we are going to do the credit card awards best credit card for UPS best credit card for dining and grocery best lifetime free credit card so let's say you and me went 10,000 rupee was our bill uh if you pre-book on 50% off then if you use card on top of that you get 25% off up to,000 rupees so now my 5,000 bill became 4,000 what are you saying what is the best credit card for cash back it's the credit card i give this one the best one right now because it can go up to 10% cash back the reason why I rank this slightly higher than other cashback cards is because this is giving you points on insurance and utilities as well next year I'm going to be going to the Banyan Tree in Bali it is 90,000 rupees a night and the experience is once in a lifetime you have a bathtub you have a room you have a forest overlooking are you paying for this i'm using to stay there for free people who want amazing amazing luxury benefits so what is the best credit card for luxury so India currently has 10 cr credit card users this number has more than five times in the last 10 years and this number is about to double in another 5 years so by 2030 we're going to have 20 cr credit card users in India so while the number of credit cards issued is increasing the knowledge about what is the right credit card to use and how to redeem them in the right manner is missing and to learn about that and to demystify this entire credit card world we are calling Mr ali Hajani once again India's leading credit card expert ali thank you so much for coming once again thanks uh for having me Sharon always good to be here now let's get to what are the updates in the world of credit card since we last spoke right so can you talk about some of the biggest changes things which have caused a lot of you know explosions in the world of credit card so can you please educate us on that yeah so uh probably two things come to mind uh number one is uh uh in all of 2024 uh so many people used to ask me about is this credit card good is it that credit card good heard about the ICICI Coral or the Sapphiro or these cards from ICICI because if you think in India the three biggest banks in our country like by far the three are HDFC Axis and uh ICICI and then a KOTC as well right right and the only ones focusing on the credit card game were HDFC and Access when I say focusing I mean looking at what the consumer wants they had flagship cards they had flagship cards that actually gave better returns than other cards icic and Kotak also have cards uh Kotak had a ban for the last one year so they couldn't focus on cards by the RBI their I think system was a little bit uh not secure initially so they had to uh do that but uh that's where ICICI now the biggest change is starting to up their credit card game i believe 2025 is going to be the year of ICICI for credit cards really yeah so most credit cards in general when you swipe or tap it anyway give you x amount of points when you spend like five points when you spend 200 rupees 100 rupees right that you call in the credit card world as a base conversion rate okay you understand what the value of that point is best case scenario like maybe if I use it on a flight or and then you figure out okay this card is giving me 2 to 3% returns or something but what HDFC access other brands MX have were things like using it on our portal will give you five times the points or 10 times the points so if you got a 3% return rate or a 3.3% return rate on an HDFC Infinia and you used their HDFC Infinia portal the smart buy portal you get 5x the points so it becomes 16.5% returns so anytime you're booking a 10,000 rupee flight you're getting 1,600 points which is 1,600 rupees back on your next flight wow so the way of looking at this is that when I invest in the stock market I get 15 16% returns but when I'm spending money I'm usually getting zero returns but by using the right credit cards I can get 10 to 15% kind of a returns on even my expenditure on things like flights and hotels that I'm anyway doing yeah so you get the most returns on nonessential [Music] uh expenses like experiential expense expenses like events or um flights and hotels and luxury purchases things like that because card companies want you to spend more but you can also make a lot of returns on your essential uh expenses as well like utilities insuranceances daily groceries you can accelerate those as well so coming back to the point that I was making on the change in the market ICICI recently also launched their portal okay now uh and that is if HDFC infinia or HDFC portal was giving 5x uh ICICI said okay let's give 6x on flights really if yeah HDFC is giving 10x on hotels okay let's give 12x on hotels so this is like your customer acquisition strategy it's their customer acquisition strategy access if you remember did this two years ago with their Magnus credit card and they burned a lot of money giving freebies so is this this card you're talking about which ICIC has come up with this one this is one of the best cards in India today it's the ICIC time guys this is not a promotion i just got this because Ali told me he said this is the best i asked him which is the best card he told me this is the best card so I got it buth what is so special about this i think I'll I'll break this into two parts so first off yeah now there are two or three cards from ICICI that are really killing it with this portal so this card gives you a 2% return rate uh on your spending so if you use it on the ICICI portal on flights or vouchers you get 6x so now you get 12% right or if you buy hotels with it uh you get 12x so 12x into the base 2% is 24% returns yeah if I use this card to swipe in hotels I get 24% returns yeah you have to book the hotel on the ICICI portal got it right like for example I recently went to Kashmir and uh there's Marriott hotels there this that but the best hotel in Kashmir is this hotel called Kyber and that hotel cost 30 40,000 a night and it doesn't have a loyalty program or to get free but you can find it on the Infinia or the ICICI portal book it and get 24% points back damn so if I'm spending 30,000 on hotel 24% back how much 24% back so that's like almost 10,000 rupees back 78,000 rupees back yes wow so there is one card that's slightly better than this in terms of return rates which is ICICI's flagship card called the Emerald Private what is better than that that's 3% base so you tell me now that's 18% and 36% so get that also now yeah but why I like this card and the reason I also got this card uh was because I mean at this point if I go to ICICI and ask them for the emerald private pulling some strings the influencer card it can work and I can get the emerald private so it has 3% base and again that 12x and 6x and so 12x become 18 36% instead of 24 wow and I'm sure these cards are not easy to get also right let's also