IDFC FIRST HPCL Power+
Keep5% at HPCL pumps and a lounge a quarter — for ₹499 and a ₹20,000 monthly habit.
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: ₹500 gift voucher on your first HPCL fuel transaction of ₹500 or more within 60 days, plus 5% cashback up to ₹1,000 on the first EMI transaction
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 ₹10,000 a month
At ₹10,000 a month — ₹1,20,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹500 gross (earn ₹500) against its ₹499 fee = ₹0 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 #203
Why #203 A fuel card with one airport lounge a quarter and 5% back at HPCL pumps earns its place, but the fuel reward is capped at ₹12,000 of pump spend a cycle and everything else pays 0.5%. The lounge visit is switched off unless you spent ₹20,000 the month before.
IDFC's Savings Maximiser prints the rate: 3 Reward Points per ₹150 on ordinary spend at "1 Reward point = ₹0.25", so the base is 2 points per ₹100 and worth 0.5%. That ₹0.25 is the house value exactly — Power+ has no in-app travel rung above it. Ignore the headline "6.5% savings on fuel" — 1.5% of it is HPCL Happy Coins, a different currency entirely.
The take
Power+ is IDFC's serious fuel card and the ₹499 version of a pair — the plain FIRST Power is ₹199 and earns less. What you are buying is 30X at HPCL pumps: 30 points per ₹150, which at IDFC's flat ₹0.25 redemption is a clean 5% back on up to ₹12,000 of fuel a statement cycle, or ₹600 a month of value if you actually burn that much. The advertised "6.5%" is 5% in IDFC points plus 1.5% in HPCL Happy Coins, a separate currency that only accrues through the HP Pay app — do not add them together and do not treat the Happy Coins as points you can spend here. The same 30X runs on grocery and utilities and on IDFC's own FASTag recharges, but those caps are tiny: ₹2,000 and ₹1,000 of spend a cycle. Everything else earns 3 points per ₹150, which is 0.5%, so this is a card you point at a pump and nothing else. The travel side is better than it looks: one complimentary domestic airport lounge visit a quarter, and hotels booked in the IDFC app pay 28.7 points per ₹100 — over 7% at ₹0.25. Both come with strings. The lounge needs ₹20,000 of spend in the month before, the fee needs ₹1,50,000 a year to be reversed, and there is no fuel-surcharge waiver at all on this card — the MITC marks it "Not Applicable", because the rewards are the fuel benefit.
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
₹499/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹499/yr
The waiver ₹1,50,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹12,500 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹10,000 a month — ₹1,20,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee.
At your spend
₹1,200 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹2,200 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹4,300 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹12,400 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
- 5% back at HPCL pumps — 30 points per ₹150 on up to ₹12,000 of fuel a statement cycle
- 1 complimentary domestic airport lounge visit every quarter
- 28.7 RP per ₹100 on hotels booked in the IDFC app ≈ 7.2% at ₹0.25
- ₹499 annual fee reversed on ₹1,50,000 of spend in the previous anniversary year
- A further 1.5% in HPCL Happy Coins when you pay through the HP Pay app
Watch out
- 0.5% on everything that is not fuel, grocery, utilities or FASTag — 3 points per ₹150
- The lounge visit is conditional on ₹20,000 of spend in the previous month
- The 5% grocery and utility rate dies at ₹2,000 of spend a cycle; FASTag at ₹1,000
- 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 5% and 1.5% into one number
- Fuel rewards only pay at HPCL stations whose merchant IDs IDFC has configured, and never on UPI
- No railway lounge access, unlike IDFC's lifetime-free entry cards
- 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 →
What earns, what doesn't
12 sourced rules · 2 pay zero
The Savings Maximiser sheet is the authority here, and it is unusually explicit: three accelerated buckets each with its own rupee ceiling, one closed "other retail" definition, and insurance struck out entirely. Base is 3 RP/₹150 (2 RP per ₹100); reduced rows use the "X RP/₹150 vs 3 RP/₹150" form.
- Fuel · capped 30 RP/₹150 at authorised HPCL stations — 5% — but only on ₹12,000 of pump spend a statement cycle (2,400 RP), and non-HPCL fuel is struck out of "other retail spends" entirely, so it earns nothing. HPCL authorisation runs off merchant IDs, so an unlisted pump pays zero.
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · capped 30 RP/₹150 on the same ₹2,000-a-cycle ceiling grocery draws from — 400 RP total — and a 1% fee lands once utility spend passes ₹20,000 a cycle
- Insurance · excluded Zero. The sheet's "other retail spends" definition excludes insurance premium payments by name — the one category this card refuses outright
- Telecom · capped Utility-MCC treatment (4814, 4816, 4899, 4900) → inside the shared ₹2,000-a-cycle ceiling
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
₹1,50,000 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 HPCL Power+ earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver — the ₹1,50,000 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
31 of 793 tracked doors
Gate: ₹20k spend in the previous month
Opens 31 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 23 airports — 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.
A public application from IDFC's HPCL co-brand page, which sells Power+ and the ₹199 FIRST Power side by side — read the fee block carefully, because the two cards share a page and differ in both fee and earn. Payment of the ₹499 joining fee is required before the card is activated and dispatched. No HPCL relationship is needed, though the HP Pay app is required to collect the Happy Coins half of the advertised savings.
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.
Filed in the MITC as FIRST Power+ : joining ₹499, annual ₹499, add-on ₹499. The fuel card with NO fuel-surcharge waiver — the MITC's waiver table prints "Not Applicable" against FIRST Power and Power+, because the reward construct pays 30X on HPCL pump spend instead. The 1% fuel FEE past ₹30,000 of fuel spend in a statement cycle still applies, and so do 1% on rent (min ₹249), 1% on utility past ₹20,000, 1% on railway past ₹25,000, 1% on tolls past ₹10,000 and 1% (min ₹249) on third-party education apps. Card replacement ₹199. No income or age criteria published.
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 — 5 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Domestic lounge list — the 31 rooms the quarterly visit can be spent at, addresses and terminals included
- official Savings Maximiser — every earn rate and every category cap, stated exactly
- official Product page — the ₹499 fees, the ₹1,50,000 fee reversal and the lounge spend condition
- official Travel & Shop T&C — 26.7% hotel and 13.3% flight bonus, effective 18 June 2026
- official Bank-wide MITC (reissued 9 Sep 2026) — ₹499 joining and annual, NIL forex markup, and no fuel-surcharge waiver