#80

TVS Credit RBL Bank Gold

Keep

₹1,500 for an international lounge door most cards twice the price don't open.

₹4,000

a year at ₹40,000 a month, after the fee

Verified · 5 documents

Skip the arithmetic — the board, ranked → · nothing to sign up for

What it's worth to you, after the fee

₹3,300
at ₹0.25L/month
₹4,000
at ₹0.4L/month
₹7,000
at ₹1L/month

Welcome: 6,000 Reward Points on one eligible retail transaction within 30 days of issuance and payment of the annual fee — credited within 60 days

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 utilities and 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 for itself at ₹20,000 a month

At ₹20,000 a month — ₹2,40,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹3,000 gross (earn ₹1,000 + bonuses ₹2,000) against its ₹1,500 fee = ₹1,500 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 · the network variants

RBL Bank / TVS Credit · Mastercard · entry

Mastercard
₹1,500 + GST
Annual fee1
None
Fee waiver

The take

TVS Credit RBL Bank Gold is the strongest travel find in this batch: for ₹1,500 it opens BOTH a domestic AND an international lounge door, something most of RBL's ₹3,000+ cards do not manage. The international leg is Priority Pass/LoungeKey-powered — 1 visit a calendar quarter on ₹1,00,000 of that quarter's spend, claimed as a voucher through the MyCard app and valid 180 days once issued. Domestic is friendlier: 1 visit on ₹50,000 of quarterly spend, a SECOND visit unlocked at ₹75,000. Earn is 2 Reward Points per ₹100 domestic (0.5% at ₹0.25 a point) and 10 per ₹100 on international purchases (2.5%, uncapped in the T&C — a rare uncapped accelerator on a card this cheap), plus 5% cashback on EazyDiner to ₹250 a month and a ₹500 dining/shopping voucher every quarter you clear ₹50,000. A 6,000-point welcome and a 6,000-point milestone at ₹2.5 lakh round it out. The ₹1,00,000 quarterly gate on the international lounge is real — most holders will not clear it every quarter — but the domestic door alone justifies the fee, and 3.5% forex on the swipes that do not earn the 2.5% keeps this honest rather than free.

Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel

Here is the fee, the spend that clears it, and everything that has moved under this card since you last decided.

₹20,000/mo is where it starts paying for itself

the whole desk — your spend, what changed, the downgrade →

Keep, downgrade or cancel

₹1,500/yr at stake · 5 spend bands

The charge ₹1,500/yr

Break-even ₹20,000 a month — ₹2,40,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee.

At your spend

₹3,300 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend

₹4,500 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend

₹7,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend

₹17,100 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend

₹27,200 a year, net of the fee, at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend

Everyday earn plus milestones, minus the fee — the same model as the value panel above, so the two cannot disagree. run your exact spend →

The downgrade

RBL Bank / TVS Credit 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

  • 23 Sep 2026 Axis EDGE brings Accor back, drops ITC, and adds Cathay, Miles & More and Hilton a program these points reach
  • 21 Aug 2026 Club ITC pays up to 50,000 bonus Green Points for spreading 10 nights across all five brands a program these points reach
  • 7 Jan 2026 RBL bolts a 1% fee onto FASTag loads and tolls — the fifth 1% line on its charge sheet 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

  • 1 complimentary international lounge visit a calendar quarter via Priority Pass/LoungeKey, on ₹1,00,000 of that quarter's spend
  • 1 domestic lounge visit on ₹50,000 of quarterly spend, a second unlocked at ₹75,000
  • 10 Reward Points per ₹100 (2.5%) on international purchases — uncapped in the product T&C
  • 5% cashback on EazyDiner to ₹250 a month, plus a ₹500 dining/shopping voucher every quarter you clear ₹50,000
  • ₹1,500 a year for an international lounge door — one of the cheapest on the board

Watch out

  • The international lounge needs ₹1,00,000 of spend inside a single calendar quarter — a high bar most holders will not clear every quarter
  • 2 RP per ₹100 (0.5%) on ordinary domestic spend — the 2.5% needs a foreign-currency swipe
  • 3.5% forex markup on every foreign transaction, including the ones earning the 2.5% accelerator
  • The excluded-MCC list (fuel, utilities, insurance, railways, real estate/rental, education, wallets, government, cash, misc) strips base points AND every milestone
  • 1 point = ₹0.05 on any redemption that is not a flight or a hotel, plus a ₹99 + GST fee per redemption day
  • Offline UPI transactions under ₹2,000 at small merchants (≤₹20 lakh turnover) earn nothing, per RBL's RuPay footnote
  • RBL charges 1% on FIVE transaction types its Schedule of Charges lists separately from the reward exclusions: rent (MCC 6513, on every transaction), fuel and auto above ₹10,000 a transaction (capped at ₹3,000), utility spends above ₹50,000 a month, education paid through third-party apps such as CRED, PhonePe or Paytm (school and college websites are exempt), and — with effect from 7 January 2026 — FASTag loading and tolls above ₹10,000 a transaction. These are FEES, listed nowhere near the reward exclusions: a category can both cost you 1% and earn you nothing

