IDFC FIRST Ashva
KeepThe budget Mayura — metal, 0% forex and 40 lounge visits for ₹2,999.
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: 7,500 RP — 2,500 on fee payment + 2,500 each on ₹20k in cycles 2 and 3 (once per customer)
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 for itself at ₹22,000 a month
At ₹22,000 a month — ₹2,64,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹3,100 gross (earn ₹3,100) against its ₹2,999 fee = ₹100 net — the first rung at or above ₹0. 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 #20
Why #20 Seated above its earn-based number for what that number can't price: a twice-yearly Cancel for Any Reason cover worth up to ₹25,000 a claim, plus a quarterly domestic + international + railway lounge quota deep for a ₹2,999 card. Neither is a reward point, so neither shows up in the score — but both are real money a holder collects whether or not they earn a single point.
Our #3 for Movies — 1 of the 23 questions this desk ranks.
Ashva redeems the same IDFC points at ₹0.40 on app travel bookings and ₹0.25 — the house value — everywhere else. It is the shallowest rung on IDFC's travel ladder: Mayura and WOW! Black get ₹0.50, Gaj and FIRST Private a full rupee. earn.base marks the points up to that ₹0.40, so the rate below assumes you book travel in the app.
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 now 0% bank-wide (MITC + Ashva brochure), 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 — plus two things the ₹2,999 fee has no business buying: a Cancel for Any Reason cover that reimburses up to ₹25,000 of a non-refundable flight or hotel booking twice a year, and ₹5,000 off a ₹25,000 stay at The Postcard Hotels once a quarter. That cancellation cover alone is ₹50,000 of annual protection with no reason required, on a card that costs ₹2,999. 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.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
Here is the fee, the spend that clears it, and everything that has moved under this card since you last decided.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
₹2,999/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹2,999/yr
Break-even ₹22,000 a month — ₹2,64,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee.
At your spend
₹900 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹7,700 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹24,300 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹78,800 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹1,33,200 a year, net of the fee, at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend
Everyday earn plus milestones, minus the fee — the same model as the value panel above, so the two cannot disagree. run your exact spend →
Your copy of this card
You hold this card.
Kept on this device, in your browser. It is never sent to us, never synced, and nothing else on the site reads it yet.
The downgrade
IDFC FIRST 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
- 9 Sep 2026 IDFC FIRST Bank zeroes forex markup on every credit card issuer-wide
- 18 Jun 2026 Ashva's app-travel multipliers cut to 40X hotels, 25X flights
- 18 Jun 2026 IDFC FIRST bolts a 24-month expiry onto reward points that were lifetime-valid 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
- 0% forex on a ₹2,999 metal Visa Infinite — bank-wide MITC NIL since 9 Sep 2026; Ashva brochure re-issue says the same
- 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)
- Cancel for Any Reason cover — up to ₹25,000 back on a non-refundable flight or hotel booking, twice a year
- ₹5,000 off a ₹25,000 booking at The Postcard Hotels, once a calendar quarter (code IDFCVIP)
- Buy-one-get-one on District movie tickets twice a calendar month, up to ₹400 off the second
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 are 2X (2 RP per ₹150) on the 10-Sep-2026 brochure, which still says they count toward the ₹20k trigger. The May-2026 rewards T&C still prints 5 RP per ₹150, and the brochure says TnC apply — the newer brochure is what we model
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes IDFC FIRST 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 · 2 pay zero
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, which is also why each reduced rate is written as "X RP/₹150 vs 5 RP/₹150": earn.base (2.67) carries that ₹0.40 haircut while the notes quote raw RP, and only the two-rate form cancels it.
- 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 vs the 5 RP/₹150 base (~0.53% at ₹0.40); doesn't count toward the ₹20k 10X trigger; IDFC's bank-wide 1% rent fee (min ₹249) applies (customer MITC)
- Wallet loads · reduced 3 RP/₹150 vs the 5 RP/₹150 base — one of only four cards of the 24 earning on wallet loads
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · reduced 1 RP/₹150 vs the 5 RP/₹150 base (~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 →
Does your spend count toward the milestones?
not published — and we say which
₹8,00,000 a year is the bar for the first milestone. A different question from the one above — earning points and counting toward a threshold are separate rules, and issuers write them separately.
Not published. IDFC FIRST Bank states what the IDFC FIRST Ashva earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the milestones — the ₹8,00,000 bar. We won't guess it from the earn table or from a sibling card: Axis published three cards' rules on one day and all three lists differed. If you hold this card and have it in writing from the issuer, send us the document and we'll source it.
Lounge access
129 of 793 tracked doors
Gate: ₹20k spend in the previous calendar month
Opens 129 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 54 airports and 19 railway stations , via DreamFolks, DreamFolks Railway — see the full map →
Can you get it?
income, age and the route in
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 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.
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
8 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.
- 9 Sept 2026IDFC FIRST Bank zeroes forex markup on every credit cardA per-card markup table — Nil on a few premium cards, 1% to 3.5% on the rest → NIL on foreign-currency transactions and on dynamic and static currency conversion, bank-wide
IDFC's retail credit-card MITC, re-saved 9 September 2026, replaces the old per-card forex table with one NIL row covering foreign-currency transactions and dynamic and static currency conversion. The commercial and corporate MITCs, re-saved 7 September, print Nil or 0% for the business and corporate cards. Ashva's brochure, re-issued 10 September, says the same and also cuts that card's international earn from 5 reward points per ₹150 to 2X. A widely reported 26 October cut to international reward earning is not in any of those documents, so it is not on the cards. Cards that were already Nil — Mayura, Gaj, WOW, WOW Black, FIRST Private, Diamond Reserve — did not move.
- 18 Jun 2026Mayura's app-travel multipliers cut to 40X hotels, 25X flights
- 18 Jun 2026LIC IDFC FIRST Select's app-travel bonus cut to 20% hotels, 8% flights
- 18 Jun 2026Ashva's app-travel multipliers cut to 40X hotels, 25X flights
- 18 Jun 2026IDFC FIRST bolts a 24-month expiry onto reward points that were lifetime-valid
- 18 Jun 2026IDFC FIRST Select's 10X moves to categories, app travel bonus cut
- 18 Jun 2026Gaj stops earning past your credit limit
- 18 Jun 2026FIRST Wealth's app-travel bonus falls from 33% to 20%
Every IDFC FIRST Bank change we've dated → 11 events since 2023, 7 of them nerfs — worst year 2026.
Verified against IDFC FIRST Bank's own documents on · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 8 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product page + FAQs — ₹2,999 joining and annual, no spend waiver; forex superseded to 0% by 9-Sep-2026 MITC + 10-Sep-2026 brochure; Cancel for Any Reason ₹25,000 twice a year
- official Lounge programme T&C — the Indian leg runs on EliteAssist and you present the Ashva card; the global leg runs on DreamFolks and you present the DreamFolks card
- official Rewards T&C PDF (bonus is ADDITIVE — Base (A) 10 + Bonus (B) 30/15 = Total (A+B) 40/25 RP per ₹150)
- official Bank-wide MITC (9 Sep 2026) — ₹2,999 joining and annual; forex NIL on foreign currency and DCC
- official Ashva brochure PDF (ModDate 10-Sep-2026) — Zero Forex Mark-Up / "Zero Markup fee on international spends"; fees ₹2,999; 2X on international spends; birthday 10X restored in copy
- 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)
- community CardInsider review
- official FIRST Digital RuPay add-on (UPI) page