you know give that disclaimer to the audience who's watching here what is the minimum criteria for getting a card like this it does require at least like uh I think a two lakh income per month uh per month not so bad but that's net so that means you ideally have to have like a 2.7 lakh oh post tax yeah I think I think you we can actually double check but yeah for example the emerald private uh as far as I remember is three lakhs net which is probably a four lakh CTC so somebody who is having like a 50 60 lakhs per anom CTC can get the kind of card like that and those are what the target audience they're looking for yeah simply they won't give that kind of discounts right another reason why I like this card or I got this card specifically is the return rate is great but they are filling a gap in the market where u I feel American Express hasn't been focusing like uh last year I uh when I had this conversation with you I talked about the MX Plat charge card which I paid almost 80,000 rupees for right now you paid 80,000 rupees for that yeah 70 at the time now it's about 78,000 so this again in terms of return rate is not the best but you buy it for the lifestyle and luxury perks like the concage service or benefits on uh different things like luxury products or luxury experiences things like that so times black is kind of doing that in India today where for that HNI who's not only return rate focused but looking at maybe those experiences I think you can get like a helicopter ride if you spend 10 lakhs on this card a resort for free what are you saying uh then they have spend 10 lakhs on this card so these kind of luxury perks come with a card like this got it the other update is that MX has now stopped sourcing credit cards what why why did you Yeah so we don't have a official confirmation on uh I can't get this anymore if I want to this is gone this is not available for a few months now it could be 2 3 4 months 6 months uh there are sources on different platforms Reddit Twitter uh in the sources I have just for example I'm in touch with a lot of folks at AMX they are just telling me that we don't know how long it could be my understanding my theory of this to some extent is now I've been using MX for 9 years now right and uh in the last one one and a half year MX has gotten very popular in the market especially in tier 1 cities everyone's getting an MX and they have a beautiful referral program so if I for example refer 300 people to MX those 300 people who have gotten it will now refer 3,000 more people and that network effect keeps going and in the last one one and a half year they have sourced so many cards that I think was a little more than their support team could handle now I have never been on an MX helpline or chatted with AMX and had to wait more than 2 minutes i think last month I messaged the AMX support team for a query it's a you're in Q 29 minutes oh which is unlikely for someone like AMX and the global MX compliance team is not okay with that they're okay with dropping revenue but not the brand name they spent so many years building so I feel like the global team has pressurized and saying hey India team you guys figure out how we're going to handle the scale of these things before you restart issuing more cards so I think it's like the global team telling them to get their together interesting cool so now let's come down to uh the requirements of the common man right so now everybody in Mumbai or Bangalore or any of the big cities is paying rent right so can you talk about a little bit of credit card hacks when it comes to paying off my rent because that's the biggest expense that anybody has yeah so 99% of credit cards will have an exclusion criteria where they will not give you any returns on rent so even for example this card or most cards do not give you points on your rental transactions but then that amount you spend on rent still counts towards that reaching the milestone okay so now you have to think of cards that give you milestones that you can uh kind of avail as benefits so last year Vistara cards used to be great when Vistara was a thing where if you spend one and a half lakh one and a every one and a half lakh you spend you get a business class ticket free yeah you're right that was the first time I went business class with no money because of that great card correct so that is where even if you don't get the points I tell people to use that card and then pay rent with it because it's coming to your two and a half you get the free ticket that ticket is at least 10,000 rupees m so you have to play with milestones now makes sense so which are the cards which are good with milestones exactly so now I'm teaching you the way you need to think okay I'm not getting points what are the milestone cards exactly like you asked right so first off uh American Express Platinum Travel for people who already have it not this one the platinum travel card gives you 40,000 points when you spend four lakh rupees as milestones wow 40,000 points is equal to 40,000 rupees between 20 to even 50,000 rupees uh because you will redeem it for hotels which have dynamic pricing depending on which hotel you redeem it for yeah dynamic pricing is very interesting but as per my understanding the only cards that are worth doing this on are maybe three or four so I'll share so for example the MX Platinum Travel although is great for uh rental payments no platform accepts MX because uh not everyone wants to pay the high MDR fee m so you can't pay your rent on a cred or a um or housing.com or any app giraffe red giraffe so red giraffe is the best platform to pay your rent it has a 0.5% fee while others have two or 3% but AMX is not accepted there okay so what you need to do is you need to open Mobyquick or another wallet application load your uh MX money into that wallet application and withdraw that money to your bank that's possible you can withdraw money from your credit card to your bank it will cost you about 3% in fees so it's not worth it on 90% cards so the other hack is using other cards the hack is that you can do this for a delta or free money but in case you don't have this uh two other cards that give you points on rent is HSBC premier that gives you 3% then minus the red giraffe free fee it's 2.5% this gives points not even milestones but it's a very HNI card you have to have a strong uh top- end card with top- end relationship with HSBC second is the Axis Magnus Burgundy return rate of almost 5% 4.8% uh on what on the rent spent no 4.8% is the standard uh return rate on the card okay and uh you can spend on rent and earn points up to 50,000 of rent in a month okay and this card is also tough to get no the burgundy one it's tough to get so either you use HNI cards or you use this MX hack or you look for other cards that have milestones like Times Black if you like