i am going to get credit card but need to know are the premium ones really better according to the fee they take?
also i need to know what other special features i can get
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Go for it if you travel often internationally, You spend ₹5L+ per year (especially on travel/dining),You want luxury perks. If your not able to relate with any of these things you should not go for premium cards.
Some special features on premium credit cards are-
1.) Concierge Service
2.) Foreign Currency Markup
3.) Airport lounge access
4.) Golf games
Hey, from my experience balancing card benefits with costs, here’s a genuine take on whether premium credit cards are worth paying the high annual fee.
When They Are Worth It?
If your lifestyle and spending habits match the perks, a premium card can offer strong value.
For example:
• Cards with annual fees of ₹10,000–₹12,500 or more provide airport lounge access, travel insurance, concierge services, hotel membership perks, and golf privileges.
• If you travel frequently internationally and use lounges, stay at luxury hotels, dine out often, then the high fee might be offset by the value of the perks you actually use.
When They Probably Aren’t Worth It?
• If you only occasionally use card benefits like lounge access or hotel discounts, then the annual fee becomes a burden.
• If you carry balances and pay interest: the cost of interest often wipes out any benefit from the card, making the fee unjustified.
• If you can get similar rewards or benefits with a lower-fee or no-fee card, then paying big might be unnecessary.
If it is true zero annual fees, go for it. Do not fall prey to zero annual fees by means of waiver clause like spend 50000 in a financial year to get the annual fees waived off for next year. There are plenty of banks offering zero annual fee platinum credit cards like ICICI, Axis, IDBI (needs to hold savings account), HDFC (might have now stopped giving LTF), IndusInd, IDFC, HSBC and Manhattan. But when it comes to rewards and offers out of these, only ICICI and to certain extent HDFC stands apart.
No body gets a free lunch. - Going for a credit card (with hefy joining and annual fees) purely for rewards point is not a productive thing in my opinion. We spend lots of time on tracking expenses to be sure of completing annual spend milestone to get subsequent year’s annual fees waived off. And if we have many cards, this becomes additional challenge as for all such waiver annual fees cards we need to complete spend annually. for more than 15 years, I am holding HDFC, ICICI, Axis, HSBC, StanChart Manhattan, IDBI, InduSind, & IDFC credit cards, all mostly platinum and LTF (Zero annual fees and NOT annual fees waiver upon certain spend using card) I ensured that I used these minimum once a year to avoid deactivation for so many years. I did not see any issue while using any card or with customer support. With my goal of having any LTF credit card (no need to track annual fees of spend to get annual fee waived off) I noticed, ICICI, HDFC and Axis are good credit cards.
To leverage early bird offers of Rupay credit card like discounts and cashbacks since 2022, I enjoyed Indian Bank (SB AC Req), BoB, UBI(SB AC Req), Canara Bank(SB AC Req), PNB and Kotak. As ICICI and HDFC were not issuing Rupay add-on CC, I went for these PSU bank credit card and wherever required opened savings account. And had collected good cashback on these Rupay and credit cards transactions on UPI app were seamless. Now closed all Rupay CC except BoB. Closed it as to keep number of credit cards manageable and PNB and UBI started annual fees on Rupay CC. BoB Rupay is still free and gives cashback.
Other cards like Standard Chartered Manhattan, HSBC, IndusInd, IDFC and IDBI (platinum and LTF) are ok and nothing great on rewards and offers (unless one goes for other variant with hefty joining and annual fees). IDBI website is not great. Recently had issue with IndusInd as they have removed humans as customer care team and everything is IVR based not addressing failed transaction issue reporting. Now a days all banks keep changing T&C and we have seen lounge access vanishing from many cards.
Instead I would suggest try SBI that has maximum offers on Amazon or even ICICI and HDFC. No point in applying for other cards unless it is corporate credit card and your are frequent flyer/traveler. I do nto have one, but planning to go for it. Many times on Amazon,. I have to use my brother’s SBI card and hence impressed with it.
Summery - If we keep minimum cards with primary (Visa/Master card) + Rupay add-on card, and use it heavily across Rupay and other purchases, it would help get more points. Hence no point is hunting for higher rate rewards card.