Best Credit Card Options: Credit cards are one of the most important products for financial management. If you have just started earning, you should get your first credit card soon. Credit cards eliminate the worry of cash and are also a great way to get rewards on day-to-day expenses. If you are thinking of getting a credit card for the first time, then we have brought some card suggestions for you.
However, before this you have to pay attention to some things about how you should use the credit card.
- -Do not treat credit card as free money. Use it to spend on your daily expenses. It should not be considered a means of wasteful expenditure.
- -Always pay your credit card bill in full and before the due date.
- -Always review your credit card statements and check for any errors or fraudulent transactions.
- -Never borrow from a credit card. This is the most expensive way of borrowing. Its interest rate is as high as 42% per annum.
- -Use it as a means to build credit history and earn rewards on your spends.
- -Use credit card to consolidate bank statements.
Now that we understand the key points to remember while using a credit card, let’s understand the features of some cards that can be good for you as a beginner user. These cards will be a stepping stone to move towards better and more rewarding cards in the future.
ICICI Amazon Pay Credit Card is
a great co-branded card between ICICI and Amazon that is free for lifetime. This card gives you 5% unlimited cash-back on all spends made on Amazon as an Amazon Prime member. If you are not a Prime member, you get 3% back. This cashback gets credited to your Amazon Pay wallet. You also get 2% back on all spends made on Amazon Pay for things like utilities and insurance. All the cashback credited to your wallet can be used for spends made through Amazon Pay wallet. However, there is no lounge access on this card.
SBI Cashback Card
This card is better than the ICICI Amazon Pay card but comes with a joining fee of Rs 999 plus GST. The renewal fee remains the same but is waived off on spending Rs 2 lakh in a year. The premise of this card is simple. It will give you a flat 5% cashback on all online spends. The cashback limit is Rs 5,000 per statement cycle. The cashback reduces to 1% if you spend more than Rs 1 lakh per statement cycle.
Cashback is available on online spends on Amazon, Big Basket, Flipkart, Myntra, Ola, Swiggy, Rapido, Uber and many more. This card also does not offer any lounge access. The cashback is credited to your statement which can be adjusted against your future spends. This card does not offer any rewards on spends like fuel, utility, insurance, rental payments.
IndusInd Tiger Credit Card
This is a co-branded card between IndusInd Bank and Tiger Fintech which is lifetime free. This is a great card. It gives you 2 domestic lounge access per quarter and 2 international lounge access per year. Not only this, it is also a good card for overseas spends as the forex markup charges are only 1.5% plus GST. You also get complimentary movie tickets worth up to ₹500 on BookMyShow every 6 months. However, this card does not offer any rewards on spends like fuel, utility, insurance, rental payments.
American Express Membership Rewards Card
This card has a first year fee of ₹1,000 and a renewal fee of ₹3,500. The renewal fee is reduced by ₹1,500 per year when you apply for the card through a referral. The renewal fee is completely waived off if you spend ₹1.5 lakh in a year and a 50% discount if you spend ₹90,000. The card will give you 1 reward point for every ₹50 spent. No rewards are earned on fuel, insurance, utilities, taxes and EMI conversions.
You will get 1,000 bonus points for making 4 transactions of at least Rs 1,500 in a calendar month. You will get 1,000 additional points for spending a total amount of ₹20,000 in a calendar month.