METRO Kotak
KeepFree forever, 48 days to pay, and up to ₹10,000 a month back on the stock run.
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: Up to ₹500 cashback on the first swipe within 30 days of card issuance, on a transaction of ₹10,000 in a day
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 — and a business card's accelerator is usually the point. This card is not on the board, which ranks personal cards only; it is ranked against other business cards on /best/business, where the tax, GST and vendor-payment rungs ARE credited and its ₹ 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 #874
Why #874 A wholesale-counter card, not a wallet card, and it is carried on the business axis rather than ranked against consumer cards — pricing a kirana's stocking card against a lounge card answers a question nobody asked. On its own terms it was well built: free forever, 48 interest-free days, and up to ₹10,000 a month back on stock you were buying anyway.
There is no scrip here and nothing to value: the benefit is quoted, capped and worked out in rupees on Kotak's own page. What Kotak never published is a rate for anything bought away from METRO — every rate on this card is defined as a slice of the month's METRO spend, and no other-category rung appears on the product at all.
The take
The METRO Kotak was not built for a points geek and it is better for it. Kotak and METRO Cash & Carry aimed it at the three million registered METRO customers — kirana owners, traders, small restaurants and caterers — and the proposition is working capital rather than rewards: up to 48 interest-free days on stock you were going to buy anyway, a credit limit starting at ₹25,000 and sized off your actual purchase history with METRO, repayment in cash or by transfer, and no joining or yearly fee ever. Kotak even opened it to METRO customers with no bank account. The cashback is a four-rung incremental ladder on the month's METRO spend, and the word incremental is the one that matters — Kotak says so in its own footnote and then shows the arithmetic. On a ₹7 lakh month you do not get 1% of ₹7 lakh. You get nothing on the first ₹10,000, a quarter percent on the next ₹20,000, half a percent on the ₹4.7 lakh after that and 1% only on the ₹2 lakh above ₹5,00,000 — ₹4,400 all in, which is Kotak's own worked example and an effective 0.63%. The whole benefit stops at ₹10,000 a month. Two things to be clear about. Every rate on this card is defined as a slice of METRO spend; Kotak published no rate at all for anything bought anywhere else, so do not assume one. And the card is gone — the product page 404s on both Kotak hosts, the current schedule of charges does not mention METRO once, and no Key Fact Statement exists for it. If you still hold one, the 48-day float was always the real benefit and the cashback was the garnish.
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
₹1,500 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹3,000 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹6,000 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹18,000 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹30,000 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
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
- 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
- No joining fee and no yearly fee — Kotak's launch release says both in one line
- Up to 48 days of interest-free credit on wholesale stock purchases
- Up to ₹10,000 a month back on METRO spend, rising to 1% on the slice above ₹5 lakh
- Credit limit from ₹25,000, sized on your actual purchase pattern with METRO rather than a salary slip
- METRO customers without a bank account could apply, on minimum documentation
- Worked at all 31 METRO wholesale centres across 21 cities and on the METRO Wholesale app
Watch out
- The slabs are INCREMENTAL — Kotak's footnote says "Slab Calculation will be done Incremental Value only", so a ₹7 lakh month earns ₹4,400, not ₹7,000
- The first ₹10,000 of METRO spend each month earns nothing at all
- The whole cashback benefit stops at ₹10,000 in a month
- Kotak published NO earn rate for spend away from METRO — every rung on this card is a slice of METRO spend
- No lounge access: Kotak's India lounge programme enumerates its eligible variants set by set and METRO is in none of the three
- Withdrawn — the product page 404s on both Kotak hosts, the current schedule of charges never mentions METRO, and no Key Fact Statement exists for it
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?
income, age and the route in
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. The product page has been removed from kotak.bank.in and kotak.com redirects into the same 404; Kotak's current cardholder agreement does not name METRO anywhere and no Key Fact Statement was ever filed in its KFS directory. When it was sold, the gate was a METRO Wholesale membership rather than an income — the card was offered to METRO's registered customers, credit limits were sized on purchase history with METRO from ₹25,000 upward, and customers without a bank account were explicitly eligible. The live Kotak business cards are the Kotak Biz at ₹499 and the Kotak Biz Edge.
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
2 of 7 MITC rows published
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
WITHDRAWN business co-brand, launched 16 Dec 2022 and now 404 on Kotak's live host. Fee, verbatim: "No 'joining' or 'yearly' fees". RuPay — "The card has been launched on the RuPay network". The proposition was working capital rather than rewards: "interest-free credit facility, for up to 48 days to over 3 million registered METRO India customers", a limit "from Rs 25,000 onwards to a maximum credit based on the customer's purchase pattern with METRO", repayment "through cash or online transfer", and acceptance across "METRO's network of 31 wholesale distribution centers (stores) located in 21 cities in India, as well as the METRO Wholesale App". Rewards are a CEILING with no rate under it — "Card users can earn cashback up to Rs 10,000, per month, subject to their monthly spends at METRO" — which is why the card carries no modelled earn. Audience is explicitly business: "small traders, Kirana owners, MSMEs, small restaurants, HoReCa … as well as self-employed professionals".
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.
- 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 · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 3 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Kotak–METRO launch release (16 December 2022) — the RuPay network, the 48-day interest-free credit, the ₹25,000 starting limit and "No 'joining' or 'yearly' fees"
- official METRO Kotak product page, archived 2 December 2024 — the four-rung incremental cashback ladder, Kotak's own worked example, and the ₹10,000 monthly ceiling
- official Retail Credit Card Agreement & Schedule of charges (31-Jul-2026) — the current Kotak shelf, which does not mention METRO