IDFC FIRST EA₹N
DowngradeA virtual card that pays 1% on UPI — through IDFC's app only, and never more than ₹500 a month.
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: 10% cashback of up to ₹250 on your first transaction — IDFC's own joining offer, and the only welcome benefit published for this card
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 →
Breaks even only by erasing its fee at ₹9,000 a month
At ₹9,000 a month — ₹1,08,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹500 gross (earn ₹500) against a fee of ₹0 — the ₹499 is waived, the spend having cleared ₹1,00,000 a year = ₹500 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 #380
Why #380 A virtual FD-backed card whose whole proposition is 1% on UPI — but only through IDFC's own app, and only up to ₹500 of cashback a cycle. It ranks below Quantum+, which pays the same 1% on more channels for no fee at all.
Statement cashback at par, credited to the card account. IDFC caps it at ₹500 in a statement cycle across every category.
The take
FIRST EA₹N is IDFC's virtual, fixed-deposit-backed RuPay card, and it exists for one transaction type: a QR-code payment. No plastic is issued. You put down a deposit of ₹5,000 or more, take a credit limit equal to it, and the card is auto-linked to UPI inside the IDFC FIRST Bank app the moment it is generated. There is no income proof, no credit history test and no add-on card. The rate depends entirely on which app you open. Scan through IDFC's own app and you earn 1%. Scan the identical merchant QR through Google Pay, PhonePe or Paytm and you earn 0.5% — and the same 0.5% applies to all online spend and to utilities, insurance and wallet loads. Book a hotel through the app's FIRST Rewards Gallery and a 5% bonus takes it to 5.5%; flights get 2% and land at 2.5%. Everything is capped at ₹500 of cashback in a statement cycle, which at the 0.5% floor arrives at ₹1,00,000 of monthly spend and at the 1% rung arrives at ₹50,000. The fee is ₹499 to join and ₹499 a year, waived entirely above ₹1,00,000 of annual spend. IDFC is currently running a limited-period offer that drops the joining charge to zero and adds 10% back up to ₹250 on your first transaction — worth taking, but it is an offer and the MITC still prints ₹499. The more useful comparison is inside IDFC's own range: Quantum+ is lifetime free, is also FD-backed and assured, and pays the same 1% on IDFC-app UPI plus 1% on in-store swipes this card cannot make. Unless you specifically want a card with no physical form, that one is strictly the better buy.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
This card reaches break-even by ERASING its fee, not by out-earning it: the waiver is the decision.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
₹499/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹499/yr
The waiver ₹1,00,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹8,333 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹9,000 a month — ₹1,08,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee, and it gets there by erasing the fee at the waiver rather than out-earning it.
At your spend
₹1,500 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹3,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹6,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹6,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹6,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
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 IDFC FIRST bolts a 24-month expiry onto reward points that were lifetime-valid issuer-wide
- 6 Jan 2026 IDFC FIRST launches zero-forex Diamond Reserve card 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
- 1% cashback on UPI paid through the IDFC FIRST Bank app
- FD-backed and assured — a ₹5,000 fixed deposit, no income proof, no credit history, ages 18 to 80
- Virtual card issued instantly and auto-linked to UPI; the credit limit equals the deposit
- ₹499 annual fee waived entirely on ₹1,00,000 of annual spend
- 5.5% on hotels and 2.5% on flights booked in the app's FIRST Rewards Gallery
- 25% off up to ₹100 on movie tickets, once a month
- Limited-period offer: ₹0 joining fee plus 10% cashback up to ₹250 on the first transaction
Watch out
- 0.5% on online spends and on UPI through GPay, PhonePe or Paytm — the 1% needs IDFC's own app
- Cashback is capped at ₹500 in a statement cycle across every category
- The 1% UPI rate applies only to cards issued on or after 16 December 2025
- Virtual only — no physical card is issued, so there are no in-store swipes
- No add-on card is available at all, because the card is FD-backed
- The ₹0 joining fee is explicitly a Limited Time Period Offer; the MITC prints ₹499
- No fuel-surcharge waiver — the MITC marks FIRST EA₹N 'Not Applicable' — and no over-limit facility
- 0% forex markup since 9 Sep 2026; no lounge access; no airline or hotel transfer partner
- A 1% surcharge applies to rent and property-management payments (minimum ₹249) and to utility spends above ₹20,000 a cycle
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes Statement cashback (₹) 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 →
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹1,00,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹499 fee. 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 EA₹N earns, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver — the ₹1,00,000 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
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?
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.
Register online, create or link a fixed deposit of at least ₹5,000 with IDFC FIRST Bank, complete KYC, and the virtual card is issued. Age 18 to 80, resident in India, no income proof and no credit history required. The limit can be raised instantly at any time by linking another FD from ₹5,000 through the mobile app.
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.
MITC §1, two columns, NOT inverted: "FIRST EA₹N Credit Card · ₹499 · ₹499 · NA". The equal pair is why there is no `joiningFee` key. The product page shows a struck-through ₹499 beside "Joining Fee: ₹0" under IDFC's own disclaimer "*₹0 Joining Fee is a Limited Time Period Offer" — a promotion, not a schedule, so the fee model keeps ₹499. Annual fee waived entirely on ₹1,00,000 of annual spend. Fuel-surcharge waiver: "Not Applicable". Virtual card only; no fee is charged on replacement of the digital form factor. Minimum FD ₹5,000. Rent and property-management payments carry a 1% surcharge (min ₹249) and utility spends above ₹20,000 a cycle a further 1%.
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 — 2 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product page — 1% on UPI through the IDFC app and 0.5% elsewhere, capped at ₹500 a statement cycle; ₹499 joining and annual with a ₹1,00,000 waiver; ₹5,000 minimum FD
- official Bank-wide MITC (reissued 9 Sep 2026) — ₹499 joining and ₹499 annual with no add-on card, NIL forex markup, no fuel-surcharge waiver and no over-limit facility