LIC IDFC FIRST Select
KeepLifetime free, two airport lounges a quarter — if you spend ₹20,000 a month.
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: 2,000 Reward Points on your first ₹10,000 of spend within 30 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: it earns nothing on fuel here, so that spend is dropped, not paid at the headline, and stops pacing milestones and the waiver. 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 #202
Why #202 Two domestic airport lounges a quarter and four railway lounges, on a card that is genuinely lifetime free and earns 1% on everything — that is a better deal than most ₹500 cards on this board. It is held back by a ₹20,000 monthly spend gate on the airport quota and by points that go nowhere but IDFC's own catalogue.
Our #2 for Insurance — 1 of the 23 questions this desk ranks.
IDFC's own product guide prints the rate: "1X = 1 Reward Point per ₹125 | 1 Reward Point = ₹0.25", so the 5X base tier is 4 points per ₹100 and worth exactly 1%. That ₹0.25 is the house value exactly — LIC Select has no in-app travel rung above it. Unusually for IDFC these points last three years, not two.
The take
This is the strongest lifetime-free card in IDFC's entry range and the one most likely to be overlooked, because it is filed under insurance rather than travel. It costs nothing to get and nothing to keep — IDFC's MITC prints Nil against both the joining and the annual fee, and its own mailer says the card "will continue to remain LIFETIME FREE" with no minimum spends. For that you get two complimentary domestic airport lounge visits every calendar quarter and four railway lounge visits on top, which is more lounge than several cards on this board charge ₹500 a year for. The earn is respectable rather than exciting: 5 points per ₹125 on almost everything is 4 points per ₹100 and, at IDFC's flat ₹0.25 redemption, exactly 1% — doubling to 2% on LIC premiums, which is the reason the co-brand exists. Book a hotel in the IDFC app and the bonus takes it to 24 points per ₹100, a genuine 6%. Now the two catches, both real. The airport quota is conditional: IDFC's product guide makes it "subject to minimum spends of ₹20,000 in the previous month", so a light spender's lounge access simply is not there. And the points are a closed loop — no IDFC card transfers to any airline or hotel programme, so ₹0.25 is the ceiling, not a floor. Take it as a free lounge card that happens to pay 1%.
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
₹2,800 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹5,600 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹11,300 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹33,800 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹56,400 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 LIC IDFC FIRST Select's app-travel bonus cut to 20% hotels, 8% flights
- 18 Jun 2026 IDFC FIRST bolts a 24-month expiry onto reward points that were lifetime-valid 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 — the MITC prints Nil joining and Nil annual, with no minimum spend
- 2 complimentary domestic airport lounge visits every calendar quarter
- 4 complimentary railway lounge visits every calendar quarter on top
- 1% on everything at 5 points per ₹125, doubling to 2% on LIC policy premiums
- 24 RP per ₹100 on hotels booked in the IDFC app — a real 6% at ₹0.25 a point
Watch out
- The airport lounge quota is conditional: ₹20,000 of spend in the previous month, or it is not there
- No international lounge access at all — both quotas are India-domestic
- Essentials (grocery, utilities, railways, education, government) are capped at 600 points a month
- No points on fuel, rent, ATM withdrawals, non-LIC insurance or EMI transactions
- 0% forex markup — the 9 Sep 2026 MITC prints NIL on foreign-currency transactions and on dynamic and static currency conversion
- Miss the minimum amount due and you forfeit that whole billing cycle's points
- FASTag above ₹10,000 and railway spends above ₹25,000 in a cycle attract a 1% fee
- 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
11 sourced rules · 3 pay zero
The only IDFC card that publishes its own MCC list for the capped bucket. Base is 5 RP/₹125 (1X = 1 RP per ₹125, and the card earns 5X on ordinary spend); LIC premiums pay 10X. Reduced rows use the "X RP/₹125 vs Y RP/₹125" form for the earn.base haircut.
- Fuel · excluded "Reward points are not applicable on Fuel, Rental, ATM Cash withdrawals, Non-LIC Insurance payments and EMI Transactions." The 1% surcharge waiver, capped ₹300 a cycle, is what is left.
- Rent & property management · excluded Named in the same exclusion sentence as fuel — zero reward points, plus the 1% rent fee with a ₹249 minimum
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · capped Inside the "essentials" bucket (MCCs 4812, 4813, 4814, 4816, 4899, 4900) — earns the 5 RP/₹125 base but the whole bucket is capped at 600 reward points a month, shared with groceries, telecom, education and government. 600 RP at that same 5 RP/₹125 is ₹15,000 a month of bucket spend in all; IDFC publishes no split of that ceiling, so none of it belongs to utilities alone
- Insurance · capped The co-brand's whole point, and the fine print decides it: LIC premiums earn 10 RP/₹125 vs the 5 RP/₹125 base, but ONLY on payments made at licindia.in, and only the first 5 premium payments in a statement cycle qualify. NON-LIC insurance earns nothing at all.
per IDFC FIRST Bank T&C · rank every card by spend category →
Lounge access
21 of 793 tracked doors
Gate: ₹20k spend in the previous month (airport quota); the railway quota is stated without a spend condition in the Privileges document
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 on IDFC's LIC co-brand page, with no LIC policy required to apply and no banking relationship — the LIC tie-up shows up in the earn rate, not the eligibility bar. IDFC applies its own credit assessment. A ₹499 add-on card is available; the FIRST Digital RuPay companion for UPI is separate.
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.
Lifetime free — joining Nil, annual Nil. Reward points here last THREE YEARS, not the 24 months every other IDFC consumer card gets: the MITC gives LIC Classic and LIC Select their own clause. The same clause carries the catch that decides whether this card is worth holding — rewards on LIC insurance premiums are paid ONLY if the premium is paid on licindia.in, LIC's own website. Fuel-surcharge waiver 1% on ₹200–₹5,000 transactions, capped at ₹300 a statement cycle (the higher of IDFC's two tiers). Category fees: 1% on rent (min ₹249), 1% on utility past ₹20,000 a cycle, 1% on fuel past ₹30,000, 1% on railway past ₹25,000, 1% on tolls past ₹10,000, 1% (min ₹249) on third-party education apps. Card replacement ₹199. No income or age criteria published in the MITC.
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