Kotak Corporate Basic
KeepFree, insured for the trip — and the one Kotak corporate card that still charges you at the pump.
no published earn rate to price
Skip the arithmetic — the board, ranked → · nothing to sign up for
What it's worth to you, after the fee
Not valued. We can't value this card until the issuer publishes how it earns — every net-value number here would be a fee subtracted from rewards nobody has described. Everything we can source — the fee, the charges, the migration that put this card in your hand — is above and stands on its own; this card is simply not on the board, not in the calculator, and cannot win a best-of call until Kotak Mahindra Bank publishes terms we can cite.
Why we decline to value some cards, and what it takes to change that →
3 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants · why it ranks #494
Why #494 A business card carried, not ranked. The floor of Kotak's corporate travel-and-entertainment shelf: free, insured for travel, and the only variant on that shelf whose fuel surcharge Kotak charges rather than waives.
The take
Basic Corporate is the entry rung of Kotak's corporate travel-and-entertainment range, and it is free: NIL against both lines in the corporate MITC. For a company issuing cards to staff who travel occasionally, that is most of the argument. The insurance is the part worth having. Kotak's clause 8.1 covers this variant like the priced ones — ₹50,000 of card-liability protection against lost-card, skimming, phishing and online fraud, then ₹10,000 each for a flight delay past six hours, carrier cancellation, lost or delayed checked baggage, valuable documents and a missed international connection, underwritten by Zurich Kotak. It applies to primary cardholders on cards used at least once in the previous 90 days. Add up to 48 interest-free days, one consolidated company bill, and a waived railway booking surcharge capped at ₹500 a year. One thing separates it from every other card on the shelf, and Kotak spells it out. Clause 5.6 splits the fuel surcharge into two lists: "Applicable - Basic Corporate" on one side, and "Waived - Travel Agent / Corporate Classic / Privy League Platinum / Wealth Signature Corporate Card / Corporate Platinum / Purchase Card" on the other. Basic Corporate is the only name on the charged side of that line. So a fleet of these pays the 1% at every pump while the ₹1,000 Classic beside it does not — which is, on the evidence, most of what the ₹1,000 buys. There is no lounge access; Kotak's India lounge programme names its eligible variants set by set and this card is in none of them. And the earn is the corporate silence: Kotak sets any incentive per company by email, and no rate appears in any published document. This card has no product page and no Key Fact Statement — the corporate MITC is its entire published record.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
There is no renewal arithmetic to run on this card yet — and a break-even we cannot source is not one we will print.
the whole desk — what changed, the downgrade, and what we cannot price →
Keep, downgrade or cancel
what we can and cannot price
Not valued. We can't value this card until the issuer publishes how it earns — every net-value number here would be a fee subtracted from rewards nobody has described. A break-even is the spend at which value crosses a fee, and we are short one side of that sentence — so this desk prints no ladder, no crossing and no ₹0 standing in for either. What we can source about this card is under Sources.
Your copy of this card
You hold this card.
Kept on this device, in your browser. It is never sent to us, never synced, and nothing else on the site reads it yet.
The downgrade
Kotak Mahindra 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 we cannot price either side of it.
What has changed under this card
- 1 Jun 2025 Kotak's June-2025 fee wave washes over the premium deck issuer-wide
- 12 Feb 2025 RBI lifts Kotak's ten-month card-issuance ban 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
- Nil to join and nil a year — both lines published NIL in Kotak's corporate MITC
- Travel insurance from Zurich Kotak: ₹10,000 each for flight delay past 6 hours, carrier cancellation, lost or delayed checked baggage, valuable documents and a missed international connection
- ₹50,000 card-liability cover against lost-card, skimming, phishing and online fraud
- Railway booking surcharge waived, capped at ₹500 a calendar year
- Up to 48 days interest-free, with the company settling one consolidated bill for every employee card
- Card replacement after loss or damage is waived
Watch out
- The ONLY Kotak corporate card whose fuel surcharge is charged rather than waived — clause 5.6 names it alone on the "Applicable" side
- No lounge access: Kotak's India lounge programme lists its eligible variants set by set and this card is in none of them
- Kotak publishes no reward rate — the incentive programme is "at the exclusive discretion of the Kotak Bank" and reaches the company by email
- Revolving credit costs 3.30% a month, 39.6% a year — dearer than the equally free Privy League Platinum Corporate at 3.10%
- Forex markup runs up to 3.5%, the Indian norm
- No cash withdrawal — the facility does not exist under Kotak's Corporate Liability programme
- No product page and no Key Fact Statement: this card exists in the corporate MITC and nowhere else Kotak publishes
What these points actually fly
Kotak Mahindra Bank has not published what this card earns, so there are no points here to fly with — not zero points, and not points that go nowhere: nothing stated either way. The moment a benefit sheet exists we will price whatever it names.
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.
Direct application — no invite list, no banking relationship required.
No consumer application. Kotak's route for the corporate range is the commercial-cards desk at service.corporatecards@kotak.com, through a Program Administrator or Authorized Signatory, with a "Kotak Corporate Credit Card Agreement of the Bank" signed at onboarding. Kotak publishes no turnover, income or headcount cutoff — and since there is no product page for this variant, the commercial agreement is where the terms are actually settled.
Kotak Mahindra 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.
- 30 Sept 2026Dream Different's unredeemed reward points expire after 30 September 2026Reward points accrued on the Dream Different Credit Card up to 31 March 2026 sitting in the account with no stated expiry date → A hard forfeiture date — "After 30th September, 2026, any unredeemed Reward Points will automatically expire"
The second half of the note that closed the programme is the part holders can still act on. Kotak's cardholder agreement gives every Dream Different point accrued up to 31 March 2026 a six-month redemption window that shuts on 30 September 2026, after which unredeemed points are forfeited outright. At the agreement's own conversion rate of 25 paise per point, a year of the card's headline 4-points-per-₹100 online earn on ₹1 lakh of online spend is roughly 4,000 points, about ₹1,000 — small money, but money that becomes zero on 1 October. Points redeem against the Kotak catalogue (flights, hotels, vouchers, merchandise) or as a statement credit through the rewards portal or the contact centre, each with its own minimum, so a last-week redemption risks missing the date on processing alone.
- 1 Sept 2026Kotak's Dream Different joining fee goes ₹250 → ₹424 and the waiver disappears
- 1 Sept 2026Kotak halves dynamic currency conversion on Dream Different, 3.5% to 2%
- 1 Apr 2026Kotak discontinues the reward points programme on Dream Different
- 1 Jun 2025Kotak guts Privy League Signature and pulls it from sale
- 1 Jun 2025Kotak's June-2025 fee wave washes over the premium deck
- 12 Feb 2025RBI lifts Kotak's ten-month card-issuance ban
- 12 May 2022Kotak quietly lists White Reserve — a card with no earn rate
Every Kotak Mahindra Bank change we've dated → 8 events since 2022, 5 of them nerfs — worst year 2026.
Verified against Kotak Mahindra Bank's own documents on
Not published , and we will not invent it: the earn rate and the currency it earns.
Every document behind this page — 4 of them, each with the day we read it
- official MITC of Kotak Corporate Credit Cards — the nil fee row, the 3.30% monthly interest rate, the fuel surcharge this card alone is charged, and the travel-insurance limits
- official Kotak's MITC and Key Fact Statement index — the thirteen commercial documents Kotak publishes, none of which is this card's
- official Kotak's corporate credit card hub — the shared T&E benefit set, the corporate application route, and the insurance list this card heads
- official Kotak Credit Cards India Lounge Programme — the three enumerated sets of lounges and the variants entitled to each, none of which is this card