Credit card guides
The fine print behind every reward, fee and approval — in plain English, in a few minutes.
7 guidesUpdated
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Latest · American Express
HDFC Bank has announced that it will no longer accept new applications for the Swiggy HDFC co-branded credit card. The move comes as a surprise, considering the card’s strong popularity among users.…
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Getting Started
With no credit history there is nothing for a bank to score, which is not the same as being scored badly. Secured cards, existing bank relationships…
8 min readCredSpy Editorial
Rewards & Benefits
Cashback is worth its face value. Reward points are worth whatever the redemption route gives you, which is often far less than the headline rate imp…
7 min readCredSpy Editorial
Fees & Charges
The interest-free period a card advertises is its maximum, available only on a purchase made on the first day of a billing cycle. It collapses the mo…
7 min readCredSpy Editorial
Fees & Charges
Almost every card advertises a fee waiver — 39 of the 40 CredSpy tracks carry one. The waiver is a spend target, not a discount, and whether it is re…
7 min readCredSpy Editorial
Rewards & Benefits
Complimentary lounge access is almost never unlimited. Of the 13 cards in CredSpy's catalogue that offer it, the common shape is a fixed annual count…
7 min readCredSpy Editorial
Fees & Charges
A lifetime-free card waives the joining and annual fee for as long as you hold it — and nothing else. Of the 40 cards CredSpy currently tracks, only…
6 min readCredSpy Editorial
Everything worth knowing before you choose. All of it is on this page — open only what you need.
These are explainers about how credit cards actually work in India — the mechanics behind the marketing, written from the fee documents and terms rather than from press releases.
The recurring theme is the gap between a headline and a statement. A card advertising "up to 50 days interest free" gives that only on a purchase made on the first day of a billing cycle. A "lifetime free" card still charges interest, forex markup and late fees. A 10X rewards multiplier means nothing until you know what a point redeems for.
The posts here cover the questions that decide whether a card is worth holding:
Every figure quoted comes from the issuer's own documentation. Where a number cannot be verified, the post says so rather than estimating.
The explainers here are written against the live catalogue, and the news desk publishes the underlying counts. Three analyses give the current picture: how many cards advertise a fee waiver and what the thresholds really are, how few cards are genuinely lifetime free, and how tightly lounge allowances are capped.
Where a post quotes a rate, a fee or a cap, it comes from the issuer's own fee documentation rather than from a marketing page.
