OneCard Metal
KeepA free metal card with 1% forex and nothing else — hold it for the border, not the points.
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: None — lifetime free with no joining bonus; the 1% forex is the pitch
Priced on the everyday mix — 30% groceries · 10% utilities · 20% travel · 6% fuel · 34% everything else — with this card's published category rules applied: it earns nothing on fuel here, so that spend is dropped, not paid at the headline, and stops pacing milestones and the waiver. 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 (earn ₹0) 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.
2 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants
The take
OneCard's metal card sells a feeling — a heavy Visa Signature slab with a slick app and no annual fee, ever — and one genuinely useful number: a 1% forex markup, the lowest on any lifetime-free Indian card. That alone justifies keeping it in a drawer for overseas swipes, where it quietly beats the 3.5% most banks charge. Just do not expect it to pay you: rewards are 1 point per ₹50 (0.2%), rising to 1% only on your top two spend categories in a month, and each point is a flat ₹0.10 in cashback. There is no airport lounge access — none, domestic or international — despite the premium metal. As a free, good-looking, low-forex card it is a fine supplementary hold; as your main travel card it earns little and lounges nothing.
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
₹600 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹1,100 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹2,300 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹6,800 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹11,300 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
OneCard (issued via partner banks) 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
- 29 Jul 2026 IDFC FIRST quietly exits OneCard's partner-bank roster
- 6 Dec 2025 RBI freezes new OneCard issuance across every partner bank
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
- Lifetime free — no joining or annual fee, on a Visa Signature metal card
- 1% forex markup — the lowest on any lifetime-free Indian card
- 5X (1%) on your top two spend categories each month
- Points never expire while the card stays active; instant app cashback at ₹0.10/point
Watch out
- New issuance has been RBI-frozen since Dec 2025 (co-branded data-sharing audit) — existing cards keep working, but you likely can't get one right now
- No lounge access at all — not domestic, not international, despite the metal
- 0.2% base earn; 1% only on two categories, closed-loop cashback at ₹0.10/point
- No transfer partners, no milestones, no welcome bonus
- Issued via partner banks (Federal, BOBCARD, SBM, others) — features can vary by issuer, and IDFC FIRST quietly left the roster in Jul 2026
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes OneCard 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
13 sourced rules · 5 pay zero
OneCard earns 1 RP/₹50 (0.2%) broadly, with 5X (10 RP/₹100, 1.0%) on the top two spend categories each month (needs spend in 3+ categories, ₹750+ each). It is known for earning on categories many cards exclude, but fuel/rent/wallet/EMI are the usual zeros. 'full' = base 1 RP/₹50; the 5X is category-and-month dependent, not fixed.
- Fuel · excluded Fuel earns nothing (surcharge only) — community, flag
- Rent & property management · excluded Rent excluded — community, flag
- Wallet loads · excluded Wallet loads excluded — community, flag
- UPI (RuPay-on-UPI only) · excluded RuPay variant links via OneCard UPI, but OneCard publishes no UPI earn and community confirms none — treat as zero until documented (flag)
per OneCard (issued via partner banks) T&C (community-sourced) · rank every card by spend category →
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.
Paused — the issuer has stopped taking new applications for now and has not withdrawn the card; existing cardholders are unaffected.
Right now you mostly can't: the RBI told every partner bank to pause NEW OneCard issuance in December 2025 while it audits FPL's data-sharing and partnership framework (an April-2026 unified audit put a restart three to six months out, and as of 2026-08-23 no resumption has been reported). When issuance is on, you don't apply to a bank — you apply to the app, and FPL's underwriting decides which of its partner banks (Federal, BOBCARD, SBM, CSB, Indian, South Indian) issues your card; IDFC FIRST quietly left the roster in July 2026, migrating its OneCard holders to its own FIRST Wealth/Select cards. Features are identical across issuers; the statement's bank name and the grievance path are what change, and the routing is not your choice. Thin file or outright declined? The official FD-backed route via SBM or Federal opens the same card against a deposit starting at ₹5,000 — once the regulatory pause lifts.