the milestones then you can use it so you're telling on a platform like Red Giraffe uh AMX is not accepted even though you want to pay rent so if AMX is not accepted you are giving that MOI quick route but that again I have to pay 3% in fees and then if I make some money it's like not a big delta could be like 10,000 20,000 rupees depending on how much I spend but that's not that great as well but if I have to if AMX is not something that I can use on a platform like Red Giraff then what are the other cards except for the you know excluding the super premier cards which which everybody can get access to correct so there are no great cards right now that give you points on uh rent if there are any I'll definitely share it but um if you take the logic I just explained of looking at milestones uh one card you can probably check out is the HDFC Marriott Bonvoy card okay like uh you know how when you spend a certain amount 3 6 9 like laks you would get a free Vistara ticket this card gives you a free Marriott stay okay up to 15,000 points when you spend six lakhs 9 lakhs and 15 lakhs okay now the milestone when you hit it with rent on Red Giraffe you won't get the base points but you'll still get that free night it's not tested i have to test it i just got the card okay so I'll start paying my rent with that to see if I can get uh the free stays the free stays and it counts towards my milestone but with Times Black for example it counts times black you've tried yeah so with this card if I pay my rent I can get free stays at fivestar hotels uh a few yeah you'll get like at two lakhs spend you get a Cluke voucher so you can use that for an experience five lakhs you'll get a uh I think a Tata Click luxury voucher yeah so short answer research the HSBC premier access Magnus Burgundy or the um MX Plat via Mobyquick if you want to pay your rent return rates are okay 2 3% so okay so my next question is about uh using credit card to purchase insurance right are there any hacks around this yeah so you can uh piggyback off of what I just said where a lot of cards exclude insurance but again the MX plat travel uh gives you the milestones on insurance spends and uh they are accepted on platforms as well so you can just use the MX card okay second is if your insurance is less than 15,000 rupees you can use any platform uh sorry you can use any card to buy vouchers okay so the emerald private gives you 3% base and 6x multiple when you buy vouchers so 18% return rate on vouchers okay right so you buy an Amazon pay voucher loaded to your Amazon pay balance and on Amazon you'll find an option to pay your insurance oh okay so but that's capped at 15,000 rupees of insurance so for example my car insurance was 14,000 rupees the last quarter so I just I paid it in my last quarter it's for a year uh and I paid that and I got I think 12% returns cuz I use Times Black okay but uh that is one way to do it and uh a few other ways to pay your insurance uh is using cards like Tata New Infiniti that gives you I think 5% cash back on your insurance spend when you do it on the new app okay um and HDFC cards actually give you direct points on your insurance so if you have like a 1 lakh premium to pay the HDFC Infinia gives you 3 3.3% returns that I have this one yeah so if you have a high insurance premium you will still get points up to 5,000 rupees so around 1 and a half lakh worth of insurance you can pay with this card per day the cap is 5,000 points so simple answer uh paying your insurance amat travel via milestones pay directly on the insurance tata New Infiniti on the Tata New Infiniti app okay the Tata New app 5% for insurance check the cappings i think it's 5,000 okay uh HDFC Infinia HDFC Diners Club Black HDFC Regalia Gold all give base points when you pay your insurance directly okay and fourth option is Amazon Pay vouchers uh if your insurance is less than 15,000 got it so that's your insurance answer got it so now let's talk about making an investment right a lot of people might not be aware that you can but you can actually earn credit card points by investing as well right and one popular investment in India the most popular investment is gold right a lot of people like to buy gold in India and we're the second largest purchaser of gold in the whole world so are there any credit card hacks that I can use when I make an investment in gold yeah so for the first statement I slightly want to correct you there that Uh credit cards i advocate to get returns on your spends i get a lot of people messaging me asking me can I make my SIP payments can I make my home loan payments can I make my mutual fund payments through credit card and my answer to that is no that is an investment instrument this is a spending instrument so ideally no gold like you rightly said is also an investment and probably the only one where this loophole exists correct okay so um what is the loophole yeah I'll tell you the loophole is kind of patched now you can still do it in smaller quantities but I'll tell you what I did for the last two months okay so u for example ICICI launched that ISHOP portal I spoke about right and you could get 12 to 18% on vouchers if you're using the times black or the emerald private and they could let you buy Amazon pay vouchers okay if you go on HDFC or AMX's site you will see that they cap out how many Amazon Pay vouchers you can buy in a month okay you can buy 10,000 Amazon vouchers in a month okay right they these guys didn't have a cap initially for the first couple of months so you could buy as many Amazon Pay vouchers as you want okay so the it's a three-step process so you buy Amazon pay vouchers maybe about 70 80,000 rupees worth of Amazon pay vouchers and use the emerald private metal for example get 18% return so for easy calculation I bought one lakh rupees worth of Amazon vouchers hypothetically I get 18,000 points back okay right so my effective cost is 82,000 okay for those vouchers now the second hack is you go to this website called maximize money okay right it's a website It it lets you buy vouchers okay and it lets you uh buy these vouchers at a discount so I could buy MyNtra vouchers at a 5.5% discount okay and when you go to the checkout page or the payment page it lets you pay with Amazon pay balance okay so I bought a lack of Amazon pay balance okay i will buy Myntra vouchers now let's say 50,000 or whatever Myntra vouchers i will get 5.5% discount on the Myntra voucher also okay so now my 18% plus 5.5% discount 18% cash back in points plus 5.5% uh discount by using that Amazon pay balance and changing it into a Myntra voucher got me 5.5% extra okay then you go to Myntra okay open Myra now you have a bunch of Myntra money right you go to Myntra type in gold coin and you'll see Kalyan Joela gold coin uh depending on when you're watching this video it pegs to the gold rate but