IDFC FIRST Diamond Reserve
KeepZero forex on a ₹3,000 card — and zero points the moment you use it abroad.
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: Brand offers worth ₹5,000+ on joining-fee payment (ET Prime ₹1,199, Lenskart Gold Max ₹800, MakeMyTrip up to ₹1,600, Mokobara 10%, ₹500 off a first app flight booking) + 5% cashback up to ₹1,000 on a first EMI
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 ₹33,000 a month
At ₹33,000 a month — ₹3,96,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹3,100 gross (earn ₹3,100) against its ₹3,000 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 #30
Why #30 Held about forty places above its computed score, and the override is deliberate. The value model prices EARN, and 0.5% on the everyday band with nothing at all on international spend is bottom-quartile earn — which is exactly why the score buries it. What the score cannot price is the reason to carry this card: a 0% forex markup that IDFC's own MITC lists beside FIRST Private, Mayura and Gaj, on the cheapest card in that list, plus 16 airport and 16 railway lounge visits a year, ₹25,000 of cancel-for-any-reason cover, two golf rounds a month and interest-free global ATM withdrawals. At ₹3,000 that package has no peer on the board; RBL's World Safari charges the same fee for the same markup and half the doors. Read the rank as "the cheapest way to stop paying 3.5% abroad", never as a rewards ranking.
Diamond Reserve is the IDFC card with NO app-travel redemption premium: its own Privileges document says "1 reward point = ₹0.25", full stop, where Mayura gets ₹0.50 and Ashva ₹0.40. Points never expire and redeem as cash against any online purchase rather than a catalogue, which makes them unusually liquid for IDFC — they are simply worth the house ₹0.25, not a paisa more, and there is no in-app travel rung to chase.
The take
Diamond Reserve is the cheapest genuinely zero-markup card IDFC sells, and the benefit sheet under it is absurd for the money: 2 domestic and 2 international lounge visits every quarter, 4 railway lounge visits on top, two golf rounds a month, BOGO movie tickets, ₹25,000 of cancel-for-any-reason cover and interest-free global ATM withdrawals. Then read the rewards T&C. Points are ₹0.25 here — half what Mayura's are worth — the everyday band is 3 points per ₹150 (0.5%), and IDFC states in writing that there are no reward points on international transactions at all. So the 0% forex and the earn rate can never apply to the same swipe: this is a travel-money tool with a lounge card bolted on, not a rewards engine. Every perk on it also needs ₹20,000 spent the previous calendar month, and the quarterly quota does not carry over. Buy it to cross borders and to sit down at 16 airport and 16 railway lounges a year; earn your points somewhere else.
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
₹3,000/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹3,000/yr
The waiver ₹6,00,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹50,000 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹33,000 a month — ₹3,96,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee.
At your spend
−₹1,300 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹3,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹14,500 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹48,500 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹82,500 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
- 0% forex markup — IDFC's MITC names Diamond Reserve at NIL alongside Private, Mayura and Gaj
- 2 domestic + 2 international airport lounge visits per quarter, plus 4 railway lounge visits
- 10 RP per ₹150 above ₹20k a statement cycle ≈ 1.67% — the page's own "up to 1.67% value back"
- Trip-cancellation (CFAR) cover up to ₹25,000, claimable twice a policy period
Watch out
- No reward points on international spend at all — zero forex, zero earn, same transaction
- 1 point = ₹0.25 flat; no app-travel redemption premium, unlike Mayura (₹0.50) and Ashva (₹0.40)
- Lounge, railway lounge, golf and movie perks all need ₹20,000 spent the previous calendar month, with no carry-over
- Year one's ₹3,000 is levied on application approval and never reversed — the ₹6,00,000 waiver only reaches a renewal
- Closed loop: IDFC points have no airline or hotel transfer partners
- 18-Jun-2026: no reward points on spends beyond your credit limit in a billing cycle — repaying mid-cycle to spend again earns nothing on the second pass
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
9 sourced rules · 3 pay zero
The Privileges document splits spend three ways and prints all three. The 10X band (10 RP per ₹150) is the DEFAULT for eligible spend above ₹20,000 a statement cycle; a 3X list (Rent, Government, Wallet Load, Education) and a 1X list (Insurance, Utility, Railway, FASTag) earn less AND are expressly "not considered for the calculation of 10 reward points", so they never lift you into the top band either. A separate no-earn list kills international spend, fuel, EMI, cash withdrawals, fees, loan-on-card, balance transfers and any transaction below ₹150. 1 reward point = ₹0.25 flat, so 3 RP/₹150 is 0.5% and 1 RP/₹150 is 0.17%.
- Fuel · excluded No reward points on fuel; a 1% fuel surcharge waiver capped at ₹300 a cycle applies instead
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · reduced 1 RP/₹150 vs the 3 RP/₹150 everyday band — railway and FASTag sit in the same 1X list, and none of them count toward the ₹20,000 trigger
- Insurance · reduced 1 RP/₹150 vs the 3 RP/₹150 everyday band, and locked out of the ₹20,000 trigger
- Forex / international spends · excluded "Reward points will not be given on international spends" — the 0% forex markup applies to exactly the transactions that earn nothing
per IDFC FIRST Bank T&C · rank every card by spend category →
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹6,00,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹3,000 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 Diamond Reserve earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver — the ₹6,00,000 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; no carry-over of the quarterly quota
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?
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.
IDFC FIRST 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 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 ₹3,000 + GST a year — IDFC's product guide labels the two rows "Joining Fees (1st Year)" and "Annual Fees (2nd Year Onwards)", the same number one year at a time. Year one is levied on application approval (the card is not dispatched until it is paid) and is never reversed; the ₹6,00,000 waiver only ever reaches a renewal. UPI enablement ₹199 + GST, replacement ₹199 + GST. Fuel surcharge waiver 1% capped ₹300/cycle. Rent and property-management transactions carry a further 1% processing fee, min ₹249. IDFC publishes no income or age cutoff for Diamond Reserve. A revision notice effective 18-Jun-2026 capped reward-point earn at the credit limit per billing cycle and moved the movie BOGO onto a ₹20,000 previous-month gate.
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 — 7 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Domestic lounge list — the 48 rooms the two quarterly visits can be spent at, addresses and terminals included
- official Product page + FAQs — a single ₹3,000 + GST a year (waived at ₹6 lakh from year two), zero forex, and "Reward points will not be given on international spends"
- official Privileges document — the rewards bands (3 RP per ₹150 up to ₹20,000 a statement cycle, 10 above it) and "1 reward point = ₹0.25", with no travel-portal split
- official Change notice effective 18 Jun 2026 — reward points capped at the credit limit per billing cycle, movie BOGO moved to a ₹20,000 previous-month gate, app-travel bonus restated
- official Welcome-offer PDF for cards generated on or after 18 Jun 2026 — the five joining benefits, released only on payment of the ₹3,000 joining fee and valid 90 days
- official Bank-wide MITC — the forex table names Diamond Reserve at NIL markup beside FIRST Private, WOW!, WOW! Black, Mayura and Gaj, and the fee table gives ₹3,000 / ₹3,000 with a ₹499 add-on
- official Product guide — FEES & CHARGES panel: ₹3,000 rows labelled "1st Year" and "2nd Year Onwards" (joining = year one, annual from year two)