IB-VISA-Bharat
KeepFree forever, the cheapest interest rate Indian Bank charges anyone — and no reward programme at all.
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 ₹0 gross against its ₹0 fee = ₹0 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 #637
Why #637 A genuinely lifetime-free card on an issuer whose interest rates are half the market's — and, by the bank's own per-variant sheet, a card with no reward programme behind it at all. It is priced here as what it is: free credit at 21.48% a year, paying nothing.
The take
Bharat is the bottom of Indian Bank's range and it is the only one that is free outright: the MITC prints "VISA-Bharat Cards: NIL" against the annual maintenance charge, and no joining fee applies to any Indian Bank card, primary or add-on. What it does not do is pay you. Indian Bank's per-variant features sheet — the document its own credit-card shelf links as "To know more about each card" — says of this variant, in words: "Reward Points: This card does not include a reward points program." The same sheet grants "1 point valued at Re.1 for every Rs.100 spent" to the Gold, Platinum and Select blocks printed beside it, so the exclusion is a deliberate line drawn between variants, not a document that forgot a row. Take the earn as zero until Indian Bank says otherwise per variant, and read the disagreement below before you argue with a branch about it. What is left is worth having anyway, and it is the interest. Indian Bank charges 1.79% a month on purchases here — 21.48% a year — where most Indian issuers charge 3.5% a month and 42% a year. That is less than half the market rate, and it is the lowest purchase rate on Indian Bank's own shelf. Cash advances run 1.99% a month with a ₹25 fee, and the whole Bharat and RuPay column of the charge schedule is priced like this: ₹50 late fee against ₹250 on the Visa cards, ₹25 over-limit against ₹50, ₹100 to replace the card against ₹250. The other catch is reach. The MITC's foreign-currency line for this column reads "NA", and Indian Bank disables online, NFC and international transactions by default on every variant under RBI guidance — you enable them yourself through the card portal. Treat this as a free domestic card that buys you cheap credit and nothing else, and step up to Gold or Platinum if you want an earn rate the bank has actually written down for the variant you hold.
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
₹0 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹0 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹0 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹0 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹0 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
Indian 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.
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 — the MITC's AMC line for this variant reads NIL, and no Indian Bank card charges a joining fee
- 1.79% a month on purchases — 21.48% a year, against the 42% most Indian issuers charge
- Cheapest charge column on the shelf: ₹50 late fee, ₹25 over-limit, ₹25 cash-advance fee, ₹100 to replace
- Up to 45 days interest-free, on a 20th-to-19th billing cycle with payment due on the 5th
Watch out
- NO reward programme: Indian Bank's per-variant features sheet says "This card does not include a reward points program" for this variant, while granting 1 point per ₹100 to the Gold, Platinum and Select blocks beside it
- TWO OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS DISAGREE, and this is the one to raise at the branch. The bank's Jan-2025 rewards poster promises "Cashback of Rs.1/- for every Rs.100/- spent" on "IB Credit Card" and names no variant; the Dec-2023 features sheet excludes THIS variant by name. We follow the per-variant document — but if a branch shows you the poster, get the rate confirmed for the Bharat card in writing before you count on it
- The foreign-currency transaction fee for this column reads "NA" in the MITC — do not read that as a zero markup, read it as a card Indian Bank has not priced for overseas use
- Online, NFC and international transactions are DISABLED by default on every Indian Bank card — you must switch them on in the card portal
- Fuel carries a surcharge of ₹10 or 2.5% of the transaction, whichever is higher
- Railway tickets carry a surcharge of ₹10 or 1.80%, whichever is higher
- No lounge access is stated anywhere on Indian Bank's card page or in its MITC, and none is claimed here — the features sheet does not even carry a lounge row for this variant
- No EMI facility and no add-on card: the features sheet reads "This card does not offer EMI facilities" and "Add On Card-Facility Not Available"
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 →
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?
the route in — no cutoffs published
The cutoffs and the actual route in — not the "apply now" button, the door that opens.