right now if you check it's maybe around 95,000 rupees uh for a 10 g gold coin right and the rate in India right now is 90 approx so it's you're paying a 5,000 premium but myntra has these midnight sales where they give you 3 4% discount once in a while once a week that sale comes so I got that 95,000 vouch that gold coin i got a 4% discount it became 91,000 then on top of that I got 18% cash back on my uh emerald private for example i use times black uh and on top of that you get 5.5% discount using the maximize money hack okay and effectively my gold price was under 75,000 per 10 g while most people are probably buying at 90 uh positives it's an investment and it's great negatives it is a loophole that you're exploiting number two it is uh it can be done in smaller quantities only you can only I could only buy like 10 10 grams a month and that's a lack a month and at a 20% haircut or a discount at normal gold rate so you were buying gold at 20% discount in the last 2 months and now this loophole has been um addressed the loophole the only address uh like how it's been addressed is that they've added a cap of 12,000 rupees that you can buy again they're very looking looking closely at the market okay HDFC is giving 10,000 cap let's give 12,000 cap which I say I say yeah so I talk in terms of the Amazon pay which vouchers that you can buy yeah amazon pay vouchers that you can buy that is per month that's uh per month yeah even now I can buy 12,000 rupees worth of gold every month at a 20% discount using the hack that you just said 20% discount from Myntra maybe 15% from average gold price because Myntra is going to be a slight premium to your normal so around 15% discount I can buy gold uh worth 12,000 rupees every month using the hacks that you just said yeah you can damn and you did this when a couple of months back when the limit was unlimited you could have bought anything you could have bought a crow worth of gold no I think they had some caps of how much you could do uh like Amazon doesn't let you add more than a lakh worth of balance to your account or maximize money only lets you transfer 50,000 over a period so yeah this was the sweet spot no amazing i think that was an amazing hack i don't know um whether a loophole or not but it just goes to show that if you're creative enough about understanding everything about the world of credit cards and how different things interact with each other like you know uh you can make that additional 20% 20% you know returns here and there so that was really shocking for me to be honest and I'm sure you guys are also shocked with what you guys are hearing today yeah so Alien now we are going to do the credit card awards right the best credit cards for 2025 across 10 different categories are you ready let's go let's go all right number one best credit card for UPI the best credit card today for uh UPI payments and like a rupe credit card that you can get and uh connected to your UPI is the Yes Bank Kiwi credit card it's the Yes Bank click card partnered with Kiwi okay it's a co-branded card so you download the Kiwi app uh and you get this now why this is the best I'll also explain um is because most credit cards in India when you link to UPI will give you 1.5 to 2% returns on your UPI spends okay right uh this card when you get it uh there's a lifetime free variant where you link it and you'll get 1.5% back no questions no hesitations the cash back is cash back direct and uh the Kiwi app is also very easy to use okay now 1.5% isn't that exciting but that's the standard norm 1.5 to 2% okay now they have this Kiwi Neon subscription okay which you buy for,000 bucks and uh then you're you get the milestone benefits now this card gives you UPI milestones so when you spend 50,000 they give you an additional 1% cash back in a month yeah so first of all when you get the Neon subscription your cash back increases from 1.5% to 2% okay so you'll get 2% cash back on all your UPI spends okay then now this is a year yearly milestone in a year if you spend 50,000 on UPI as soon as you hit 50,000 they've they give you an extra 1% cash back so hypothetically if you spend 50,000 you got 2% plus 1 3% okay if you spend 1 lakh rupees they give you an additional 2% cash back if you just do all the math together making it very simple Shahan if you spend one and a half lakh in UPI or online spend or whatever on the card in the whole year this is like barely 15K per month 12,500 rupees exact per month or something um is when you're getting 5% cash back overall so you will get 7,500 rupees cash back on that one and a half lakh expense that you made wow right so that is a 5% cash back that you've gotten uh and that can be a mixture of online spending UPI everything right so 5% on UPI is unheard of right u minus the,000 rupees membership you bought so net net 4.1% got it best card by far no one's even at 3% no one's even at 2 and a half% so yeah interesting so the the award for the best credit card for UPI goes to the Yes Bank Kiwi card yes sir got it award number two best lifetime free credit card the best lifetime free credit card according to me is this credit card by Indescent Bank it's called the Indescent Tiger credit card okay now this is a free credit card and it gives you I think eight domestic lounge visits every year okay um why I'm even mentioning that or why that's great is because you would have seen in the last year most credit cards have moved to a spend based model spend 50k in the previous quarter then you get lounge access to make sure people are using the cards this card no requirement for spend and it's free so you got free lounge access second is I think you get two international free lounge access visits as well no credit card no free credit card in India is giving you international lounge access okay you get free golf like in case you want to go try playing golf that's usually a premium card benefit right you only hear Infinia Amex these cards giving you golf access yes this one gives you golf access um and this also gives you a few other benefits uh like movie tickets so it'll give you a 500 rupee movie voucher for free now most cards will always tell you to spend something that you buy one movie ticket get one movie ticket back correct is just take one free movie ticket 500 rupee voucher wow so that's a lot of cost incurred by the bank they give you only two movie tickets in a year but that's a free,000 rupees that they're giving you for nothing right um they also have a spend tiered system i won't get into that uh right now but uh the more you spend the more points they give you and uh you can transfer these points to airlines and stuff no free card lets you transfer your points now the ratio you can transfer to is not very good it's you can transfer to Singapore Air but uh I think I I mean I spoke to the head of this card earlier