Utkarsh Eternal Credit Card
Downgrade1.25% back in rupees, ₹1,999 a year, and absolutely nothing else in the box.
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: 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 →
Breaks even only by erasing its fee at ₹15,000 a month
At ₹15,000 a month — ₹1,80,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹1,900 gross (earn ₹1,900) against a fee of ₹0 — the ₹1,999 is waived, the spend having cleared ₹1,50,000 a year = ₹1,900 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.
3 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants · why it ranks #274
Why #274 Flat 1.25% paid as rupees off the statement, with nothing else attached — no lounge, no welcome, no accelerator. At ₹1,999 the card only pays for itself above the ₹1.5 lakh waiver line, and Utkarsh's own SmartGen does the same job at ₹199.
The unit is the rupee, credited against the card account: Utkarsh's MITC says "Cash back credited to Your Credit Card Account will be adjusted towards the balance on Your Next Credit Card Statement." So ₹1.00 is floor, value and ceiling alike. Utkarsh publishes no monthly or annual ceiling on the 1.25% — what it publishes instead is a twelve-line list of transactions that earn nothing at all, and that list is the real limit on this card.
The take
Utkarsh's mid card is the flat-cashback shape with no ornament whatsoever. 1.25% on every eligible transaction, paid the honest way — the MITC says cashback "will be adjusted towards the balance on Your Next Credit Card Statement", so it is rupees off what you owe, not points in a catalogue you have to go shopping in. There is no welcome benefit, no milestone, no accelerated category, no lounge access and no membership. What there is, instead, is a ₹1,999 renewal fee from the second year and a twelve-line exclusion list that is wider than most: wallet loads, financial institutions, government services, charities, foreign-currency purchases, insurance, railway, mutual funds, education, transport, fuel and utility bills all earn zero. Take rail, transport, fuel and utilities out of an Indian wallet and a meaningful slice of ordinary spend stops earning. Run the arithmetic against the fee and the card only makes sense at one spend level: you need ₹1,50,000 of eligible spend a year to waive the fee, and at exactly that number the card returns ₹1,875 against a ₹1,999 charge it just waived — so it is free and pays you, but barely. Below the waiver line it is negative, and Utkarsh's own SmartGen does the same flat-cashback job at ₹199 with a ₹50,000 waiver. The one genuinely good number is the forex: 3% against the 3.5% almost every Indian issuer charges, which is not a reason to take the card abroad but is a reason not to fear it there — except that "Foreign Currency Purchase" is on the ineligible list, so the spend that costs you 3% earns you nothing. Available FD-backed from age 18 or unsecured from 21, and only to existing Utkarsh customers by pre-approved invitation.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
This card reaches break-even by ERASING its fee, not by out-earning it: the waiver is the decision.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
₹1,999/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹0 joining, then ₹1,999/yr
The waiver ₹1,50,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹12,500 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹15,000 a month — ₹1,80,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee, and it gets there by erasing the fee at the waiver rather than out-earning it.
At your spend
₹3,200 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹6,300 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹12,600 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹37,800 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹63,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
Everyday earn plus milestones, minus the fee — the same model as the value panel above, so the two cannot disagree. run your exact spend →
Your copy of this card
You hold this card.
Kept on this device, in your browser. It is never sent to us, never synced, and nothing else on the site reads it yet.
