YES Bank Zagg Credit Card
KeepLifetime free, two lounge visits a quarter, 0.75% back — as long as you pay through one particular app.
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 →
Pays from the first rupee
At ₹1,000 a month — ₹12,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹100 gross (earn ₹100) against its ₹0 fee = ₹100 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 #168
Why #168 Lifetime free with two domestic lounge visits a quarter at a ₹50,000 gate — the cheapest real lounge quota on the board. Ranked below Select because the coins only accrue inside one app.
₹0.25 a coin, and the co-brand partner prints it: "4 Zagg Coins equal ₹1 and can be redeemed directly into your bank account." Cash is the only door, which also makes it the best one — there is no portal markup to lose and no airline or hotel to reach. Zagg Coins are NOT YES Rewardz: the bank's own T&C says any Zagg-app programme "would be the sole responsibility of the TPAP", and Zagg is absent from the MITC table listing every card that earns YES Rewardz.
The take
This is the cheapest genuine lounge key in India, and almost nobody describes it correctly. It costs nothing to get and nothing to keep — the fee grid in YES Bank's own MITC puts Zagg in the NIL/NIL row — and once you have put ₹50,000 through it in a calendar quarter it opens two domestic lounges a quarter in the next one, on the same ₹50,000 gate YES charges ₹599 for on Select and gives one visit a quarter for. Eight domestic visits a year, free, is a proposition the premium shelf charges four figures to match. The earn is where the card is routinely oversold. Zagg's rewards policy says "3% of the transaction amount will be credited as Zagg Coins", which reads like 3% cashback and is not: its own worked example is ₹100 in, three coins out, and Zagg's FAQ prices a coin at a quarter of a rupee — "4 Zagg Coins equal ₹1". So the real rate is 0.75%, paid straight into your bank account, and only on payments made through the Zagg app's own UPI. Pay with any other UPI app and you earn nothing; swipe the card and you earn nothing; the card earns no YES Rewardz at all. Add the exclusion list — rent, utilities, insurance, education, government, taxes, jewellery, DTH, fuel — and a ceiling of 1.5% of your credit limit in coins per statement cycle, and this is a lounge card with a rewards garnish, not a rewards card. Take it for exactly that. It is lifetime free, it is a RuPay card so it links to UPI, and the worst case is that you never earn a coin and still walk into eight lounges a year. What it is not is a card to route your spending through: 0.75% inside one app, 3.50% forex, and a reward ledger the issuing bank explicitly disclaims responsibility for. Keep it, use it for the doors, and earn your points somewhere else.
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
₹1,900 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹3,800 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹7,600 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹22,700 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹37,800 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
YES 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.
What has changed under this card
- 15 Jun 2026 YES's ₹100 redemption fee reaches Marquee and Reserv issuer-wide
- 15 Jun 2026 YES Bank raises forex on almost every card it sells — SELECT takes 75 basis points in one step issuer-wide
- 1 Apr 2025 YES lounge gate triples to ₹1 lakh on Marquee and Reserv 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
- Lifetime free — zero joining fee and zero renewal fee, in YES Bank's own MITC
- Two complimentary domestic lounge visits a quarter after ₹50,000 of spend in the previous one
- 0.75% back as Zagg Coins on Zagg-app UPI spend, redeemed as cash into your bank account
- RuPay, so it links to UPI and pays merchant QR codes directly
- 1% fuel-surcharge waiver on transactions from ₹400 to ₹5,000, capped ₹250 a statement cycle
- Entry bar is low: ₹25,000 a month net salary or a ₹7.5 lakh ITR
Watch out
- Coins accrue ONLY through the Zagg app's own UPI — another UPI app, a swipe or an online checkout earns nothing
- "3% Zagg Coins" is 0.75% in money: 3 coins per ₹100, and 4 coins make ₹1
- Earning is capped each statement cycle at 1.5% of your credit limit in coins (since 23-Sep-2025)
- Rent, utilities, insurance, education, government, fines, taxes, jewellery, cable/DTH and fuel earn zero
- The card earns no YES Rewardz — YES Bank disclaims the Zagg programme as "the sole responsibility of the TPAP"
- 3.50% forex, plus YES Bank's separate 1% DCC markup on rupee-billed foreign transactions
- No international lounge access, no welcome benefit, no milestone ladder
- Cards ISSUED before 10-Jan-2025 are on the old deal: a ₹399 annual fee waived at ₹1,80,000 of spend, and Rio coins at 1.5 per ₹50 on UPI
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes Zagg Coins 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 · 10 pay zero
An inverted grid, and the inversion is the point: on every other card here the question is which MCCs earn LESS, and on Zagg the question is whether the payment went through one particular app at all. Zagg's own rewards policy is explicit — "Users can earn Zagg Coins only on eligible transactions made via the Zagg Yes Bank Credit Card through the Zagg UPI platform" — so a swipe, an online checkout or a payment made from any other UPI app earns nothing regardless of merchant code. On top of that sits a conventional exclusion list, a ₹50 transaction floor, a Bharat-QR and mandate carve-out, and a ceiling of 1.5% of the assigned credit limit in coins per statement cycle (effective 23-Sep-2025). This card earns no YES Rewardz, so none of the bank's own category rules apply to it.
