If you have reached here, I assume that you are interested in choosing a credit card and not sure which would be best card for you. A simple answer to this question is “THERE IS NO ONE BEST CREDIT CARD”. Picking the right card is easy if you know what you are looking for.
It will depend a lot on what your expectations are from your card. Are you looking a card with best rewards points, do you want best travel credit card, or are you looking for the best business credit card.
Once you decide what you are expecting from the credit card, I will be able to help you to know about the best credit card available in that category. We would be discussing about the credit card based on the interest rate they will be charging, limit which they would be providing and cash back provided by them.
But before talking about technical terms, let me talk a little about what exactly is a Credit card. If you are someone who is already aware of it, stop reading or read our article on best credit card in India.
What is a Credit card ?
Credit card can be easily understood as a card which is provided by your financial institution, which can be a bank or NBFC providing you a limit to spend per month. Say you have a good CIBIL score and decent salary, bank will provide you with a credit card with a limit of say 50,000.
What it means in simple terms is you have 50,000 rs to spend and once the month end, most of the bank will provide you 20 days to pay back the credit you have used. If you paid the limit used in full, you don’t have to pay any interest charges to the bank. But say you used 20,000 this month and only paid back 10,000, then interest would be charged on the remaining 10,000 you have not paid. Most of the banks charge interest anywhere from 1% per month upto 3% per month.
In case you make full payment of the credit you have used, there is no charge payable by you.
So if you are someone who spend more that you can pay, you should look at the card which have low interest charges else you can end up paying lots of interest charges.
Some of you may have a question that if we pay in full, how does the bank make money. So whenever you use your credit card online or offline on a shop, there is a charge upto 2% which the bank charges the ecom company or shop. So even if you don’t pay any interest, bank are fine making money of every swipe you do.
Three things to keep in mind while choosing the Credit Card
1) Look at the interest rate charged by the Credit card company. Make sure that you read the fine prints before you choose the card.
2) Annual Maintenance Charge – Most of the card charge a AMC but they provide your with service which make you more than the Annual charge you are paying. So be open and look out for the best offer the companies are providing you.
3) Reward point or cash back provided – This is one of the most direct way to profit from your credit card. Look for companies which provide best offer on this. There are some companies which give upto 5 rewards point for Rs 100 transaction. Points are redeemable for cash, so in a way you actually get 5% discount on anything you do with the card.
These are the three points you should keep in mind while choosing the CC. There are some other points also to keep in mind while choosing a Credit card. We will be talking more about them in coming articles.
I hope that after reading this, you should have got a basic understanding of what is a credit card and what points you should keep in mind while choosing the best credit card in India.
In case you have some questions which you feel I have not answered here please feel free to ask your questions and I will try to answer it to the best of my ability.