IDFC FIRST Quantum+
KeepLifetime free, a ₹10,000 fixed deposit is the whole test, and 1% back with a ₹500-a-cycle ceiling.
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
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 #379
Why #379 The free version of Hello Cashback: same FD-backed assured approval, same shape of cashback ladder, half the rates and a third of the cap — but nothing to pay, ever. For a ₹10,000 deposit and no credit history, 1% on everyday spend with no fee is a fair floor.
Statement cashback at par, credited to the card account rather than a points balance and adjusted against the next statement's outstanding. It is forfeited for any cycle whose Minimum Amount Due is not paid on time, and it only accrues on spend up to the credit limit in a cycle — repaying mid-cycle and re-spending does not earn twice.
The take
Quantum+ is IDFC's credit-builder card and the cheapest way onto its cashback ladder: lifetime free, no conditions, no minimum spend, and an assured approval against a fixed deposit of ₹10,000. Your credit limit equals 100% of the deposit, the deposit keeps earning FD interest, and you can raise the limit any time by linking another one. No income proof, no credit history, ages 18 to 80 — IDFC pitches it at students, homemakers, freelancers and retirees, and the eligibility list is honestly that short. A virtual card is issued instantly and the plastic follows. The cashback is the same architecture as the ₹1,000 Hello Cashback card at half the rates. Online spend earns 1% up to ₹10,000 in a statement cycle and 2% above that; in-store purchases and UPI routed through IDFC's own app earn 1%; utility, rent, jewellery, wallet loads, insurance and government services earn 0.5% and do not count toward the online threshold. Hotels and flights booked in the app take a bonus 1%, so they pay 2% or 3% depending on which side of the threshold you are on. Then the ceiling, which is the number that decides whether this card is worth a slot: total cashback is capped at ₹500 a statement cycle across every category combined. Six thousand rupees a year, full stop. At the 1% base that ceiling arrives at ₹50,000 of monthly spend, so this is a first card and a credit-builder, not a workhorse — and if you are already spending past it, the ₹1,000 Hello Cashback card triples the cap and triples the online rates. Fuel earns nothing and there is no fuel-surcharge waiver either; UPI through GPay, PhonePe or Paytm earns nothing; and missing the Minimum Amount Due forfeits the whole cycle's cashback.
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
₹3,000 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹6,000 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹6,000 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹6,000 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹6,000 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
- Lifetime free — Nil in both of the MITC's fee columns, and IDFC's FAQ says 'no conditions, no minimum spend required'
- 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
- 2% cashback on online spend above ₹10,000 in a statement cycle, 1% below it
- 1% on in-store purchases and on UPI through the IDFC FIRST Bank app
- 3% on hotels and flights booked in the app once past the ₹10,000 online threshold
- Virtual card issued instantly after video KYC; limit raised any time by linking another FD from ₹5,000
- ₹2,00,000 personal accident cover and ₹25,000 lost-card liability cover
Watch out
- TOTAL cashback is capped at ₹500 a statement cycle across all categories — ₹6,000 a year is the ceiling
- UPI through GPay, PhonePe, Paytm or any third-party app earns NOTHING; only the IDFC FIRST Bank app counts
- EMI transactions and ATM cash withdrawals earn no cashback
- Utility, rent, jewellery, wallet loads, insurance and government services earn 0.5%, and never count toward the ₹10,000 online threshold
- No fuel-surcharge waiver at all — the MITC marks Quantum+ 'Not Applicable'
- Miss the Minimum Amount Due and the whole cycle's cashback is forfeited
- Cashback only accrues on spend up to your credit limit in a cycle; repaying and re-spending inside the same cycle does not earn again
- 0% forex markup since 9 Sep 2026; no lounge access; no over-limit facility at all
- The fixed deposit is under lien 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
1 sourced rule
A lifetime-free FD-backed RuPay card whose reward construct is a three-rung cashback ladder with a half-rate "select categories" carve-out under it. Only the government row is asserted here.
- Government / tax · reduced ₹0.50 per ₹100 vs ₹1 per ₹100 in store — IDFC files government services in its "select categories" band with utility, rent, jewellery, wallet load and insurance, and IDFC's own sentence keeps those spends out of the ₹10,000 online-spend milestone, so a tax paid on a government portal earns half the in-store rate and no step toward the 2% rung. IDFC caps total cashback at ₹500 a statement cycle across every category together
per IDFC FIRST Bank T&C · rank every card by spend category →
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.
Four steps online — enter your details, create a fixed deposit of ₹10,000 or more (or link an existing eligible one through the IDFC FIRST app), complete video KYC with Aadhaar and a physical PAN, and the bank issues a virtual card immediately, with the physical card arriving in about five working days. Age 18 to 80, resident in India. No income proof and no credit history are required.
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: "Quantum+ Credit Card · Nil · Nil · NA" — a published lifetime-free zero, with no `joiningFee` key. Fuel surcharge waiver: "Not Applicable". The card is in the image-personalisation exclusion list. CENSUS CORRECTION: the 2026-08-17 sweep recorded this card as having no product page anywhere in IDFC's 1,347-URL sitemap; /credit-card/quantum-plus-credit-card serves a full one, with an earn table, an eligibility panel, a fee block and twenty FAQs. Total cashback is capped at ₹500 a statement cycle across all categories.
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; lifetime free, FD-backed from ₹10,000; 2% / 1% / 0.5% cashback with a ₹500-per-statement-cycle total cap and the third-party-UPI exclusion
- official Bank-wide MITC (reissued 9 Sep 2026) — Nil joining and Nil annual with no add-on card, NIL forex markup, no fuel-surcharge waiver and no over-limit facility