- Fuel · excluded Zero coins. A 1% fuel-surcharge waiver applies instead on transactions from ₹400 to ₹5,000, capped ₹250 a statement cycle — the most generous cap on the YES shelf below Marquee
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero coins — "Real Estate Agents and Managers – Rentals" is the first line of Zagg's own exclusion list
- Wallet loads · excluded Zero coins on POI (Point of Interaction) funding transactions — Zagg's wording for a wallet or prepaid load
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · excluded Zero coins ("Utilities – Electric, Gas, Heating Oil, Sanitary, Water"), and unlike the YES Rewardz cards there is no reduced rate behind the exclusion
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.
Direct application — no invite list, no banking relationship required.
You do not apply to YES Bank for this one. The bank's own page says to "visit our partner's website / download the partner's mobile application", and the journey runs through the Zagg app — built by Rivpe Technology Pvt Ltd, still shipping under the package name `omnicash.rio.app` from its Rio-branded era. Eligibility is 21 to 60, a net salary of ₹25,000 a month or an ITR of ₹7.5 lakh, and the standing YES catch applies: existing YES Bank credit cardholders are not eligible. Zagg also reserves the right to charge its own platform fee, which YES Bank discloses and does not quantify.
per the official YES 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.
NIL joining and NIL annual: Zagg sits in the membership-fee grid's "NIL / NIL / NA / NA" row. Footnote **** carries the only surviving fee, and it is a dated POPULATION rather than a variant — "Zagg Credit Card issued prior to 10th Jan'25 has an annual fee of INR 399 + applicable GST which will be waived on annual spends of INR 1,80,000". Domestic lounge access gated on ₹50,000 of prior-quarter spend; no international lounge feature. Fuel surcharge waiver of 1% on transactions from ₹400 to ₹5,000, capped ₹250 a statement cycle. Zagg is absent from the YES Rewardz utility-capping table — it earns Zagg Coins, a programme YES Bank disclaims as the TPAP's.
per the official YES Bank MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
What's changed for this card
7 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.
- 15 Jun 2026YES's ₹100 redemption fee reaches Marquee and ReservMarquee and Reserv exempt from the ₹100-per-redemption fee; card reissuance ₹100–₹200 by variant → ₹100 fee on every redemption request, premium cards included, plus a ₹99 booking fee on YES Rewardz flights; reissuance ₹199; fuel-surcharge waiver window revised
The exemption that let Marquee and Reserv holders pretend the ₹100 redemption fee was someone else's problem is gone. From 15 June 2026 every YES card pays ₹100 per redemption request, and booking a flight through YES Rewardz — the only place the points are worth their ₹0.25 — stacks a ₹99 booking fee on top. On a card whose whole pitch is settling 4.5% online earnings in portal travel, YES now charges you twice at the exit.
- 15 Jun 2026YES Bank raises forex on almost every card it sells — SELECT takes 75 basis points in one step
- 15 Jun 2026Reserv's forex markup goes 1.75% to 2%
- 1 Apr 2025YES lounge gate triples to ₹1 lakh on Marquee and Reserv
- 1 Apr 2025Government and ad spends stop earning on 13 YES cards
- 1 Dec 2024YES caps travel redemptions at 70% of the invoice
- 15 Dec 2023YES returns to super-premium with the Marquee
Every YES Bank change we've dated → 7 events since 2023, 6 of them nerfs — worst year 2026.
Verified against YES Bank's own documents on · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 5 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product page — "Zero First Year Membership Fee / Zero Renewal Membership Fee"; two domestic lounge visits a quarter at ₹50,000 of prior-quarter spend; eligibility 21–60 at ₹25,000/month
- official MITC (CMITC_V18_07082026) — Zagg at NIL joining and NIL annual; forex 3.50%; domestic lounge threshold ₹50,000 a quarter; fuel waiver ₹400–₹5,000 capped ₹250 a cycle
- official Zagg Rewards Policy (Rivpe Technology Pvt Ltd) — 3 Zagg Coins per ₹100 on Zagg-UPI spend, the excluded MCC list, and the 1.5%-of-credit-limit cap per statement cycle
- official Zagg FAQ — "4 Zagg Coins equal ₹1 and can be redeemed directly into your bank account. Every ₹100 you spend with your Zagg Card on the Zagg UPI app gets you 3 Zagg Coins."
- official Zagg's document index — confirms the YES BANK Zagg Credit Card is issued on RuPay by YES BANK Limited, with Rivpe Technology as co-brand partner