IDFC FIRST HPCL Power
Keep3.5% at HPCL pumps for ₹199 — and a third of a percent on everything else.
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: ₹250 gift voucher on your first HPCL fuel transaction of ₹250 or more within 60 days, plus 5% cashback up to ₹1,000 on the first EMI transaction and merchant offers IDFC prices at ₹1,000+
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 ₹5,000 a month
At ₹5,000 a month — ₹60,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹200 gross (earn ₹200) against a fee of ₹0 — the ₹199 is waived, the spend having cleared ₹50,000 a year = ₹200 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 #381
Why #381 The ₹199 half of a pair that shares one product page. It pays 3.5% at HPCL pumps against Power+'s 5%, caps that at ₹5,000 of fuel a cycle against ₹12,000, drops everything else to 0.33%, and has no lounge access at all — but it costs ₹300 less and waives its fee at a third of the spend.
IDFC's Savings Maximiser prints the rate: other retail and UPI spends earn "2 Reward points per ₹150" at "1 Reward point = ₹0.25", so the base is 1.33 points per ₹100 and worth 0.33%. That ₹0.25 is the house value exactly — FIRST Power has no in-app travel rung above it. Ignore the headline "up to 5% savings on your fuel expenses": 1.5% of it is HPCL Happy Coins, a different currency that lands in the HP Pay app.
The take
The cheap half of IDFC's fuel pair. FIRST Power and FIRST Power+ share one product page and differ in both price and rate, which is exactly the trap: this is the ₹199 card, and the ₹499 one earns more on every accelerated category. What you get here is 21 points per ₹150 at HPCL pumps — 3.5% at IDFC's flat ₹0.25 — on up to ₹5,000 of fuel a statement cycle, which is ₹175 a month of value at full stretch. Grocery, utilities and IDFC's own FASTag recharges pay 2.5% on tiny slices: ₹4,000 and ₹2,000 of spend a cycle respectively. Everything else earns 2 points per ₹150, which is 0.33% — a third of a percent, and low even by entry-card standards. The advertised "up to 5% savings on your fuel expenses" is 3.5% in IDFC points plus 1.5% in HPCL Happy Coins. Happy Coins are a separate currency, credited into the HP Pay app rather than to your card, and paid only when you pay through that app. Do not add the two together. There is no fuel-surcharge waiver either — the MITC marks FIRST Power and Power+ "Not Applicable", because the rewards are meant to be the fuel benefit. The travel side is the surprise: a hotel booked in the IDFC app earns 28 points per ₹100, seven percent, and a flight 14.6, capped at 8,000 bonus points a calendar month. What this card does not have — and Power+ does — is lounge access. Not a visit, not a quarter, not on any spend condition. So read the pair as a fuel card at two prices: ₹199 for 3.5% on ₹5,000 of fuel a cycle and no lounge, or ₹499 for 5% on ₹12,000 and a lounge a quarter. The fee here is reversed at ₹50,000 of spend in the previous anniversary year, against ₹1,50,000 for the bigger one.
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
₹199/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹199/yr
The waiver ₹50,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹4,167 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹5,000 a month — ₹60,000 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
₹1,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹2,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹4,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹12,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹20,000 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
- 3.5% at HPCL pumps — 21 points per ₹150 on up to ₹5,000 of fuel a statement cycle
- ₹199 annual fee reversed on ₹50,000 of spend in the previous anniversary year
- 7% on hotels booked in the IDFC FIRST app (28 points per ₹100)
- 2.5% on grocery, utilities and IDFC FIRST FASTag recharges, on small monthly slices
- ₹250 gift voucher on your first HPCL fill of ₹250 or more within 60 days
- A further 1.5% in HPCL Happy Coins when you pay through the HP Pay app
- Roadside assistance worth ₹1,399, plus ₹2,00,000 personal accident and ₹25,000 lost-card cover
Watch out
- 0.33% on everything that is not fuel, grocery, utilities or FASTag — 2 points per ₹150
- NO lounge access at all. The ₹499 FIRST Power+ on the same page has one visit a quarter; this card has none
- The 3.5% fuel rate dies at ₹5,000 of pump spend a cycle; grocery and utilities at ₹4,000; FASTag at ₹2,000
- No fuel-surcharge waiver at all — the MITC marks FIRST Power and Power+ 'Not Applicable'
- Happy Coins are HPCL's currency, not IDFC points, and need the HP Pay app — never add the 3.5% and 1.5% into one number
- Fuel rewards only pay at HPCL stations whose merchant IDs IDFC has configured, and never on UPI
- Insurance premiums, non-HPCL fuel, EMI transactions and ATM withdrawals earn nothing
- 0% forex markup — the 9 Sep 2026 MITC prints NIL on foreign-currency transactions and on dynamic and static currency conversion
- Closed loop — zero airline or hotel transfer partners, like every IDFC card
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 →
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹50,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹199 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 HPCL Power earns, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver — the ₹50,000 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.
A public application from IDFC's HPCL co-brand page, which sells FIRST Power and the ₹499 FIRST Power+ side by side — read the fee block carefully, because the two share a page and differ in both fee and earn. IDFC publishes an income floor for this one: "To be eligible for a FIRST Power Credit Card, you must have an annual income of ₹3 Lacs or more." Payment of the ₹199 joining fee is required before the card is activated and dispatched.
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 Power Credit Card · ₹199 · ₹199 · ₹499" — IDFC's cheapest priced pair after the Digital RuPay companion, and equal, so no `joiningFee` key. Annual fee reversed on ₹50,000 of spend in the previous anniversary year, against ₹1,50,000 on the ₹499 Power+ that shares its product page. NO FUEL-SURCHARGE WAIVER AT ALL: the MITC lists FIRST Power and Power+ together under "Not Applicable", because on this line the rewards are the fuel benefit. Card replacement ₹199.
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 — 4 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Savings Maximiser — every earn rate and every category cap for FIRST Power, stated exactly
- official Product page, FIRST Power tab — ₹199 joining and annual, the ₹50,000 fee reversal, the ₹250 welcome voucher, the ₹3 lakh income floor, and NO lounge line
- official Travel & Shop T&C — 26.7% bonus on hotels and 13.3% on flights over a 1.3% base, totalling 28% and 14.6%, capped at 8,000 bonus points a calendar month, effective 18 June 2026
- official Bank-wide MITC (reissued 9 Sep 2026) — ₹199 joining and ₹199 annual, ₹499 add-on, NIL forex markup, and no fuel-surcharge waiver