The downgrade
Utkarsh Small Finance 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
- Flat 1.25% on all eligible transactions, credited against the card balance on the next statement
- No joining fee at all — Utkarsh prints a separate joining line and it reads Nil
- First year free; the ₹1,999 renewal is waived on ₹1,50,000 of spend in the previous year
- 3% foreign-currency surcharge, below India's 3.5% norm
- 1% fuel surcharge refunded on transactions of ₹400 to ₹5,000, capped at ₹400 a statement cycle
- Available FD-backed from age 18 — the fixed deposit becomes the credit limit, and the FD-backed variant also carries a lower 2.5%-a-month finance charge
- Add-on cards carry no annual fee and no joining fee
Watch out
- Twelve categories earn ZERO: wallet recharges, financial institutions, government services, charities, foreign-currency purchase, insurance, railway, mutual funds, education, transport, fuel and utility payments
- At the ₹1,50,000 waiver threshold the card returns ₹1,875 of cashback against a ₹1,999 fee — it is only worth holding above that line, and Utkarsh's own SmartGen does the same job at ₹199
- No welcome benefit, no milestone, no accelerated category, no lounge access and no membership of any kind
- Interest is 3% a month, 36% a year on the unsecured variant (2.5% a month on the FD-backed one)
- Cash advance costs 5% or ₹500, whichever is higher, and the cash limit is 20% of the credit limit
- Rent payments carry a 1% surcharge, capped at 40% of the credit limit in a billing cycle
- Overlimit is ₹500 or 2.5% whichever is higher, card replacement ₹500, late payment ₹500, and a physical statement ₹50
- Utkarsh publishes no card-specific cashback cap, so the exclusion list is the only stated limit — a rate with no published ceiling is also a rate with no published floor on how it can be revised
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 →
What earns, what doesn't
11 sourced rules · 7 pay zero
- Fuel · excluded Named outright on Utkarsh's 'List of Ineligible transactions for cashback' — zero cashback. The 1% fuel SURCHARGE waiver still applies, on transactions of ₹400 to ₹5,000 and capped at ₹400 a statement cycle, with GST not refunded
- Wallet loads · excluded Named on the ineligible list as 'Wallet recharges' — zero cashback
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · excluded Named on the ineligible list as 'Utility Payments (Electricity, Telephone, Internet, Water etc)' — zero cashback
- Insurance · excluded Named on the ineligible list — zero cashback
per Utkarsh Small Finance Bank T&C · rank every card by spend category →
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹1,50,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹1,999 fee. A different question from the one above — earning points and counting toward a threshold are separate rules, and issuers write them separately.
Not published. Utkarsh Small Finance Bank states what the Utkarsh Eternal Credit Card earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver — the ₹1,50,000 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
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.
Invite-only — there is no public application form. The bank calls you.
Not a public application. Utkarsh's own eligibility block reads "For our existing customers who are holding an active Current Account, Savings Account, FD Account & Loan Account", and then "Eligible Customers will receive a Pre-Approved/Pre-Qualified Credit Card link on their personal registered email id with the Bank." So you need a relationship with the bank first and an invitation second; there is no apply form for a stranger. Two age doors, because two variants exist: 21 to 65 for the unsecured card, 18 to 65 for the FD-backed one, where a fixed deposit becomes the credit limit and the finance charge drops from 3% a month to 2.5%. No additional documents are required beyond current KYC. Once issued, the card must be activated within 30 days or it is closed under the RBI's own rule, and activation runs through Utkarsh's separate credit-card portal rather than its banking app.
per the official Utkarsh Small Finance 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
7 of 7 MITC rows published
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
our published-nil-fee rule TWO-ROW FEE SHAPE. Utkarsh prints a SEPARATE joining line reading Nil in three documents — the product page's Limits and Charges table ("Joining Fee — No joining fee"), the MITC v2.1 fee grid ("Joining Fees — NIL") and the KFS's Annual Fees cell ("No annual fee or joining fee") — beside the renewal figure, so joining is ₹0 and the annual fee is ₹1,999 from the second year, waived at ₹1.5 lakh. First year free. Cashback is STATEMENT CREDIT: MITC v2.1 §(m), "Cash back credited to Your Credit Card Account will be adjusted towards the balance on Your Next Credit Card Statement." Card association MasterCard per the KFS — whose forex row nonetheless ends "using Visa currency conversion at transaction point", boilerplate that also appears on the RuPay SmartGen sheet. Twelve categories earn zero: wallet recharges, financial institutions, government services, charities, foreign-currency purchase, insurance, railway, mutual funds, education, transport, fuel, utilities. Rent carries a 1% surcharge capped at 40% of the credit limit a cycle; the fuel surcharge waiver is 1% on ₹400–₹5,000 transactions, capped at ₹400 a cycle, GST not refunded. Return payment 2.5%, card replacement ₹500, physical statement ₹50, e-statements nil. No lounge access — MITC §(d) names Rhodium and only Rhodium. Utkarsh publishes no income criterion for any of its credit cards; the gate is an existing banking relationship plus a pre-approved invitation.
per the official Utkarsh Small Finance Bank MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
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 Utkarsh Small Finance 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 Key Fact Statement — Utkarsh Eternal: Mastercard, first year free and ₹1,999 from the second, waived at ₹1.5 lakh, 3% foreign-currency surcharge, and the ineligible list
- official Utkarsh Eternal product page — the 1.25% flat cashback, the separate "Joining Fee — No joining fee" row, and the invitation-only eligibility
- official Utkarsh Small Finance Bank Credit Card MITC v2.1 — cashback is adjusted against the next statement balance, and the three-column fee grid confirms Joining Fees NIL