Credit Cards Indian Banks India goes global for Credit Cards Citibank Cards, American Express Visa Master, Co-Branded Cards etc.a
SHOULD I BUY A CO-BRANDED CREDIT CARD?
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MAJOR CO-BRANDED CREDIT CARDS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE IN INDIAN MARKET
The Indian Credit Card market in recent times has seen a sudden upsurge in the number of co-braded credit cards. The main reason for this phenomenon is the growing competition where customers can be lured only by offering new incentives to buy their cards. Moreover, the credit card issuing agencies like banks have realised that different customers have different needs, e.g. some customers fly around a lot within India / outside India, on the other hand some use their cars a lot within a city or some spend more on dinning and entertaining their clients etc. It was in this background that now more and more credit card issuing agencies are going for a range of alliances with other companies so as offer their customers more facilities and make the cards more attractive.
We will suggest you to evaluate the co-branded credit cards according to your spending pattern. If you are able to evaluate these properly, it is likely that you will be able to get much more benefits than you will pay for such cards. Some of the Co-Branded credits cards available in Indian markets are as follows :-
(A) CITIBANK-INDIAN OIL CARD:-
This is quite popular card as it offers reward points as and when you purchase fuel from the Indian Oil fuel stations. Such reward points can be later on redeemed for purchase of more fuel for your vehicle. Most of the earlier cards used to charge "transaction fee" whenever the Credit Card was used to purchase petrol / diesel. This fee was quite high at 2.5% and thus it was a discouragement to use the Credit Card for purchase of petrol / diesel. However, this CitiBank-Indian Oil Card does not charge any transaction fee.
Thus, if you are frequent user of your vehicle and you spend a sizable amount of money on petrol / diesel, you should opt for this kind of card.
(B) ICICI - HPCL:
This allows you to re-fill your vehicle without paying any transaction cost. Moreover, it also provides for reward points as and when you get fuel from an HPCL gas petrol pump.
(C) AMERICAN EXPRESS-INDIAN AIRLINES CARD :
This card is meant for those people who are frequent fliers and mostly use Indian Airlines for their domestic / international flights. The bookings through this card will bring you not only increased membership reward points, but will also entitle you for other benefits like access to reserved lounges at some airports etc.
(D) STANDARD CHARTERED - AIR SAHARA CARD:
This card allows certain facilities when you book your air tickets on Air Sahara
(E) CITIBANK JET AIRWAYS CARD :
This card allows certain facilities when you book your air tickets on Jet Airways
(F) AMERICAN EXPRESS - MTNL CARD:
This co-branded Credit Card is mostly popular with those people who have hefty telephone bills to pay every month. In this case, you will not have to stand in queues for payment of your telephone bills. You will get a consolidated bill from American Express. Moreover, you will be entitled to get 1.7% discount on your telephone bills. There are few other facilties with this card.
(G) CITIBANK - MTV CARD:
This card will entitle you to discounts on the favourite music and MTV style clothes. It also entitles discounts on certain educational courses at leading private institutes like NIIT, Aptech etc.
(H) STANDARD CHARTERED - INDIAN RAILWAYS CARD :
This card allows the card holders to book railway tickets through a telephone call. It also allows insurance of your luggage while travelling upto a predefined limit.