and they're launching for Air India and for Qatar maybe later this year so you tell me if you're getting free domestic lounge access international lounge access golf movies option to transfer your points for free like crazy why not now let's come to the best card for lounge access there are a lot of good cards for lounge access like I just told you a free card Indescent Tiger is giving you lounge access benefits but if you do travel I'm I'm taking this question as you want a lot of lounge benefits like uh multiple lounge access visits for you your family in this scenario my favorite card for lounge access is the HDSC Marriott Bonvoy credit card this card comes at a fee of 3,000 rupees and when you open the Marriott app it will show you you have one free night award okay and then uh if you let's say want to book a 20,000 point hotel you can book that also but the free night award will cover only 15,000 points you'll have to have 5,000 points to transfer it from your AMX account or something like that so I stayed at courtyard in Mahabhar which was 22,000 points i used my free night award and 7,000 points of my own got it got it but if you want to stay only in 15,000 points there are some hotels like in Bangkok uh in uh Phuket in Bali there are hotels in uh India also under 15,000 and usually the rupee value of these rooms are more than the points number right yeah it's dynamic in Marriott marriott has a very uh sophisticated structure that they've come up with so let's say in offse when let's say a normal hotel room costs uh 30,000 rupees right in offseason they'll probably sell it for 15,000 rupees or 17,000 rupees right their points also reflect a dynamic structure so on peak season that those points can go up to 50 60,000 also so then you're better off paying in rupees uh and in low season it can go much lower also like it might even go down to 10 12,000 points lower than the rupee value it yeah you uh the it can be higher or lower because it's dynamic based on uh the hotel the location the seasonality and all of those how do I stay on top of these things you follow me on Instagram follow that credit card guy i'm so glad you picked it up man you are a natural influencer all right so finally you're saying the HDFC Merit is the best for lounge access oh yeah so that's the joining benefit and the lounge benefit on this is 12 domestic lounge visits every year 12 international lounge visits every year wow and you can get add-on cards up to three for your family members okay next card is for international travelers right people who love going on international trips and they want the best forex credit card what is the best forex credit card for people who are planning their next Europe trip Australia trip US trip you name it tell me so I'll actually add a learning to this so for for users to learn something in terms of how to select the right Forex card and I'll give you my verdict of what I think the best Forex card is today um like I told you at the start of this podcast every card will give you certain points when you spend and then you calculate the point value and you come to a return rate okay this card is giving me two or 3% return rate right so for example I use my times black card abroad this card gives me 2.5% on forex on whenever I swipe it abroad i also have Yeah so you can use it you can use it infinia also but this is 2 and a half% on my international expenditure yes so once you understand what I mean by uh return rates you'll understand the concept of why when you should use a credit card and when you should use a forex card or whatever so this card for example gives you 2.5% returns on your spending if you spend one lakh rupees Sharan you will get 2,500 points on this card so if I go to Paris and buy a one lakh rupee worth of a Gucci bag or something I get 2 and a half,000 rupees back correct but every credit card has a 4x fee right this card's forex fee is 1.5% plus GST 18% on that 1.5% net 1.8% or 1.7 something% right now you you got 2.5% you lost 1.7% net net you still profited 8% yeah so I know so many HNI so many people who still use Forex cards because it's branded as what 0% Forex best 0% Forex best uh so I'm not getting charged on Forex but they're not realizing that swiping their credit card is actually giving them a return it's net positive they just look oh Forex fee here so it's net negative so when your return rate on your credit card is higher than the forex fee you should be using your credit card or you can use your credit card but I have one counter question here people who get these zero uh% forex card they usually lock in the currency rate at the time of getting that card but if I don't do that and if I follow your advice let's say I go with this card and I start swiping in Europe for one two weeks then my forex rate or the conversion rate keeps changing right so how do I know that what if the bank is charging a bigger conversion rate then and I'm not even aware of it because you know I'm not tracking those conversions on every transaction yeah so how do I go about doing that so a bank will always charge you a slightly higher rate than what's on Google uh and so will a forex card most of the time uh and so even if you go to aoscope and try to uh give your cash rupees and get dollars they also have a slight markup right so that markup is there everywhere that's universal but uh your point is very valid uh where let's say today the rate is favorable for yourself and then you get a 4x card and buy $1,000 worth of forex and lock it in yeah then that can be better but uh that's not always the case last week the dollar was 87 today's the dollar is 85 so okay u it can actually go down in some situations as so the risk is there both ways whether you lock in the price today or you start spending it as the currency fluctuations keep happening correct so risk can go both ways you're saying but uh most of these return rate benefits that I just talked about are on your premium cards the best mass zero forex card that anybody can get regardless of if you're going abroad to spend 5,000 10,000 if your salary is 20,000 rupees 2 lakh rupees whatever No nonsense zero forex card and free it's free is the Scapia credit card scapia scapia by Federal Bank uh it's great for forex transactions the app is very easy to use uh 0% Forex has some lounge benefits also domestically m now uh one thing that I see users making a mistake in uh which is just very silly because uh of things you don't know is when you apply for this card it gives you the option to apply for a rupe variant or a visa variant now if you're planning to use this card abroad you definitely need to get the visa variant because rupees probably won't work abroad yeah so these are small things that people don't think of and they just think oh rupia might be better but that is where if you're going abroad