LIC IDFC FIRST Classic
KeepFree for life, an airport lounge and two railway lounges a quarter, and 1.2% on your LIC premium.
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: 1,000 Reward Points on your first ₹5,000 of spend within 30 days, plus 5% cashback up to ₹1,000 on the first EMI transaction and merchant offers IDFC prices at ₹1,500+
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 from the first rupee
At ₹1,000 a month — ₹12,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹100 gross (earn ₹100) against its ₹0 fee = ₹100 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.
3 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants · why it ranks #378
Why #378 Lifetime free with one airport lounge and two railway lounges a quarter — and unlike its LIC Select sibling, no monthly spend gate on either quota. It ranks below Select because the earn is 0.6% against Select's 1%, and the lounge quota is half.
IDFC's own rate card prints it: "1X = 1 Reward point per ₹125 spent | 1 Reward point = ₹0.25". The base tier is 3X, so 3 points per ₹125 = 2.4 points per ₹100 = 0.6% at ₹0.25. That ₹0.25 is the house value exactly. Unusually for IDFC these points last three years, and they redeem at firstrewards.in or as "pay with points" against a purchase — no IDFC card transfers to any airline or hotel programme, so ₹0.25 is the ceiling.
The take
The entry rung of IDFC's LIC co-brand, and a better lifetime-free card than the fee-free label usually buys. Nothing to join, nothing to renew — the MITC prints Nil in both columns and IDFC's own FAQ says the card is "free for life". For that you get one complimentary domestic airport lounge visit every quarter and two railway lounge visits every quarter, with no minimum-spend condition attached to either. That last detail is what separates it from its bigger sibling: LIC Select gives twice the lounges but gates the airport quota on ₹20,000 of spend in the previous month, and this card does not. The earn is modest and clearly stated. Three points per ₹125 on almost everything is 2.4 points per ₹100, and at IDFC's flat ₹0.25 redemption that is 0.6%. LIC premiums double it to 1.2%, but only when the premium is paid on licindia.in — pay through an agent or an aggregator and the accelerator does not fire. Book a hotel inside the IDFC app and the 20% bonus takes it to 22.4 points per ₹100, a genuine 5.6%; flights get 8% and land at 2.6%. The essentials list — grocery, utilities, railways, FASTag, education and government payments — earns the same 3X but stops at 300 points a month, roughly ₹12,500 of spend. Fuel, rent and any non-LIC insurance earn nothing at all. Two conditions worth knowing before you lean on it. Since 18 January 2026, missing the Minimum Amount Due kills the entire billing cycle's points, and any already posted are clawed back. And the points are a closed loop: no IDFC card transfers to an airline or a hotel, so ₹0.25 is a ceiling and not a floor.
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
₹1,800 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹3,600 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹7,200 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹21,600 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹36,000 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
- Genuinely lifetime free — Nil in both of the MITC's fee columns, with no minimum spend
- 1 complimentary domestic airport lounge visit every quarter, with NO spend condition
- 2 complimentary railway lounge visits every quarter
- 1.2% on LIC premiums paid at licindia.in — 6 points per ₹125
- 5.6% on hotels booked in the IDFC FIRST app (22.4 points per ₹100)
- 1% fuel-surcharge waiver up to ₹200 a month on transactions between ₹200 and ₹5,000
- Reward points last three years, longer than IDFC's usual
- Roadside assistance worth ₹1,399, plus ₹2,00,000 personal accident and ₹25,000 lost-card cover
Watch out
- 0.6% on ordinary spend — 3 points per ₹125 at ₹0.25 apiece
- The LIC accelerator only fires on premiums paid through licindia.in, not through an agent
- Essentials — grocery, utilities, railways, FASTag, education, government — stop earning at 300 points a month
- Fuel, rent and non-LIC insurance earn no points at all
- Since 18 January 2026, miss the Minimum Amount Due and the whole cycle's points are cancelled and reversed
- 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
- The product page's rewards panel claims 'up to 38%' on app travel; the card's own Travel & Shop T&C says 22.4% on hotels and 10.4% on flights, and we model the T&C
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
2 sourced rules
A lifetime-free co-brand whose only accelerator is the LIC premium itself; everything else earns 3X inside a single essentials bucket. The education and government rows are asserted here.
- Government / tax · capped Government payments earn the card's ordinary 3X — 3 Reward Points per ₹125 — but inside IDFC's essentials bucket, capped at 300 reward points a month and SHARED with grocery, utilities, railways, FASTag and education. The product page's own words are "3X Rewards on Essentials (Grocery, Utilities, Railways, FASTag, Education and Government payments) up to 300 RP per month". IDFC publishes no split between the six, so not one rupee of that ceiling is claimed for government alone and this desk prices no government ₹ against it — a reader who also pays a power bill on this card reaches it sooner
- Education · capped Education earns the card's ordinary 3X — 3 Reward Points per ₹125 — but inside IDFC's essentials bucket, capped at 300 reward points a month and SHARED with grocery, utilities, railways, FASTag and government payments. The product page's own words are "3X Rewards on Essentials (Grocery, Utilities, Railways, FASTag, Education and Government payments) up to 300 RP per month". IDFC publishes no split between the six, so not one rupee of that ceiling is claimed for education alone — a reader who also pays a power bill on this card reaches it sooner
per IDFC FIRST Bank T&C · rank every card by spend category →
Lounge access
21 of 793 tracked doors
Gate: None — unlike the LIC Select sibling, neither quota on this card carries a spend condition on the product page
Opens 21 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 19 railway stations , via 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.
A public application from IDFC's LIC co-brand page, which sells Classic and the ₹0 LIC Select side by side on one page — read the rewards block carefully, because the two cards differ in earn, in lounge quota and in whether the airport quota is gated. No LIC policy is required to hold the card, though the 6X rung is worthless without one.
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.
MITC §1, two columns, NOT inverted: "LIC Classic Credit Card · Nil · Nil · ₹499". Nil in BOTH fee columns, so this is a published lifetime-free zero and takes no `joiningFee` key; IDFC's own FAQ says "There is absolutely no Joining/ Membership/ Annual fee applicable on LIC IDFC FIRST Bank Credit Cards. Your card is free for life." Fuel-surcharge waiver ₹200 a statement cycle on transactions between ₹200 and ₹5,000. Reward points last three years. Since 18 January 2026 the whole billing cycle's points are cancelled and reversed if the Minimum Amount Due is unpaid by the due date. The card is in the image-personalisation exclusion list.
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 — 3 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product page — lifetime free; 6X on LIC premiums and 3X elsewhere at 1 point per ₹125 and ₹0.25 a point; one airport and two railway lounges a quarter; the 300-point essentials cap
- official Travel & Shop T&C — 20% bonus on hotels and 8% on flights over a 2.4% base, totalling 22.4% and 10.4%, capped at 8,000 bonus points a calendar month
- official Bank-wide MITC (reissued 9 Sep 2026) — Nil joining and Nil annual, ₹499 add-on, NIL forex markup and a ₹200 fuel-surcharge cap