PNB VISA Classic
KeepFree forever, a quarter of a per cent back, and a ceiling of ₹1,00,000 — PNB's entry door, honestly labelled.
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
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 →
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.
3 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants · why it ranks #527
Why #527 The floor of PNB's shelf, and honestly priced: nothing to take it, nothing to keep it, a quarter of a per cent back, and a credit limit that stops at ₹1,00,000. It ranks where a free card with no lounge, no welcome and no accelerator ranks — near the bottom, but above every card that charges you for the same nothing.
The take
This is the bottom rung of Punjab National Bank's Visa shelf and there is no catch in the price. PNB's MITC gives VISA CLASSIC its own row and prints NIL in every fee cell — joining, add-on joining and annual — with the waiver column reading "NA" because there is nothing to waive. Two add-on cards come free with it. That is the entire case for the card, and for a reader who wants a credit line with no annual drag it is a real one. Everything else is thin. The earn is one Reward Point per ₹100, and PNB's own MITC values a point at 25 paise, so a quarter of a per cent — with no accelerated category, no milestone and no welcome bonus (the 300-point first-transaction offer PNB runs sits on the RuPay variants, not this one). The points go to the PNB Rewardz catalogue or to statement cashback and nowhere else: no airline, no hotel, no program hop exists on this currency at all. There is no lounge access on the product page or in the fee schedule, and foreign spend pays the full 3.50% markup PNB charges on everything except its LUXURA metal cards. The ceiling is the other thing to know before applying. PNB's Key Fact Statement caps the Classic credit limit at ₹1,00,000 — the lowest band on the whole shelf, a fifth of what the Gold rung allows — and cash is 20% of that. If you want the same free card with room to spend, ask about Gold or RuPay Platinum instead; both cost ₹300–₹500 a year but both start where this card stops.
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
₹800 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹1,500 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹3,000 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹9,000 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹15,000 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
Punjab National 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.
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
- Genuinely lifetime free — PNB's MITC prints NIL for the joining fee, the add-on joining fee and the annual fee, with the waiver column reading NA
- Two add-on cards, free, for a spouse, parents or children over 18
- 1 Reward Point per ₹100 (0.25% at the 25 paise a point PNB's MITC assigns)
- Cheapest charges on the shelf when things go wrong: ₹250 minimum over-limit, ₹100 cheque return, ₹100 card replacement, ₹50 PIN replacement — all half what PNB's RuPay cards pay
- 1% fuel surcharge waiver, minimum ₹10, on fills above ₹400 and below ₹3,000
- 20 to 50 interest-free days on retail purchases when the previous month cleared in full
Watch out
- Credit limit is capped at ₹1,00,000 — the lowest band on PNB's entire shelf, and cash advances are 20% of that
- No lounge access of any kind, on the product page or in the fee schedule
- 3.50% forex markup — PNB's nil-markup benefit belongs to the LUXURA metal cards and to nothing else
- No welcome bonus: the 300-point first-transaction offer runs on PNB's RuPay variants, not on this one
- pnb-reward-points has zero ways out — no airline, no hotel, no program hop — so the catalogue or statement cashback is the only exit
- PNB contradicts itself on what a point is worth: the Rewardz page says 50 paise, the MITC says 25 paise and uses 25 paise to convert a negative balance to a debit. This desk prices the MITC's number
- Revolving interest is 2.95% a month, a 35.89% annual compounded rate, and a minimum 5% of the outstanding is due each cycle
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes PNB 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 →
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.
Branch application or PNB's own card portal at pnbcard.in, which runs a pre-qualified funnel for existing PNB account holders. Ask what limit is on offer before accepting: Classic tops out at ₹1,00,000 and the Gold rung starts at ₹50,000 and runs to ₹5,00,000.
Punjab National 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
nothing tracked yet — which is itself a fact
No tracked devaluations or changes yet — this card's history starts here.
Verified against Punjab National Bank's own documents on · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 4 of them, each with the day we read it
- official PNB's Most Important Terms and Conditions for retail credit cards — the fee table row pricing VISA Classic at NIL joining, NIL add-on and NIL annual, and the 25 paise point value
- official PNB VISA Classic product page — the free add-on cards, the 1-point-per-₹100 line and the absence of any lounge claim
- official PNB Rewardz programme page — the per-variant earning table that gives VISA Classic its rate by BIN
- official PNB's bank-wide Key Fact Statement — the ₹10,000-to-₹1,00,000 Classic credit-limit band, the Classic/Gold fee concessions and the 3.50% forex markup