IndusInd PAYBACK Credit Card
CancelA card that paid into somebody else's loyalty programme, and paid well into it.
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.
2 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · why it ranks #876
Why #876 Withdrawn, so nothing here is a recommendation — but it is priced now rather than shrugged at. PAYBACK is a coalition programme run by another company and its points reach no airline and no hotel, which caps the whole thing at a voucher rate: 2 points per ₹100 at four coins to the rupee, 0.5%, with a genuinely loud 20-point movie rung on top. Same call as Amex PAYBACK.
The take
IndusInd built this one with PAYBACK, and the partnership is the whole story. Points earned on the card did not sit in an IndusInd account — they were transferred to your PAYBACK membership number after each statement, to be spent in PAYBACK's catalogue, on BookMyShow, at Big Bazaar, through VoucherWorld, or in-store at PAYBACK's partner brands. That is a coalition programme run by another company, it reaches no airline and no hotel, and it is why a points-and-miles desk files this as a cashback product. It does have a rate: PAYBACK — Zillion since BharatPe rebranded it in 2023 — pays four coins to the rupee on every e-voucher it sells, so the 2-point base rung is 0.5% and the 20-point movie rung is 5%. What it did do, it did cheaply. The entry price was a one-time ₹249 plus tax with nothing to pay thereafter, and a welcome bonus landed in the PAYBACK account once that fee cleared. Underneath sat a genuinely useful trick the card sold hard: because PAYBACK is a coalition, you could earn from the merchant AND from the card on the same transaction — IndusInd's own example is booking through BookMyShow with the card and your linked mobile number, which pays from both partners at once. Later issues came with a complimentary PAYBACK PLUS membership for a year; earlier ones came with a Future Privilege membership instead, which IndusInd stopped attaching to new cards from 1 December 2020. It is gone. IndusInd's own page is headed "Payback Credit Card (Discontinued)" and carries the notice that the product is shown only as a reference for existing cardholders. If you still hold one, your points live in PAYBACK's account and not in the bank's, which is the one thing to remember when the card finally closes.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
This card charges nothing at the anniversary — its one fee was taken at issue. There is no renewal decision to make; keeping it costs ₹0 a year.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
nothing due at the anniversary · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹0/yr · ₹249 joining (one-time)
At your spend
₹4,000 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹5,500 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹8,500 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹20,500 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹32,500 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
IndusInd 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
- 15 Jun 2026 IndusInd doubles its DCC fee to 2% on the mass shelf, and holds 1% on the premium one issuer-wide
- 25 Mar 2025 IndusInd hikes redemption fee to ₹149, caps cash-outs at 50% 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
- A one-time ₹249 plus GST to join, with no annual fee after it
- Points were transferred to your own PAYBACK membership account after each statement, not held by the bank
- Coalition stacking: earn from the merchant AND from the card on the same transaction by quoting your linked mobile number
- Later issues carried a complimentary PAYBACK PLUS membership for a year
Watch out
- Discontinued — IndusInd's own page is headed "Payback Credit Card (Discontinued)" and shows it only as a reference for existing cardholders
- PAYBACK is a coalition programme run by another company, not an IndusInd scheme — the points reach no airline and no hotel
- PAYBACK is now Zillion, and payback.in is a dead domain — a balance from this card lives at zillionrewards.in or nowhere
- Zillion coins expire three years after the transaction, and an idle account is charged up to 8 coins a month after 24 months
- Points leave the bank: they land in your PAYBACK membership account within 10 working days of the statement date, and only if that account is active
- Fuel earned nothing, and IndusInd revised the rewards programme for select merchant categories from 1 August 2019
- Every unposted benefit lapses the moment the card closes — IndusInd's clause covers termination by either side
- No lounge access and no travel benefit of any kind
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes PAYBACK Points (now Zillion Coins) 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 →
Does your spend count toward the milestones?
not published — and we say which
₹2,00,000 a year is the bar for the first milestone. A different question from the one above — earning points and counting toward a threshold are separate rules, and issuers write them separately.
Not published. IndusInd Bank states what the IndusInd PAYBACK Credit Card earns, but has not published which spend categories count toward the milestones — the ₹2,00,000 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
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.
Closed to new applications — existing cardholders keep the card; there is no way in.
You cannot. IndusInd's own disclaimer reads: "we have discontinued this product for new sourcing, and same is only displayed as a reference for existing IndusInd Bank PAYBACK Credit Cardholders." Existing holders keep the card. The nearest live IndusInd cards at this end of the shelf are the IndusInd Platinum, which is lifetime free, and the Platinum Aura Edge.
IndusInd Bank publishes no income or age cutoffs for this card. Blank means blank — we don't invent numbers to fill a grid.
no MITC row researched for this card yet · filter the board by what you can get →
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.
- 1 Jul 2026Pioneer Legacy's quarterly lounge visit now costs ₹1.5 lakh of spend1 complimentary domestic lounge visit a quarter, no spend condition → From the Jul–Sep 2026 quarter, the visit unlocks only on ₹1,50,000 of previous-quarter spend
The spend-tracking regime IndusInd switched on in April now bites: from the July–September 2026 quarter, Pioneer Legacy's single complimentary domestic lounge visit is granted only if you put ₹1.5 lakh through the card the quarter before. Legacy sits in the same ₹1.5L tier as Pinnacle; Indulge, Solitaire and Crest need ₹5 lakh for theirs. The gate covers the domestic visit — the Priority Pass international allowance isn't part of this condition. On a private-banking card with a ₹50,000 retail joining fee, spend-gating one lounge visit a quarter is a remarkably small door to put a toll on, and IndusInd did it anyway.
- 15 Jun 2026IndusInd doubles its DCC fee to 2% on the mass shelf, and holds 1% on the premium one
- 1 Apr 2026IndusInd Pinnacle's domestic lounge access goes spend-gated
- 25 Mar 2025IndusInd hikes redemption fee to ₹149, caps cash-outs at 50%
- 7 Mar 2025Legend loses lounge access entirely1 complimentary domestic lounge visit per quarter → No complimentary lounge access at all
A year after halving Legend's lounge visits, IndusInd came back and took the rest. From 7 March 2025 the card offers no complimentary lounge access, domestic or otherwise — on a product still marketed with a ₹5,000 joining fee. The lifetime-free Legend crowd shrugs; anyone who paid for this card on the strength of its airport perks got a two-step lesson in how IndusInd sunsets a benefit.
- 1 Mar 2024Legend halves lounge visits, cuts cash value to ₹0.50
- 17 Aug 2023IndusInd launches the Avios card — BA and Qatar in one
- 3 Aug 2023IndusInd's lifetime-free Tiger prowls in
Every IndusInd Bank change we've dated → 10 events since 2016, 8 of them nerfs — worst year 2025.
Verified against IndusInd 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 IndusInd PAYBACK product page, archived 22 July 2024 — the discontinuation notice, the ₹249 one-time joining fee, the PAYBACK partnership and the coalition-stacking mechanic
- official Zillion programme terms — PAYBACK India under its current name and operator, with the three-year coin expiry and the ban on transferring coins to anyone else