get the visa variant of this card got it i give you two alternatives also the AUIX iggo card is good and uh the RBL World Safari is also good these cards are also 0% 4x okay so anyone can get any of these non-biased so and this is 04x zero forex any three cards whichever one you want got it cool next question best credit card for dining and groceries so the best card in this scenario is according to me I'll give you a few options but I'll give you my number one and number one for this category is the Easy Diner signature credit card by Indescent Bank okay uh it's a co-branded card with Easy Diner so if you use Easy Diner you can get uh you get the get the card use the Easy Diner app now Easy Diner has a lot of discounts where if you prior book like let's say you and me uh go out for dinner and uh it's you we go to like a fivestar restaurant or something you can get 40 to 50% off on pre-booking so let's say for example we're going to Indian accent i think that's one of your favorite restaurants i also went there recently with my mom and dad and they loved it uh but it's quite expensive it's uh I think it was for four of us the bill came to almost 25,000 rupees if I'm not wrong no alcohol yeah 6,000 bucks is that tasting menu correct so that's how much I spent so tell me how could I have used this card that you're telling me to get some discounts yeah so it I don't think it works on um on uh Indian accent but let's say you went in BKC right next to it at the Sophetel okay uh and you had a 25,000 or let's say two people went you and me went 10,000 rupee was our bill uh if you pre-book on easy diner 50% off then if you use the easy diner card on top of that you get 25% off on top of that up to,000 rupees so now my 5,000 bill became 4,000 so that's pretty good for dining at a fivestar hotel and I think but how does it make sense for them like how are they giving you a 50% discount on your fivestar hotel bill yeah so I think it's a win-win situation if you go into the micros um a fivestar hotel has money it makes from room revenue and from FNB now FNB they make money when from in-house guests and from external guests if you talk to any five-star hotel the number of walk-ins they get for people coming just to dine at that restaurant is very minimal because over the last five or six years standalone restaurants in India have come a class apart like an Indian accent or there are so many of these tasting menus in Bangalore there's uh Naru for that ramen i love that then there's uh Masala Library for these experiential ones uh what is the other one there's farmlor in Bangalore it's like Indian accent concept but standalone restaurants are really coming up so they have overtaken the fivestar hotels yeah now nobody goes to a fivestar hotel and goes to dine at that right so to make extra revenue obviously those are inflated prices so even at 50% the restaurant is making money so that 50% discount is footed by the uh hotel m now the card discount is footed a little bit by easy diner then the card and then they make money through people transacting on that card in other places it's basically a ma a whole macro game on the credit cards bank got it so a lot of mathematics behind it my next question is obviously we travel a lot yeah we have all our vehicles right some people might be using Uber but a lot of people have their own vehicles now fuel is one of the biggest expenditures of any Indian family household most people spend spend at least 15 to 20,000 rupees on fuel especially if you're living in a big city and you're stuck in traffic 2 hours every day so what is the best credit card for petrol diesel best card for fuel is the RBL Extra it's a card that gives you 7.5% returns on your fuel wow really uh plus the 1% search charge waiver that you would get so that's actually pretty good it's capped at about 12,000 odd rupees per month that you can spend on fuel which is good enough for an uh average uh fuel spend so if I spend 10,000 rupees on fuel every month you're telling me that 750 rupees I can get cash back 750 uh bucks you will get back in your RBL points uh and it's an RBL Indian Oil card indian Oil Petrolum card so next time once you accumulate that 750 rupees I can use that to buy more fuel next time you go you say I want to buy fuel they'll give you 750 bucks so 7 L worth of fuel for free wow that's how the card works amazing but that's only for Indian oil if you want Bhat petroleum there's SBI BPCL Octane oh this is for creating loyalty to petrol pumps indian oil yeah so that's how the credit card makes uh loyalty towards that petrol pump and the cash back is uh counted for because you're getting loyalty and people are coming back very interesting the world of credit cards creates so many opportunities for loyalty and business and all of that such an interesting space cool now let's talk about pure cash like I don't want any of these things Ali i don't want flights i don't want hotels i don't want restaurants i just want cash back money what is the best credit card for cash back the best credit card according to me for cash back today it's a subjective answer and I want to sound correct but I'll tell you my favorite it's the Tata New uh credit card it is the Tata New Infinity credit card um if you follow my uh Instagram page you would see that I really vocally talk about other cashback cards like SBI cashback and Swiggy HDFC uh and I'll explain why each of these is good i give this one the best one right now because you get 5% cash back uh whenever you spend on this card on Tata related products okay so if I'm and because Tata is such a big ecosystem this makes it versatile also if you're shopping at Westside uh if you're if you're buying groceries you use Big Basket if you're flying you use Air India it's all Tata it's a whole ecosystem play so everything that I could possibly spend money on Tata is obviously one of the largest companies in India so you can if if you're somebody who can switch your expenses to Tata you get 5% cash back on the card and 5% cash back if you use the Tata new app so it can go up to 10% cash back it's it's addition 5% cash back plus 5% Tata new points so total it's all in Tata new points but points are worth one rupees to one point and you can redeem points unlimited you can buy a whole uh item for just points it's there's no uh what are you saying amazing so up to 10% cash back I can get that up to 10% cash back and number two is the reason why I rank this slightly higher than other cashback cards is because this is giving you points on insurance and utilities as well now SBI cash back is a great card 5% cash back on every website you go to not just Amazon not just Flipkart any website you go SBI cash back is giving you 5% cash back but it's not giving on utilities it's not giving on uh insurance so this one when you mean utility mean like electricity