per the official OneCard (issued via partner banks) 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
4 of 7 MITC rows published
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
Lifetime free — no joining or annual fee, on a Visa Signature metal card. 1% forex markup is the lowest on any LTF Indian card. 1 RP/₹50 (0.2%); 5X (1%) on the top two monthly spend categories — needs ₹750+ in each of 3+ categories that month. NO lounge access (domestic or international) — confirmed across CardInsider + Magnify. Points don't expire while the card is active. Issued via six partner banks (Federal, BOBCARD, CSB, SBM, Indian, South Indian per CardInsider) — APR, late-fee and cash-advance terms live on the issuing bank's MITC and vary; not centrally published.
per the official OneCard (issued via partner banks) MITC (community-sourced) · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
What's changed for this card
5 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.
- 29 Jul 2026IDFC FIRST quietly exits OneCard's partner-bank rostergetonecard.app's footer listed 7 issuing banks including IDFC Bank (still present in the 24-Jul-2026 archive snapshot) → Footer lists 6 — BOBCARD, CSB, Federal, SBM, South Indian, Indian; IDFC FIRST migrates its OneCard holders to its own FIRST Wealth / FIRST Select cards
Our T&C watchdog caught getonecard.app's partner-bank footer shrinking from seven banks to six between 24 and 29 July 2026 (Wayback pins the six-bank footer live by 29 July, 04:04 UTC): IDFC Bank is gone, and IDFC FIRST's own site now carries 'OneCard replaced by FIRST Wealth Without Limit' migration pages. For holders whose OneCard was issued through IDFC, the card is being swapped for IDFC's in-house product — a different rewards system entirely; everyone else's issuer routing is untouched. With new issuance already RBI-frozen since December, the roster is shrinking while the front door stays shut.
- 6 Dec 2025RBI freezes new OneCard issuance across every partner bank
- 15 Dec 2023OneCard stops earning points on fuel
- 20 Feb 2022OneCard tolls app-routed rent and caps the fuel waiver
- 1 Jun 2020OneCard launches India's first mobile-first metal credit card
Every OneCard (issued via partner banks) change we've dated → 5 events since 2020, 2 of them nerfs — worst year 2023.
Verified against OneCard (issued via partner banks)'s own documents on · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 11 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product site (no joining/annual/redemption fees; 5X on top-2 categories; points never expire; partner-bank footer now lists 6 — Federal, BOBCARD, CSB, SBM, Indian)
- community CardInsider review, upd. 30-Apr-2026 (1% forex, 1 RP/₹50, 5X top-2 needs 3+ categories, ₹0.10/pt, no lounge)
- community 5X three-category rule explainer
- official OneCard FAQ — enabled by Visa/Mastercard/RuPay networks; lifetime free; "lowest forex fees in the market @ just 1%"
- community Inc42 (06-Dec-2025) — RBI sent letters to every OneCard partner bank asking them to pause new issuances while it examines data-sharing under the Mar-2024 co-branded-card rules
- community Entrackr (25-Apr-2026) — RBI appoints a firm for a unified audit of FPL's partnership/data-sharing framework
- official IDFC FIRST Bank — "OneCard replaced by FIRST Wealth Without Limit" migration page (a FIRST Select variant exists too)
- community Kiwi vs OneCard — UPI rollout, earn unpublished
- official OneCard — FD-backed route via SBM/Federal, deposits from ₹5,000
- official Indian Bank's own OneCard page — "Indian Bank One Co-branded credit card, a Mobile-first Metal Credit Card, fully controlled by the OneCard app", lifetime free
- official BOBCARD's card catalogue — its "BOBCARD One" entry carries the OneCard feature set and the OneCard app, with nothing of BOBCARD's own attached