Citibank has been working on two new products to replace the existing Citibank Ultima, which has been their lifestyle and travel credit card in India for about five years or more, and was their product equivalent of the American Express Platinum. Over a period of time, the Jet Airways and Priority Pass privileges went away and the product proposition was vastly reduced. Since American Express launched their Centurion in India, Citibank will be relaunching the Ultima to compete with the Amex Centurion, and Citibank Prestige will be launched in India at INR 20,000 plus taxes to be the lifestyle credit card for Citibank. My guess is this product will be issued as a Visa product in India, while it is…
Credit Cards
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Free Ticket codes very good reason why you should keep your Jet co-branded credit cards
One of the query I receive frequently from readers has been about the renewal for their Jet Airways co-branded credit cards issued by HDFC Bank, American Express and ICICI Bank. Most readers find it attractive to receive the card in the first year with 15,000 to 30,000 JP Miles as sign-up bonus, and want to cancel it after the first year because the second year renewal benefits are not as good, and they are paying the same amount of fees. While everyone who likes collecting miles across the globe loves to look at the US banks and the ability of US residents to churn credit cards every 3-6 months for big sign-up bonuses, it is a heartbreak indeed that the…
My 2014 Credit Card Strategy
Last week, I wrote about my 2013 Mileage Credit Card strategy, where I told you guys I managed to get something about 264,000 miles basis credit cards issued in India for the full calendar year. For 2014, here are the credit cards I am looking at having in my wallet. Take note that while I intend to publish full reviews for each product at some point of time, it may be a while before I would be able to bring them all in the fold. To make it simple, I’ve updated my Mileage CC calculator for 2014 numbers, so have a look and see which is the best one for you. Here are the cards I already have, and I’ll…
My 2013 Indian Credit Card mileage wins
I know it is a little late in the day to put out a round up for 2013, but I thought I’d do it anyways. I did not get the time to put a post earlier than this, but all I can tell you is we are lucky to be living in times when the mileage earning game is just about getting started in this country. And I am happy to be on board earlier rather than later. For the rest of you, miles and points are not just a silly hobby, but they can finance a lifestyle if you did all the right things. For the longest time, for 10 years or so actually, India just had one major…
Citibank offering INR 2,500 referral for new PremierMiles Credit Cards
Citibank PremierMiles Credit Card is easily my go-to credit card, purely because of the flexibility it offers in terms of earning mileage for air travel (10 PremierMiles/ INR 100) and non-air travel related purchases (4 PremierMiles/INR 100). PremierMiles add up easily, and never expire. Not to forget, you have promotions like double miles every now and then. You can transfer them to 10 different airline or hotel loyalty programs, or use them to book tickets directly at www.premiermiles.co.in by redeeming them for INR 0.5 value per PremierMile spent. You can read my review here, from May 2012. You also get a limited number of trips to the lounge every quarter for domestic Indian Airports. Anyhow, Citibank has now taken the…
Citi PremierMiles 50% transfer bonus to Hilton HHonors till December ‘13
Citibank is on a roll with transfer bonuses over the past couple of days it seems. After signing up new transfer partners in IHG Rewards Club, Hilton HHonors, Taj Inner Circle, Malaysia Airlines & Eva Air last month, they are now running a transfer bonus with Singapore Airlines. And now, they are running another transfer bonus with their new partner Hilton HHonors. This time around, if you transfer 10,000 PremierMiles, which convert into 15,000 Hilton HHonors points (due to the 1PM=1.5 HHonors conversion rate), you get an added bonus of 5,000 HHonors points as well. There are no limits to the amount of PremierMiles you can transfer under this promotion and the amount of extra 5,000 HHonors points you can…
Unlimited lounge access on ICICI-Jet-Amex credit cards, and extra JP Miles
ICICI Bank’s Jet Airways co-branded credit cards have now completed about a full year in the business. When they started, they had a lot of issues with putting out credit cards, most of which are now resolved. Very recently, they offered a special promotion where there were extra JPMiles going out for signing up for the Visa version, or spending on the Visa version of the ICICI Bank 9W credit card. Now, a few important changes made to the product offering. Earlier, there were only 4 complimentary visits allowed per annum to the Altitude Lounge in Mumbai and Delhi. Now, this changes from 1st November 2013 onwards to make it unlimited trips to the lounges. Here are the reviews of…
Credit Card Review: Air India SBI Visa Signature
With this post, I am reintroducing the Credit Card Reviews series in India, which I had to stop a while ago due to paucity of time. Air India & GE/SBI Credit Cards recently teamed up to launch co-branded credit cards which could earn you quite some miles, making me think of calling it perhaps the best credit card to earn miles in India at the moment. They’ve launched 2 credit cards, one at the Signature level and one at the Platinum level, and I will review both separately. Sign-Up Bonus: This credit card offers a tidy sign-up bonus of 20,000 Air India miles to start you up with the credit card product. You also get an upgrade voucher from Air…
An extra 1000 PremierMiles to activate EMV by tomorrow
Seems Citibank never wanted me to earn these 1000 PremierMiles so I never got this email. Anyhow, I requested a reader to forward me an email that Citibank has sent out to select group of their PremierMiles customers, who have recently been issued the new chip & pin credit cards. To avail this offer, you first need to look up your mailbox to see if you have received an email from india.marketing@citi.com regarding this promotion. Only if you heard from Citi would you be eligible for the promotion. You need to use your new Chip+Pin Citibank Premiermiles CC with a physical swipe machine (i.e., not over the internet or a phone system) before August 31, 2013 and authenticate using a…
Earning miles on a credit card and being paid for it
The recent festival season in India presented an interesting opportunity to earn miles & points, and also be paid for it. One of the banks in India was offering gift cards at a discount on the face value of the gift card, which essentially meant you would be getting more money to spend on the card than how much you paid for it. There was a 5% discount, so if you bought the gift cards worth INR 3,000, you only paid INR 2,850 for it. I was able to purchase this gift card with a points earning credit card issued in India, who gave me their normal points structure on this spend. In essence, I was earning miles, and roughly…
Which is the best Indian mileage-earning Credit Card?
The quest for the best Indian mileage-earning credit card has been on going. No one throws 50K miles our way to sign on a credit card here. Back in January, I created a calculator for everyone who wanted to figure out which was the best credit card according to their usage of credit every month, for travel and everything else. At last count, I had over 1,000 people using that calculator to make their assessments or validate their choices on which credit cards to pick for earning miles in India. Things change all the time, such as mileage earned, so I’ve tweaked the calculator accordingly. Here is the new version of the calculator, accessible from my Google Drive. The earlier…
