IndianOil Kotak Credit Card
KeepKotak's '5% on fuel' is 4% in points plus the 1% surcharge waiver — and the points half stops at ₹7,500 of petrol 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: 1,000 Reward Points (₹250) on a single transaction of ₹500 or more within 30 days — only on the fee-paying variant, and only once the joining fee has been realised
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 →
Breaks even only by erasing its fee at ₹5,000 a month
At ₹5,000 a month — ₹60,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹300 gross (earn ₹300) against a fee of ₹0 — the ₹449 is waived, the spend having cleared ₹50,000 a year = ₹300 net — the first rung at or above ₹0. 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 #244
Why #244 The 4% at the pump is real and the cap is ₹7,500 of fuel a statement cycle — Kotak's own value chart prices it at ₹3,600 a year, not the ₹4,800 an uncapped 4% would give. Ranked on that, plus a ₹449 fee that clears at ₹50,000 and a 2% dining/grocery leg that runs to ₹10,000 a month.
Kotak Reward Points from this card redeem at 25p on the Kotak Rewards catalogue — the house value — and at 20p as cashback, with a 2,000-point minimum. There is no airline or hotel exit. Every "%" on this card's marketing is already a 25p number.
The take
Read the asterisk before you read the headline. Kotak advertises "up to 5% on IndianOil fuel spends" and then defines it in its own footnote: "5% savings is calculated as 4% back in the form of Reward points and 1% back as Fuel Surcharge waiver". The surcharge waiver is not a reward — it is Kotak declining to pass on a charge every other bank also waives — so the earn rate here is 4%, and it runs out at 1,200 Reward Points a statement cycle, which is ₹7,500 of petrol. Kotak's own value chart is refreshingly honest about this: it credits ₹3,600 a year on ₹10,000 a month of fuel, not the ₹4,800 the rate implies. The dining-and-grocery leg is the quiet good bit — 2% across ten named MCCs up to ₹10,000 a month, so restaurants, supermarkets and bakeries all count, and that is ₹2,400 a year on its own. Everything else earns 0.5%, uncapped, which is where most Indian entry cards live. Two traps. UPI spends earn 0.5% flat, so tapping your phone at the pump throws away three quarters of the reason you carry the card — you have to swipe. And the 1,000-point welcome only exists on the fee-paying variant, once the ₹449 has actually been charged. At ₹449 waived on ₹50,000 of spend, a household putting ₹7,500 of fuel and ₹10,000 of groceries a month through it clears ₹6,000 a year of points. That is a good small card. It is not a 5% card.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
This card reaches break-even by ERASING its fee, not by out-earning it: the waiver is the decision.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
₹449/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹449/yr
The waiver ₹50,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹4,167 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹5,000 a month — ₹60,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee, and it gets there by erasing the fee at the waiver rather than out-earning it.
At your spend
₹1,500 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹2,700 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹4,800 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹12,600 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹20,300 a year, net of the fee, at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
Everyday earn plus milestones, minus the fee — the same model as the value panel above, so the two cannot disagree. run your exact spend →
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 the numbers above are the whole of it.
What has changed under this card
- 8 Sep 2026 Flying Blue splits award tickets into Light / Standard / Flex — a 25% rise for the same product a program these points reach
- 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
- 24 Reward Points per ₹150 at IndianOil outlets — 4% back at Kotak's own 25p a point
- 12 Reward Points per ₹150 on dining and groceries across ten named MCCs — 2% back, to ₹10,000 a month
- 1% fuel-surcharge waiver on IndianOil transactions of ₹100–₹5,000, up to ₹100 a statement cycle
- ₹449 annual fee waived on ₹50,000 of retail spend in the previous anniversary year
- 1,000 Reward Points for a single ₹500 transaction inside 30 days
- Free add-on card with its own spend limit and separate spend tracking
- 0.5% on everything else, explicitly uncapped
Watch out
- The advertised 5% is 4% in points plus the 1% surcharge waiver — Kotak's own footnote says so, and the waiver is not earn
- The 4% fuel leg stops at 1,200 Reward Points a statement cycle — about ₹7,500 of petrol — then drops to 0.5%
- The 2% dining/grocery leg stops at 800 points a cycle, about ₹10,000 of spend
- UPI transactions earn a flat 0.5% across every category, accelerators included — swipe the card, don't scan
- The welcome 1,000 points is only paid on the variant that charges a joining fee, and only after the fee is realised
- Points redeem at 25p on the catalogue but 20p as cashback, with a 2,000-point minimum; no airline or hotel transfers exist
- Points expire 24 months from the credit date
- No lounge access, and forex is 3.5% with a 3.5% dynamic-currency-conversion fee on top of it
- 1% surcharges apply on rent, on wallet loads above ₹10,000 a cycle, on utilities above ₹35,000, on skill-gaming above ₹10,000 and on third-party education payments
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes Kotak 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
9 sourced rules
Base is 3 Reward Points per ₹150 (0.5% at Kotak's 25p Unbox rate), explicitly uncapped. Two accelerated buckets sit on top and BOTH are switched off on UPI: 24 points per ₹150 at IndianOil outlets, capped at 1,200 points a statement cycle, and 12 per ₹150 on the ten dining-and-grocery MCCs Kotak names, capped at 800. Kotak publishes no no-earn exclusion list for this card, so no category is recorded as excluded here — the rows below are only the ones its own page and Key Fact Statement actually state.