Not confirmed on sale — the issuer still documents this card but we could not confirm it is open to new applications. Treat any application path with care.
Through an Indian Bank branch or the bank's credit-card portal at creditcard.indianbank.bank.in. Indian Bank publishes no income criterion, age band or credit-score floor for any of its consumer cards — the department page carries only the spend-based AMC waiver thresholds, which this card does not need because its AMC is nil. If a deposit-backed route is what you need, the bank issues secured cards against a minimum of ₹25,000 or 90% of a term deposit's face value, with the variant assigned by card limit. First thing to do after activation: log into the card portal and enable online, NFC and international transactions, all three of which Indian Bank ships switched off.
Indian 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 Indian 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.
FEE PROVENANCE - NO TWO-COLUMN TRAP: Indian Bank states the joining fee in PROSE ("No Joining Fee for primary cardholder and add-on cardholder/s") and the recurring charge in a separate numbered list ("AMC Charges"), so there are no columns to invert. For this variant the AMC list reads "VISA-Bharat Cards: NIL", so BOTH charges are a published zero and the card file carries annualFee 0 alone with no joiningFee (a redundant 0 beside a 0 fails audit section 61). This card sits in the schedule's SECOND charge column, "VISA Bharat & RuPay": cash-advance fee ₹25, late fee ₹50, over-limit ₹25, limit enhancement ₹25, cheque return ₹50, card re-issue ₹100, pin mailer ₹25, statement retrieval ₹50, charge-slip retrieval ₹75. The "NA" in the forex row is NOT a zero markup - it is a card Indian Bank has not priced for overseas use. Interest-free period 15-45 days on a 20th-to-19th billing cycle with payment due on the 5th; a 5th-of-the-month cycle can be chosen once in the card's life. Surcharges: petrol ₹10 or 2.5% of the transaction, railway tickets ₹10 or 1.80%, whichever is higher. EMI conversion 2% of the converted amount (min ₹199, max ₹1,000) at 18% p.a., with a 3% foreclosure charge. Online, NFC and international transactions are DISABLED by default on every variant per RBI guidance and must be enabled at creditcard.indianbank.bank.in. EARN - NOTHING, AND THE BANK SAYS SO: Indian Bank's per-variant "Credit Card Features and Benefits" sheet, linked from its own card shelf as "To know more about each card", reads for this variant "Reward Points: This card does not include a reward points program", against "1 point valued at Re.1 for every Rs.100 spent" in the Gold, Platinum, RuPay Platinum and RuPay Select blocks beside it. The bank's Jan-2025 rewards poster does promise ₹1 cashback per ₹100 on "IB Credit Card" - but it names no variant, and a generic poster does not overturn a per-variant exclusion by being newer. The card file carries a SOURCED rewardRate 0. NO LOUNGE ACCESS: the MITC has no lounge clause at all, and the features sheet carries no lounge row for this variant either way, so none is tagged.
per the official Indian Bank MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
What's changed for this card
nothing tracked yet — which is itself a fact
No tracked devaluations or changes yet — this card's history starts here.
Verified against Indian 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 Indian Bank's "Credit Card Features and Benefits" sheet — the per-variant block behind this card: no EMI, no add-on, 25% cash limit, 1.79% a month and "does not include a reward points program"
- official Indian Bank credit-card MITC — "No Joining Fee for primary cardholder and add-on cardholder/s", "VISA-Bharat Cards: NIL" AMC, 1.79% a month on purchases and the Bharat/RuPay charge column
- official Indian Bank's generic rewards poster — ₹1 cashback per ₹100 on "IB Credit Card", naming no variant, and the document that disagrees with this card's own per-variant exclusion
- official Indian Bank's credit-card page — the variant shelf, the ₹50,000 AMC-waiver threshold and the RBI default-disabled transaction note