What these points actually fly

RBL Reward Points move to Club ITC — and that programme prices every award dynamically. There is no published chart to quote, so we quote nothing: an estimate is not a seat.

what the cards that DO reach a chart can fly — 2,196 corridors priced →

What earns, what doesn't

13 sourced rules · 8 pay zero

TVS Gold earns 2 Reward Points per ₹100 domestic and 10 per ₹100 international — and the international rate carries NO stated monthly cap, which is rare on this shelf. The exclusion table (§3.7) strips the same categories from the earn and from every quarterly threshold on the card, and those thresholds are the whole product: ₹50,000 a quarter buys a domestic lounge visit and a ₹500 voucher, ₹75,000 a second visit, ₹1,00,000 an international one.

Fuel excluded — No points — "Fuel & Auto" (MCC 0032, 2541, 4001, 5542, 5541, 5172) sits on the T&C's own category/MCC exclusion table; the 1% fuel surcharge waiver is the only fuel benefit
Rent & property management excluded — No points — "Real Estate/Rental" (MCC 6513) on the T&C's own category/MCC exclusion table. RBL also levies a 1% fee on every rental transaction, bank-wide
Government / tax excluded — No points — "Government Services" (MCC 9400, 1490, 2490, 2995, 7800, 9406, 9222, 9405, 9399, 9211, 9402, 9401, 9311, 9223) on the T&C's own category/MCC exclusion table
Utilities (electricity/water/gas) excluded — No points — "Utilities" (MCC 4900) on the T&C's own category/MCC exclusion table. RBL also levies a 1% fee on utility spend past ₹50,000 a month, bank-wide
Insurance excluded — No points — "Insurance" (MCC 6300, 6310) on the T&C's own category/MCC exclusion table
Education excluded — No points — "Education" (MCC 8220, 8244, 8249, 8211, 8241, 8299) on the T&C's own category/MCC exclusion table. RBL also levies a 1% fee on education paid through a third-party app
Wallet loads excluded — No points — "Wallet/Service Providers" (MCC 6540) on the T&C's own category/MCC exclusion table
Groceries & supermarkets full — Absent from the exclusion table — earns the base 2 RP per ₹100
Dining & food delivery not applicable
Telecom full — Telecom (MCC 4814) is absent from the T&C's own category/MCC exclusion table — earns the base rate (inferred from absence, flag)
Jewellery / gold full — Jewellery (MCC 5944, 5094) is absent from the T&C's own category/MCC exclusion table — earns the base rate (inferred from absence, flag)
Forex / international spends full — 10 RP per ₹100 on international purchases — 5x the domestic rate, with no ceiling on a month's earn stated anywhere in the T&C. The up-to-3.5% markup still applies
UPI (RuPay-on-UPI only) not applicable — Mastercard. The T&Cs UPI clause applies only to RuPay cards
EMI conversions / merchant EMI excluded — No points on any EMI conversion — Split-N-Pay, merchant EMI and EMI requests placed at the time of the transaction all forfeit accrual, and "Bills2Pay" is excluded alongside it
  • Fuel · excluded No points — "Fuel & Auto" (MCC 0032, 2541, 4001, 5542, 5541, 5172) sits on the T&C's own category/MCC exclusion table; the 1% fuel surcharge waiver is the only fuel benefit
  • Rent & property management · excluded No points — "Real Estate/Rental" (MCC 6513) on the T&C's own category/MCC exclusion table. RBL also levies a 1% fee on every rental transaction, bank-wide
  • Wallet loads · excluded No points — "Wallet/Service Providers" (MCC 6540) on the T&C's own category/MCC exclusion table
  • Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · excluded No points — "Utilities" (MCC 4900) on the T&C's own category/MCC exclusion table. RBL also levies a 1% fee on utility spend past ₹50,000 a month, bank-wide

per RBL Bank / TVS Credit T&C · rank every card by spend category →

Does your spend count toward the milestones?

not published — and we say which

₹2,50,000 a year is the bar for the first milestone. A different question from the one above — earning points and counting toward a threshold are separate rules, and issuers write them separately.

Not published. RBL Bank / TVS Credit states what the TVS Credit RBL Bank Gold earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the milestones — the ₹2,50,000 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

32 of 793 tracked doors
1 visit/calendar quarter on ₹50,000 of that quarter's spend, a 2nd once the quarter reaches ₹75,000 (up to 8/yr)
Domestic
1 visit/calendar quarter outside India on ₹1,00,000 of that quarter's spend, issued as a LoungeKey voucher claimed in the RBL MyCard app (valid 180 days), US$35 thereafter
International
Paid after the complimentary visits are exhausted; ₹25 (domestic) or US$1 (international) is authorised for validation and reversed in the same month's statement
Guests

Gate: Spend in the CURRENT calendar quarter, not the preceding one — ₹50,000 unlocks the 1st domestic visit, ₹75,000 the 2nd, ₹1,00,000 the international one; the standard RBL exclusion list and all EMI conversions are stripped out first

Opens 32 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 19 airports — see the full map →

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.

