Best credit cards for international travel

Everything a travel card is sold on — miles, lounges, hotel status — is worth less than one number almost no comparison shows you: the foreign currency markup. It is a percentage the bank adds to every transaction made in a currency other than the rupee, and it applies whether you are paying a Tokyo restaurant, a Lisbon hotel or Netflix billed in dollars.

Fifty-three of the sixty-nine cards in our catalogue publish a markup. Thirty-seven of them charge 3.5%, the Indian industry default. Sixteen charge less. Five charge nothing at all. That spread is the single largest cost difference between two travel cards, and it is invisible until the statement arrives.

The markup itself attracts 18% GST, so 3.5% is really 4.13% in cash out of your account. Run it on a real trip:

• Rs. 1,00,000 spent abroad on a 3.5% card: Rs. 4,130 in markup.
• The same Rs. 1,00,000 on a 0% card: Rs. 0.
• A two-week family holiday at Rs. 2,50,000 of card spend: Rs. 10,325 against nothing.

Rs. 10,325 is more than the annual fee on all but three cards in the catalogue. On international spending, the fee you pay to hold the card is usually the smaller number.

Five cards publish a 0% markup, and they are not equivalent:

• Scapia (Federal Bank) — 0% markup and lifetime free. The only card in the catalogue that is both. For most readers searching this page, the answer stops here.
• IDFC FIRST WOW! Black — 0% markup, Rs. 750 + GST from the second year, and issued against a fixed deposit, so it needs no income proof and no credit score. The cheapest way to spend abroad if your file is thin.
• RBL Bank World Safari — 0% markup with a Rs. 3,000 + GST fee (about Rs. 3,540). It pays for itself at roughly Rs. 86,000 of foreign spend a year against a 3.5% card.
• HSBC RuPay Cashback — 0% markup, Rs. 499 + GST. The catch is the network: RuPay acceptance abroad runs through partner networks and is far narrower than Visa or Mastercard, so treat this as a cheap card that occasionally works overseas, not a travel card.
• DBS Vantage — 0% markup, but invite-only and Rs. 20,000 + GST from year two. You cannot apply for it, which is why it leads no list here.

Below the 3.5% default, the next tier is worth knowing because several of these are mainstream cards you may already hold:

• 1.49% — IndiGo IDFC FIRST Dual (both the regular and the FD-backed variant).
• 1.99% — SBI ELITE, SBI Card Miles Elite, Tata Neu Infinity SBI, SBI Card ELITE Business, Etihad Guest SBI Premier.
• 2.49% to 2.75% — SBM Novio, SBI Card Miles Prime, IndiGo Axis Bank Premium, YES Bank ACE.

Going from 3.5% to 1.99% saves Rs. 1,780 per Rs. 1,00,000 after GST. Going to 0% saves Rs. 4,130. The gap between a good card and the best one is larger than the gap between a bad card and a good one.

Three charges survive a 0% markup, and all three are avoidable:

Cash withdrawals. An ATM abroad charges a flat fee plus interest from day one — no interest-free period applies to a cash advance on any Indian credit card. Carry a forex card or cash for that.

Dynamic currency conversion. When a foreign terminal asks whether you want to be billed in rupees, say no. Saying yes hands the conversion to the merchant's processor, which typically adds 3% to 5% on top of a rate it sets itself — and your 0% markup saves you nothing, because the transaction never reaches your bank as a foreign currency one. Always choose the local currency.

Tax on remittances. Spending abroad can fall under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme and attract TCS above the annual threshold. The rules have changed more than once; confirm the current position with your own bank before a large trip rather than trusting any article, including this one.

Most Indian cards count domestic and international lounge visits separately, and the international allowance is the smaller one — often two to four visits a year, sometimes only through a Priority Pass that has to be requested and then charges per guest. A card advertising "complimentary airport lounge access" may give you twelve domestic visits and two abroad.

Check the international number specifically on each card page before you choose on this basis. If lounges matter more to you than the markup, our best credit cards with airport lounge access list ranks on that instead.

A 0% markup is useless if the application is declined. Of the five: Scapia and HSBC RuPay Cashback publish no minimum credit score, IDFC FIRST WOW! Black needs none at all because the deposit secures it, RBL World Safari asks for roughly Rs. 4,00,000 a year, and DBS Vantage cannot be applied for.

If you are not sure where you stand, run the free credit card eligibility check first, or let the credit card recommender narrow the catalogue to the cards your profile actually clears. For the wider travel picture — miles, hotel nights, domestic lounges — see best travel credit cards in India.

Membership is the published markup and nothing else: a card qualifies only if it publishes a foreign currency markup below 3.5%, and a card that publishes no markup is left out rather than assumed cheap. Within the list, the lower the markup the higher the card ranks, with our value score breaking ties. Sixteen of sixty-nine cards qualify. Every figure above is read from the card's own published fee schedule — see how we rank cards.