IndusInd Tiger credit card is a co-brand credit card of IndusInd Bank and Tiger Fintech (A Bajaj Capital group company). The USP of the IndusInd Tiger credit card is that it’s a lifetime-free credit card and gives a 1:1.2 transfer ratio to Vistara CV miles.
What are the other features of the IndusInd Tiger credit card? Should you apply for one? Please read my review to find out.
IndusInd Tiger Credit Card
Fees:
- Lifetime free
Rewards and Benefits
- Reward points:
- Unique tiered structure where you earn reward points based on your annual spending. For spends up to 1lk you get 1 reward point on every 100 spent. This increases to 6 reward points for every 100 spent on annual spends of 5lks and above.
- Spends on utility bill payments, insurance premiums, government services, Educational Institutes, Real Estate, and rental payments will get only 1 reward point.
- Fuel transactions will not accrue any reward points.
- Reward points can be converted into cash credit at 1 point = 40p. They can be transferred to Vistara at a 1:1.2 conversion ratio.
- 1 free movie ticket of up to 500 on BMS every 6 months
- Forex markup of 1.5%+GST
- 2 complimentary domestic and 2 international lounge access every quarter
- 1 complimentary golf game or lesson every quarter
Thoughts on the IndusInd Tiger Credit Card
Positives of the IndusInd Tiger credit card
Unique tiered reward structure
The IndusInd Tiger credit card offers a unique tiered reward structure where the more you spend, the higher the reward rate you earn. The way this works is for spends of up to 1lk you get 1 reward point for every 100 spent. For spends of up to 2.5lk, you get 2 reward points on the additional 1.5lk spent. For annual spending of up to 5lk in an anniversary year, you get 4 reward points on the additional 2.5lk spent. Further, on all spends above 5lk, you get a handsome 6 reward points per 100 spent. The same is explained in the table below:
The catch here is that a few categories such as utility bill payments, insurance premiums, government services, Educational Institutes, Real Estate, and rental payments are not counted in the milestone threshold in the IndusInd Tiger credit card. These categories will fetch you 1 reward point for every 100 spent. In addition, all fuel spends don’t get any reward points.
Best suited for people who have high annual spends
The IndusInd Tiger credit card is best suited for people with annual spending outside the excluded category. The table below highlights how the reward rate increases as you spend more with this credit card.
Thus, the IndusInd Tiger credit card is more suited for self-employed, business professionals who have large spends across various categories and can benefit from this credit card.
Great conversion ratio with Vistara
The IndusInd Tiger credit card offers a very good conversion ratio of 1:1.2 to Vistara CV points. I don’t remember any LTF credit card offering such a good conversion ratio. In the example above where the annual spends are 6lks in an anniversary year outside the excluded categories then you get 24k CV points (20k reward points converted into CV points at 1.2 ratio).
The 24k CV points are sufficient for a one-way economy ticket between Delhi and Bali or Singapore. The flight tickets for Singapore generally cost around 15k and Bali generally costs anywhere between 25-28k on Vistara. Thus, you can get a very good reward rate of anywhere between 2.5-4.7% on your annual spending on the IndusInd Tiger credit card.
Vistara as such has good redemption options from India and I have redeemed my points for multiple Vistara points in the past. Have discussed the same here and here.
Do note that the value of airmiles varies a lot depending on routes. The above is just an example and your actual reward rate may vary a bit.
Free Lounge Access
The IndusInd Tiger credit card offers 2 domestic lounge access and 2 international lounge access free every quarter. The international lounge access is via Priority Pass. This translates into 8 domestic and international lounge access every year. Not bad at all for a lifetime free credit card.
I read in a few places that many people are using the IndusInd Tiger credit card as their backup lounge access card when they need to take their guests or friends into a lounge. 😊
Low forex markup (1.5%)
The IndusInd Tiger credit card charges 1.5%+GST as forex markup. Given that there are many zero forex markup credit cards out there the reason why the IndusInd Tiger credit card stands out is if your annual spends are above 5lk a year then you get a reward rate of ~4.4% when converting to Vistara CV miles. Thus, a net return of approx. 2.6% on forex spends.
Negatives of the IndusInd Tiger Credit Card
Low reward rate for utilities and insurance
The IndusInd Tiger credit card gives only 1 reward point for every 100 spent on utility bill payments, insurance premiums, government services, Educational Institutes, Real Estate, and rental payments. Further, these spends are not counted towards the milestone spends either.
Since these spends are not counted towards milestone payments, the IndusInd Bank could have given a higher reward rate on these spends at least on the utility bill payment and insurance spends.
No status with Vistara
Since the IndusInd Tiger credit card is not an airmiles credit card it does not offer any status with Vistara. Many Vistara co-brand credit cards offer the Silver and Gold tiers with Vistara but not the IndusInd Tiger credit card.
Vistara is merging with Air India. A big risk!
Vistara will be merged with Air India very soon and thus the CV points will also be merged with Air India’s Flying Return program. This remains a big risk in my opinion. While, Air Vistara has mailed that CV points will be transferred to Air India in a 1:1 ratio, which is a good thing. My worry is that post the merger many of the Vistara co-brand credit cards may cease to exist and transfer ratios with all partners will undergo a revision.
Conclusion
The IndusInd Tiger credit card is a decent LTF credit card with free lounge access and a very good conversion ratio on Vistara. Its unique reward structure benefits users who have very high credit card spending on non-exclusion categories. Thus, if you have high spends (say above 10lk a year) and fly Vistara very often then you should opt for this credit card.
Do you own the IndusInd Tiger Credit Card? What’s your opinion about the card? Do share the same in the comment box below.
Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash. This post was published/last updated on 13th July 2024
Disclaimer
In the interest of full disclosure, Credit Cardz may earn a referral bonus for anyone that’s approved through some of the links in this post. However, opinions and views expressed here are of the author's alone and not those of the bank, credit card issuer, or anyone else and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.