Route Direct application
Income · salaried not published
Income · self-employed not published
Age band not published

Direct application — no invite list, no banking relationship required.

RBL Bank / TVS Credit publishes no income or age cutoffs for this card. Blank means blank — we don't invent numbers to fill a grid.

per the official RBL Bank / TVS Credit 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

7 of 7 MITC rows published

What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.

Forex markup Up to 3.5% + GST — RBL's 0% markup carve-out names only the Safari family and Lumière
APR Bureau-score-tiered: 3.35%/mo (40.20%/yr) at CIBIL >775; 3.85%/mo (46.20%/yr) at 725–775; 3.99%/mo (47.88%/yr) below 725
Late fee 12.5% of the outstanding amount, min ₹5, max ₹1,300
Cash advance 2.5%, min ₹500
Add-on card ₹200 per add-on card (RBL's MITC fee table)
Overlimit Nil — RBL levies no overlimit fee on any card
Redemption fee ₹99 + GST per redemption day — one fee covers all redemptions that day

Fee ₹1,500 both years, no spend waiver. Every benefit on this card is bought with quarterly spend, and the ladder is unusually explicit: ₹50,000 in a calendar quarter unlocks 1 domestic lounge visit that quarter, a further ₹25,000 (₹75,000 cumulative) unlocks a second, and ₹1,00,000 unlocks 1 international visit — issued not at the door but as a LoungeKey voucher claimed in the MyCard app in the first week of the following month, valid 180 days, with US$1 authorised for validation and US$35 charged for anything beyond the complimentary visit. A ₹500 shopping/dining voucher (Amazon, Flipkart, Swiggy or Zomato) also lands at ₹50,000 of quarterly spend and must be claimed within 90 days. Earn is 2 Reward Points per ₹100 domestic and 10 per ₹100 international — the international rate carries no stated cap, which is rare on this shelf. EazyDiner pays 5% back, capped ₹250 a month. One annual milestone: 6,000 points at ₹2.5 lakh. Every threshold above excludes the standard RBL list (Fuel & Auto, Utilities, Insurance, Quasi-Cash, Railways, Real Estate/Rental, Education, Wallet/Service Providers, Government Services, Contracted Services, Cash, Miscellaneous, Bills2Pay, EMI). Fuel surcharge waiver 1% on ₹500–₹4,000 fills, capped ₹200 a month. No income or age criteria published.

per the official RBL Bank / TVS Credit MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026

What's changed for this card

6 dated changes

Full tracker →

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.

  • 23 Sept 2026
    Partner major Axis Bank
    Axis EDGE brings Accor back, drops ITC, and adds Cathay, Miles & More and Hilton
    Accor and Marriott off the grid since 2 April 2026; Club ITC live; no Cathay, Miles & More or Hilton → Accor live at the punished rates; ITC removed; Cathay, Hilton and Miles & More live; Marriott still gone

    Axis's own Travel EDGE terms, re-read 25 September 2026, already show the grid that went live on 23 September. Accor ALL is back, and not at the old Atlas 1:2: EDGE Miles convert at 2:1 (Olympus 1:2) and EDGE Rewards at 5:1, with Magnus for Burgundy at 5:2 and only Burgundy Private still at 5:4. Club ITC is off the table. Three partners are new. Cathay Asia Miles sits on that same punished grid. Hilton Honors is the ordinary one: EDGE Miles 1:2, EDGE Rewards 5:2, Burgundy 5:4. Lufthansa Miles & More is the exception on Atlas, which converts 1:1 there while every other standard airline on that card is 1:2; the EDGE Rewards side of Miles & More is the ordinary 5:2. Marriott stays removed. Qatar Privilege Club was already back. Flying Blue, Air India and Qantas moved into Group A, which is the capped group. The Axis Rewards credit card's Amex network is advertised as joining-fee and annual-fee nil for a limited period; there is no separate Amex variant on this board, so that offer is not modelled as a fee change.

  • 22 Aug 2026
    Launch minor RBL Bank
    RBL relaunches the Shoppers Stop co-brand as a Gold / Platinum / Black trio
  • 21 Aug 2026
    Buff minor Club ITC
    Club ITC pays up to 50,000 bonus Green Points for spreading 10 nights across all five brands
  • 7 Jan 2026
    Fee minor RBL Bank
    RBL bolts a 1% fee onto FASTag loads and tolls — the fifth 1% line on its charge sheet
  • 1 Jul 2025
    Lounge moderate RBL Bank
    RBL gates domestic lounges behind ₹35k a quarter
  • 15 Oct 2024
    Devaluation moderate RBL Bank
    RBL strips points from education, government and wallet spends