OneCard Metal
KeepA free metal card with 1% forex and nothing else — hold it for the border, not the points.
What it's worth to you — net annual value
Welcome: None — lifetime free with no joining bonus; the 1% forex is the pitch
How these numbers are computed →
Spend tiers, milestones and fee waivers included, at our house ₹/point. Portal and category multipliers can push higher — run your exact number →
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.
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
- 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
What earns, what doesn't
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
No lounge access. This card opens exactly 0 of 644 tracked lounge doors — board with the crowd, or find a card that doesn't →
Can you get it?
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.
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 and co.) issues your card. 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.
per the official OneCard (issued via partner banks) MITC — figures marked (community) aren't in the PDF; the issuer won't say · filter the ranking by what you can get →
The fine print
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
Full tracker →Devaluations and buffs that touch this card directly, its issuer, or the points and programs it earns and transfers to.
- 15 Dec 2023OneCard stops earning points on fuelFuel earned 1 point per ₹50 like any other spend → Zero points on fuel; the 1% surcharge waiver survives
OneCard joins the industry pile-on: from 15 December 2023, fuel spends earn nothing, leaving only the 1% surcharge waiver. On a card that pays 0.2% base into ₹0.10 cashback points, the rupee loss is small — but it's one more excluded category on a rewards program that was already the thinnest excuse for holding the metal.
- 20 Feb 2022OneCard tolls app-routed rent and caps the fuel waiverNo OneCard fee on rent or wallet loads via third-party apps; uncapped fuel surcharge waiver → 1% fee on rent/wallet loads via Paytm, Cred, PhonePe and peers; fuel surcharge waiver capped at ₹400/month
The free metal card sprouts its first fees: routing rent or wallet loads through third-party apps now costs 1% on top of the apps' own charges (in-app rent payments carry a 1.5% convenience fee instead), and the fuel surcharge waiver gets a ₹400-a-month ceiling. Early proof that lifetime-free never means toll-free once the manufactured-spend crowd finds a card.
- 1 Jun 2020OneCard launches India's first mobile-first metal credit cardMetal cards were a super-premium, high-fee privilege → Lifetime-free Visa Signature metal via partner banks, app-first controls, 1 point per ₹50
Pune's FPL Technologies shipped a lifetime-free metal Visa Signature in June 2020 and had 75,000 people on the waitlist within two months — proof that Indians would queue for the feel of a card. The metal was the product: 0.2% base rewards into ₹0.10 cashback points, no lounges, no partners. What endured was the 1% forex markup, still the cheapest on any free Indian card.
Go deeper
Sources
Every fact on this page is checked against these documents — the issuer's own paperwork first. Spot something stale? The PDF wins, and we re-verify.
- official Product site checked 11 Jul 2026
- community CardInsider review (1% forex, 1 RP/₹50, 5X top-2, ₹0.10/pt, no lounge) checked 13 Jul 2026
- community 5X three-category rule explainer checked 13 Jul 2026
- official OneCard FAQ — enabled by Visa/Mastercard/RuPay networks checked 11 Jul 2026
- community Kiwi vs OneCard — UPI rollout, earn unpublished checked 11 Jul 2026
- official OneCard — FD-backed route via SBM/Federal, deposits from ₹5,000 checked 11 Jul 2026
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