bill and all yes electricity bill let's say your broadband things like that mhm right so this is where your utilities are sorted your insurance is sorted Tata products are sorted and you get it very easily in coins so yeah in order of my preference it's Tata new infinity SBI cashback swiggy HDFC now if you're more of a Swiggy user for you Swiggy becomes better if you're somebody who uses random websites more than the generic e-commerce sites like people who don't shop on a Nika or a Myntra but will go to like a brand website like shop on a zara.com then SBI cashback is better so it's these three are one of them you have to get but which one is right for you depends on you got it cool next is the best credit card for traveling best travel credit card according to me right now is the Axis Atlas credit card i also use this i also have it but I didn't bring it today can you just show me yours it's the Axis Atlas credit card h quite popular right it has become very very popular now this what's so special about this credit card why is this like so social media popular uh because I made it social media popular i know that but humble also Ali okay but uh I mean I made it social media popular because it is such a good card now Shahon I'll tell you if you like traveling to hotels right and let's say you like staying at any AOR hotel AOR is your brands under AOR are your Raffles Banyan Tree Sophel Novotel Ibis of these name crazy hotel under AOR so next year I'm going to be going to the raffles not the raffles the banyan tree in Bali the banyan tree in Bali banyan Tree Buahan google it it is 90,000 rupees a night and the experience is once in a lifetime i'll tell so the hotel does not have rooms like the rooms are open like your walls are trees it's in it's in the it's in literally the So basically for 90,000 rupees they're going to give me a forest yes did anyone make the room you're like paid up sleep go sleep over there one lakh rupees for that it's a luxury experience you get the paid without the hassle of the cockroaches the mosquitoes the this it's you have a bathtub you have a room you have a forest overlooking all of that and the privacy doesn't come from walls the privacy is coming from the the the trees and the rooms are so spaced out so it's a luxury snakes and all over there i I I'll tell you next year when I go so 90k per night for this place huh but let me tell you why this card is Are you paying are you paying for this i'm using my access atlas to stay there for free for free how tell me how yeah this card gives you two points for every 100 rupees that you spend okay right and you can transfer these points at a 1 is to2 ratio to any partner okay okay now I will transfer it to AOR okay so I spend 100 rupees I get two of these points now when I transfer to AOR it becomes four four okay four points and each AOR point is worth almost 2 rupees of value aor is a currency of itself it's pegged to the euro so each AOR point if you convert to rupee it's almost two rupees so that four into two eight rupees so that means for every 100 rupees that I spend I'm getting 8 rupees back in AOR hotels okay so plus milestone benefits plus other benefits if you do the back calculation the return rate on this card if you tap it is 7.2% if you count ECO if you're using it at EOR okay so I spend around 15 lakh rupees on this card okay and I earn about 50 60,000 points uh and I'll transfer some to echore or some to ITC whatever now the cap is 30,000 you can transfer every year to echore so that becomes 60,000 echore 60,000 echore is worth 1.2 two lakh rupees okay and I've been doing this for this year last year and half of the year before so so you get one night stay free no going back to what I said I've been doing this for this year last year and I'll do it next year you've been saving up i've been saving up and I've been using also but overall I have about 250k aore points right now so it's worth five lakhs so three four nights maybe I'll do two nights here two nights in Raffles two nights in Masamara in Fairmont things like that amazing amazing so you've been spending like 15 lakhs a year for the last 2 three years and now you're going to get five night stay free in a fivestar hotel in Bali which cost 90k per night in the jungle with no snakes right that's the that's the bottom line yeah mind you I've been using my points also uh in different places whenever I go now uh there are different redemptions I'm doing next month also I'll use my accore points but yeah huh just one last benefit I'll talk about the card is so I told you every time you spend 100 rupees You get 8 rupees back correct now if you use it to book a flight every 100 rupees you spend you get five points for flights yeah so you don't get two you get five now I spent 100 rupees on a flight I got five points five points when I convert to AOR becomes 10 points each AOR point is worth two so 20 so 20% returns yes on your flight expenditure yeah so to go to Bali also you will spend using this card to buy the flights and if the flight is worth 50,000 rupees you're going to get 10,000 rupees worth of hotel stay again free it's yeah the very the crux of it or the very easy way to a very easy way to say it is if you're spending a lack of rupees on flights you can assume you can get 20,000 of hotel stay on that same trip it's as simple as that all right so the next credit card is for people who want luxury people who want amazing amazing luxury benefits so what is the best credit card for luxury so I am a big fan of certain luxury products like um I do like my luxury purchases i do like my luxury experiences i like Can can you show me your watch which watch is that this is a Movado can you like show a little bit you bought this on a credit card no no this is an old watch i bought this many years back but yeah it's a very famous USbased uh like I bought it in the US but it's very famous in the US like what are the luxury items that you own like I really like sunglasses I like uh watches I like sunglasses cost like what 10,000 bucks no you'd be surprised at a good Tom Ford maybe 3540,000 okay or yeah what you see better or something like that no it's just uh a lot of people like good shirts they like good shoes they like good belts some people like good phones i like sunglasses okay i like watches and I like perfumes so okay what's the most expensive perfume that you own uh I have the Tom Ford ombre leather ombre leather how much is that yeah i think uh I don't remember i bought it a year ago and I still have like 20% left but it was probably about 20 25,000 rupees i bought it in Dubai yeah 25,000 for perfume fine so you clearly like luxury items yeah yeah so what is the best credit card so for luxury items uh I used to use the American Express Platinum Charge card i'll show to the camera here uh this was my luxury pick for 2024 