IDFC FIRST Purchase
KeepLifetime free, eight lounge visits a year, and 1.25% back on foreign currency.
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
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 — and a business card's accelerator is usually the point. This card is not on the board, which ranks personal cards only; it is ranked against other business cards on /best/business, where the tax, GST and vendor-payment rungs ARE credited and its ₹ 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.
2 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · why it ranks #502
Why #502 A business card carried, not ranked. What it is: a lifetime-free purchase card for a company's vendor and supply spend, with eight lounge visits a year that work at home or abroad and five times the earn on foreign currency.
IDFC FIRST Reward Points redeem at ₹0.25 across the commercial shelf, and there is no portal rung above it on the purchase card — no ₹0.50 app-travel rate like Mayura's, no ₹1.00 like Gaj's. The currency is closed-loop: IDFC runs no airline or hotel transfer partners at all, at any ratio, so the points are a catalogue currency and nothing more. Redemption itself is free here — the corporate MITC prints "Reward Redemption Fees NIL", against ₹99 a redemption on the retail cards.
The take
FIRST Purchase is FIRST Corporate with the travel-and-entertainment framing swapped for a procurement one: same ₹0 fee, same 36% APR, same 0% forex (was 3.5%), same insurance schedule, and a different earn table — 10 Reward Points per ₹200 abroad against 3 at home, where the corporate card pays 10 and 2 per ₹125. That arithmetic is worth reading slowly, because it means the purchase card earns LESS than its sibling on both rungs: 1.25% abroad against 2%, and 0.38% at home against 0.4%. What you get in exchange is a card built to be handed to people who buy things — usage can be restricted by transaction and vendor category, virtual cards cover ad-hoc payments, and every direct expense lands on one central dashboard. The travel case is the lounge quota: two visits a quarter, eight a year, and IDFC lets you spend them domestic or international against its own published lounge list rather than splitting them the way most corporate cards do. Everything else is deliberately narrow. Cash withdrawal is not allowed at all, EMI conversion is not permitted, and forex is now 0% on the card whose best rung is foreign spend. The fuel surcharge waiver belongs on that list with an asterisk, because IDFC contradicts itself about it: the corporate MITC says "FIRST Purchase Card – Not applicable" where FIRST Corporate gets 1%, while the live product page and the June-2025 product guide both grant this card the same 1% up to ₹500 a statement. We model none — the MITC is the document that governs charges — but the disagreement is unresolved at IDFC's end, not ours, and you should ask the bank rather than take our modelling as the last word. Take it as free plumbing with a lounge attached, not as a rewards card.
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
₹1,100 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹2,300 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹4,500 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹13,500 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹22,500 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
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
- Lifetime free — ₹0 to join and ₹0 a year, printed as one figure in IDFC's corporate MITC
- 2 lounge visits a quarter, usable domestic OR international, against IDFC's own published lounge list
- 10 Reward Points per ₹200 on international spends including DCC — 1.25% at the ₹0.25 house value
- Free roadside assistance worth ₹1,499 with each card
- Reward redemption is free — the corporate MITC prints ₹0, against ₹99 a redemption on IDFC's retail cards
- 45-day interest-free period, with card usage restrictable by transaction and vendor category
Watch out
- Earns less than its own sibling: FIRST Corporate pays 10 RP per ₹125 abroad and 2 per ₹125 at home; this card pays 10 and 3 per ₹200
- 0% forex since the Sep-2026 corporate MITC (was 3.5% + GST) — on a card whose best earn rung is still international spend
- Cash withdrawal is not allowed at all, and EMI conversion is marked "Not Allowed" in the corporate MITC
- IDFC's three documents disagree about the fuel surcharge waiver and we are not resolving what IDFC has not. The corporate MITC — the regulatory one — reads "FIRST Purchase Card – Not applicable" where FIRST Corporate gets 1% of ₹200–₹5,000 fills up to ₹500 a cycle. But the live product page says "Enjoy a 1% waiver on fuel surcharge, up to ₹500 per statement" inside its own FIRST Purchase panel, and the June-2025 product guide's "Essential Features of Purchase Card" block prints "Fuel Surcharge Waiver / 1% on transaction amount (upto ₹500 per statement)". We model no waiver, because the MITC is the document that governs charges — but two of IDFC's three say you get one, so ask the bank before you assume either way
- IDFC Reward Points are closed-loop — no airline or hotel transfer partner exists, at any ratio
- 36% APR on revolved balances, and the lounge quota is a shared eight a year
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 →
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.
Through the company. The corporate MITC defines the holder as an employee of a "Client" — an entity to which IDFC has sanctioned a commercial card facility — and the business allocates its sanctioned limit across cards. No turnover or income cutoff is published for the card itself; the product page collects a company name and a mobile number and IDFC calls back.
IDFC FIRST Bank publishes no income or age cutoffs for this card. Blank means blank — we don't invent numbers to fill a grid.
no MITC row researched for this card yet · filter the board by what you can get →
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 — 4 of them, each with the day we read it
- official FIRST Purchase product page — ₹0 fee, 36% APR, quarterly lounges, two earn rungs; fuel waiver the MITC denies
- official IDFC FIRST corporate MITC (ModDate 7 Sep 2026) — NIL joining and NIL annual, 36% APR, 0% forex markup, no cash advance — and the fuel-waiver denial IDFC's own two other documents contradict
- official FIRST Corporate product guide (V6, 02-06-2025) — its "Essential Features of Purchase Card" block is where the per-₹200 earn rungs are printed — and a fuel waiver the MITC denies
- official IDFC FIRST Corporate Lounge Program list — the enumerated Indian lounges the quarterly quota opens, with a separate global list linked from it