domestic and 2 international lounge visits every quarter and lifetime-valid points. In a year dominated by devaluations from HDFC, Axis, ICICI and SBI, this is one of the rare cards actually adding value at a mid-premium fee point rather than taking it away.
- 29 Dec 2025IDFC FIRST unveils Gaj, an invite-only ₹12,500 metal flagshipPrivate banking metal tier topped out below super-premium → Gaj: launched atop Ashva-Mayura-Gaj trilogy, ₹12,500 fee
Gaj: is invite-only for IDFC FIRST Private Banking clients, carries a ₹12,500+GST joining and annual fee, and offsets it with 12,500 Reward Points (1RP=₹1) redeemable on in-app travel bookings — plus 0% forex and 1:1 earn rate. It's a niche launch that won't matter to most readers, but it signals IDFC FIRST is chasing the HNI segment HDFC Infinia and Axis Reserve have owned for years, right as those two incumbents are busy cutting benefits.
- 11 Jul 2023IDFC First and Club Vistara team up on a travel credit cardNo IDFC First travel card tied to an airline programme → Club Vistara IDFC FIRST Card: CV Points, lounge, golf perks
IDFC FIRST Bank, Club Vistara and Mastercard announced a new co-branded travel card on July 11, 2023, bundling CV Points earning with lounge access, golf benefits and trip-cancellation cover. It was a modest entrant next to the HDFC and Axis Vistara cards already in market, but it gave IDFC First — still building out its premium lineup — a genuine travel-rewards product for the first time.
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 (₹2,999 fee; 1% forex) checked 12 Jul 2026
- official Rewards T&C PDF checked 13 Jul 2026
- official Jun-2026 change notice PDF (18-Jun-2026 app 20%/10% Bonus = 40/25 RP per ₹150; ₹0.40 travel value; rewards capped at credit limit; ₹20k prev-month movie gate) checked 12 Jul 2026
- community CardInsider review checked 11 Jul 2026
- official FIRST Digital RuPay add-on (UPI) page checked 11 Jul 2026
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