um it used to give me 10 to 20x points when I used to shop for luxury products on certain sites the concage service was nice the MX lounge was nice uh but the fees are not that justified and because AMX really really pushed this card it just became a more commoner card I felt so what is the new winner now now for me I'm switching uh I've removed my MX so I'm going to be canceling this next month and uh I'm going to be using the Times Black okay um again not a promotion but I have genuine uses for it um I got this card like I said a couple months ago see I like luxury but that doesn't mean I'm going to go super crazy without any returns on it like even if I buy a 30,000 sunglass and I'm getting 10 12,000 back in points that's still something I'm using towards something else so my effective cost goes down so this card I got because it made sense in terms of luxury and return rate like the gold thing I did or Amazon vouchers I buy for my genuine expenses it gives a good return rate forex it gives me cash uh returns and for luxury purchases now next year next month literally in the month of April I'm going to Hong Kong okay now I'm going to Hong Kong in China that's part business part leisure now if I'm going to Hong Kong I want to go to Disneyland right now if you spend two lakhs on this card you get a Cluke voucher what is Cluke voucher cluke is a website where you will book all of your international experiences so today if you want to go to Universal Studio you want to go to uh uh any water park you want to go for any experience uh you will book it on Clue cluke is your experience app it's a global app okay right so you get a so I Disneyland cost 7,000 rupees in Hong Kong i got a 10k cluke voucher okay so it's helping you with those kind of experiences that was actually useful to me so my luxury pick of the year is that is the ICICI times black credit card is the ICICI times black credit card two lakhs is giving me my Hong Kong cluke voucher uh 10,000 I think five lakhs spent gives me an additional Tata Click vouchers uh luxury vouchers but these are like fine but tell me like you know I want to spend big let's say I'm going to Dubai or Europe and I want to buy um what's that expensive bag that women like birkkins right which is like a eight lakh kind of a bag now I'm not saying I'm buying it but the people who are watching this and they're like you know millionaires who want to gift this to their wife or the the woman wants to buy this Burkin bag what is the best credit card this is like a 10 lakh bag if I'm not wrong or a 50 lakh bag what is this correct it's very expensive i haven't converted it in rupees but yeah so what is the credit card that I need to use for these kind of luxury purchases which is not like 10,000 20,000 which is like 4 lakh 5 lakh 10 lakh correct so a generic luxury uh card for me was the times black what you're talking about uh I would label as the best uh credit card okay or the best credit card for high spending a person buying that bag is probably a very very high spender yeah it's probably spending like 30 lakhs a month yeah or even even 10 lakhs a month it's crazy to spend 10 lakhs a month you probably need to be earning 3 4 crores a year yeah minimum and uh yeah if you're spending 10 lakhs on non-essential that's crazy right yeah so for me uh the best UHNI card in India is probably the Axis Magnus burgundy credit card oh another one for access what's so special about this Burgundy credit card yeah so a UHNI doesn't give a about points and all and he's not going to go to a any shop or any website and take out three credit cards and think which one should I use where right so for a UHNI simplicity matters and this card and the problem with other cards is that they have cappings oh if you spend one lakh then you'll get points and it's capped at that or two lakhs you'll cap at that m this card has no capping on how many points you can earn so if you go buy a 10 lakh rupee bag you can earn unlimited points on it and they give you bonuses for spending more very simple i'll explain to you this card gives you 12 points when you spend 200 rupees now if you do the back calculation points is worth how much how much can it transfer you will come to a conclusion that this card is giving you a 4.8% return if I spend 100 rupees I will get 4.8 rupees back now if you h spend more than 1.5 lakh rupees in a month then everything above 1.5 lakh rupees they almost triple your conversion it'll give you 35 points not 12 35 points per 200 rupees spent now you do the back calculation you get 14% return rate on everything you spend above 1.5 lakh why why didn't you tell me this because I'm not an ultra henna you didn't tell me this this sounds like a good card shan I think uh you live frugally you you talk about financial independence i don't think you spend so much do you but I mean whenever I go on a vacation I might for my family for my you know I might need it i want it okay then we'll I'll get you in touch with my access guy and you can cancel all your other cards and only use that card that's the only card I need yes and the reason for that is because you're rewarded extra for spending more right let's say you hit that 1.5 lakh spend and everything above that is now giving you more why do you want to spend somewhere else correct right you will give get this card give it to your mom give it to your sister give me one also and let us all spend on it so that I get the points so you get the points so the point is to spend more on it just watch out for the exclusion you won't get points on gold you won't get points on uh insurance you get points on rent up to 50,000 of rent only which is fine not bad 50,000 you put on it and it's coming towards the accelerator right you're trying to hit 1.5 lakh spend in a month so that everything else is accelerated right so that first 50k is just covered in your end only correct so a great card for that amazing that's why when people tell me what card should I use for my 10 lakh car down payment now you know the answer your first 1.5 lakh will give you 4.8% but the remainder 8.5 lakhs that you're spending on that car down payment you 14% returns amazing so my pick for heavy spenders HNI is the Axis Magnus Burgundy so Ali I think u amazing amazing interaction i think it was so valuable i don't think a video like this exists anywhere a completely unbiased uh award ceremony for the best credit cards in India today there are more than 200 plus credit cards but we have picked the top 10 credit cards across different categories for this month right as you know guys the world of credit cards keep changing every single month that's why we're going to keep having these videos once every 1 month or once every two months so that you guys are also updated about what the hell is happening so until then guys I'll see you in the next one [Music]