- Fuel · capped 24 Reward Points per ₹150 at IndianOil outlets — 4% at 25p a point — capped at 1,200 points a statement cycle, which is about ₹7,500 of petrol; past the cap it reverts to the 3-per-₹150 base. Fuel at any other pump earns only the base rate. Kotak's advertised "5%" is this 4% plus the waiver, by its own footnote — a 1% fuel-surcharge waiver on transactions of ₹100–₹5,000, capped at ₹100 a statement cycle, and working ONLY at IndianOil outlets, "not on any other fuel pumps". A separate KFS line reads "Fee on Fuel Transactions — Waived"
- Groceries & supermarkets · capped 12 Reward Points per ₹150 — 2% at 25p — on MCC 5411, 5311, 5399, 5422, 5451 and 5441, sharing an 800-point statement-cycle ceiling with dining, which is about ₹10,000 of combined spend. Past it, the 3-per-₹150 base
- Dining & food delivery · capped 12 Reward Points per ₹150 on MCC 5812, 5813, 5814 and 5499, out of the same 800-point cycle pool the grocery MCCs draw on
per Kotak Mahindra Bank T&C · rank every card by spend category →
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹50,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹449 fee. A different question from the one above — earning points and counting toward a threshold are separate rules, and issuers write them separately.
Not published. Kotak Mahindra Bank states what the IndianOil Kotak Credit Card earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver — the ₹50,000 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.
Direct application — no invite list, no banking relationship required.
Open to apply — Kotak sells it from the card's own product page with a live application flow. The fee is ₹449 to join, billed within 90 days of issuance, and ₹449 a year after, waived on ₹50,000 of retail spend in the previous anniversary year; there is no joining-fee waiver. Kotak publishes no income floor for the card. If the joining fee is waived for you, so is the 1,000-point welcome benefit — the T&C ties it to realisation of the fee.
Kotak Mahindra 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 Kotak Mahindra 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
6 of 7 MITC rows published
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
Two fee columns, NOT inverted: joining ₹449, annual ₹449, joining-fee waiver "NA", annual-fee waiver "₹50,000 Retail Spends in anniversary year". Joining fee is levied within 90 days of card issuance. Fuel surcharge: "Waiver of 1% of transaction value on fuel transactions between ₹100 - ₹5,000", max ₹100 per statement cycle, ONLY at IndianOil outlets and not at any other fuel pump; GST on the surcharge is borne by the customer. A separate "Fee on Fuel Transactions" line reads "Waived". Other surcharges: 1% on every rent transaction; 1% on cumulative wallet loading above ₹10,000 a cycle; 1% on utility spends above ₹35,000 a cycle; 1% on online skill-based gaming above ₹10,000 a cycle; 1% on education paid via third-party apps. Cheque return 2% min ₹500; auto-debit/NACH return 2% min ₹450 max ₹5,000; cash payment at a branch ₹100; card replacement ₹100; image card ₹99 or ₹199; credit-limit increase processing ₹100. Interest-free period up to 51 days. Earn: 24 Reward Points per ₹150 at IOCL capped at 1,200 points a statement cycle, 12 per ₹150 on dining and groceries (MCC 5812/5814/5813/5411/5311/5399/5422/ 5451/5499/5441) capped at 800 a cycle, 3 per ₹150 on everything else uncapped — and a flat 0.5% on ALL UPI-on-credit-card transactions, which switches the accelerators off. Points redeem at 25p on Kotak Rewards and 20p as cashback (2,000-point minimum) and expire 24 months from credit. Kotak's advertised "5%" is 4% in points plus the 1% surcharge waiver, per its own footnote. Network not published; the page marks concierge "Applicable on Rupay Variant Only".
per the official Kotak Mahindra 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.
- 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.
- 8 Sept 2026Flying Blue splits award tickets into Light / Standard / Flex — a 25% rise for the same product
- 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
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 · 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 IndianOil Kotak Credit Card product page — 24 points per ₹150 at IOCL capped at 1,200 a cycle, 12 per ₹150 on dining/groceries capped at 800, and the 25p/20p redemption split
- official Key Fact Statement — Indian Oil Kotak Credit Card at ₹449 joining and ₹449 annual, waived on ₹50,000 of retail spend, forex 3.50%