IDFC FIRST Hello Cashback
KeepUp to 5% online, up to ₹18,000 a year, and a ₹10,000 fixed deposit is the whole eligibility test.
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: No welcome bonus is published. The introductory benefit is the joining fee itself — IDFC currently waives the ₹1,000 charge its own MITC still prints
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 →
Pays for itself at ₹9,000 a month
At ₹9,000 a month — ₹1,08,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹1,100 gross (earn ₹1,100) against its ₹1,000 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 #377
Why #377 The strongest cashback rate IDFC publishes — 5% on online spend above ₹10,000 a cycle — bolted to an FD-backed card anyone can get with no credit history. It is held here rather than higher because every rupee of it is capped: ₹1,000 a cycle on online, ₹1,500 a cycle in total, which is ₹18,000 a year and the exact number IDFC advertises.
Our #3 for Government & tax — 1 of the 23 questions this desk ranks.
Statement cashback at par. IDFC credits it to the card account, not to a points balance: "The Cashback you earn is credited to your IDFC FIRST Bank Credit Card account one day after Payment due date and will be adjusted against outstanding balance of your next statement." It does not expire, but it is forfeited for any cycle whose Minimum Amount Due is not paid on time.
The take
IDFC's cashback flagship, and the rare Indian card whose headline rate is both high and reachable. Online spend pays 3% up to ₹10,000 in a statement cycle and 5% on everything above that, with a further 1% on hotels and flights booked inside the IDFC app — so a travel booking made online past the threshold pays 6%. Everything else pays 1%: in-store swipes, UPI routed through IDFC's own app, and the long "essentials" list of rent, utilities, education, insurance, jewellery, wallet loads, gift cards, government services, FASTag and railways. Now the part that decides whether any of that is real. Online cashback stops at ₹1,000 a statement cycle and TOTAL cashback stops at ₹1,500 — ₹18,000 a year, which is exactly the number IDFC advertises, and it is a ceiling rather than a target. The 5% rung is worth at most ₹1,000 a month no matter how much you put through it, so this is a card for a ₹30,000–₹50,000 online habit and not for a large one. Fuel earns nothing at all. UPI through GPay, PhonePe or Paytm earns nothing at all — only IDFC's own app counts. And cashback for a whole cycle is forfeited if you miss the Minimum Amount Due. The other half of the pitch is who can get it. This is an FD-backed assured card: create a fixed deposit of ₹10,000, take a credit limit equal to 100% of it, and skip income proof and credit history entirely. The deposit keeps earning interest while the card earns cashback, and you can raise the limit any time by linking another FD from ₹5,000. The ₹1,000 annual fee is fully reversed at ₹2,00,000 of annual spend and half-reversed between ₹1,00,000 and ₹2,00,000 — and IDFC is currently waiving the joining charge outright, though its own MITC still prints ₹1,000 against that column.
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
₹1,000/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹1,000/yr
The waiver ₹2,00,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹16,667 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.
At your spend
₹3,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹6,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹12,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹18,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹18,000 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
- 5% cashback on online spend above ₹10,000 in a statement cycle, 3% below it
- 6% on hotels and flights booked in the IDFC FIRST app once past the ₹10,000 online threshold
- 1% on in-store swipes, on UPI through the IDFC app, and on rent, utilities, education and FASTag
- FD-backed and assured — a ₹10,000 fixed deposit, no income proof, no credit history, ages 18 to 80
- Credit limit equal to 100% of the deposit, which keeps earning FD interest
- ₹1,000 annual fee fully reversed at ₹2,00,000 of annual spend, half-reversed from ₹1,00,000
- Complimentary roadside assistance worth ₹1,399, up to 4 times a year
- 1% fuel-surcharge waiver up to ₹100 a cycle on transactions between ₹200 and ₹5,000
Watch out
- TOTAL cashback is capped at ₹1,500 a statement cycle, and online cashback at ₹1,000 — ₹18,000 a year is the ceiling, not the target
- UPI through GPay, PhonePe, Paytm or any third-party app earns NOTHING; only the IDFC FIRST Bank app counts
- Fuel, ATM withdrawals and EMI transactions earn no cashback at all
- Essential-category and fuel spends do not count toward the ₹10,000 online threshold, even when made online
- Miss the Minimum Amount Due and the whole cycle's cashback is forfeited, including anything already posted
- The ₹0 joining fee is an introductory offer — the MITC still prints ₹1,000 in the joining column
- 0% forex markup — the 9 Sep 2026 MITC prints NIL on foreign-currency transactions and on dynamic and static currency conversion
- No lounge access of any kind, and IDFC has no airline or hotel transfer partner
- The fixed deposit is under lien for the full amount and cannot be closed before the card's dues are cleared
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 →
What earns, what doesn't
2 sourced rules
A RuPay card whose whole reward construct is a three-rung cashback ladder with an essentials carve-out under it. The education and government rows are asserted here.
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
₹2,00,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹1,000 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 Hello Cashback earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver — the ₹2,00,000 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.
Open online in four steps — details, fixed deposit, video KYC, virtual card issued instantly, with the physical card following by post. IDFC's own eligibility list: "No documentation required. Age Limit Criteria: 18 to 80 years. The applicant must qualify as an Indian resident citizen … required to create and maintain a minimum fixed deposit of ₹10,000." The deposit must be singly held and on auto-renewal reinvest mode; HUF, partnership, society, trust, minor, joint, tax-saver and auto-sweep deposits are all ineligible.
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: "Hello Cashback Credit Card · ₹1,000 · ₹1,000 · NA". The equal pair is why there is no `joiningFee` key. The product page currently prints "Joining fees ₹0 (Introductory Offer)" against that same ₹1,000 — a dated promotion sitting on a standing charge, NOT the structural nil our published-nil-fee rule is about, so the fee model keeps ₹1,000. Annual fee 100% reversed at ₹2,00,000 of annual spend and 50% reversed between ₹1,00,000 and ₹2,00,000. Fuel-surcharge waiver ₹100 a statement cycle on transactions between ₹200 and ₹5,000. Minimum FD ₹10,000, credit limit 100% of it.
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 — a RuPay card on UPI; 5% / 3% / 1% cashback with the ₹1,000-per-cycle online cap and the ₹1,500 total cap, the ₹10,000 minimum FD, and the ₹1,000 annual fee with its two reversal tiers
- official Bank-wide MITC (reissued 9 Sep 2026) — ₹1,000 joining and ₹1,000 annual with no add-on card, NIL forex markup, ₹100 fuel-surcharge cap and no over-limit charge