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The author of this blog has explained about his personal experiences in detail.
Kotak Bank has recently launched a new entry-level credit card – the Kotak 811 Credit Card. Kotak bank already has an 811 #DreamDifferent credit card. The difference with this new card is: 811 is an unsecured credit card while the #DreamDifferent card is a secured one.
Let's dive into the details of this credit card and see how good it is.
Kotak 811 Credit Card:
Fees and Eligibility:
- Joining and annual fee - ₹500 + taxes.
- Kotak 811 is currently being rolled out only in selected cities, i.e., Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi (including Gurgaon and Noida), Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Pune. People residing outside of these cities will have to wait.
- Annual fee waiver - ₹50k or more.
Rewards and Benefits:
- Joining Benefits: 500 bonus reward points on spending ₹5000 within the first 45 days. i.e., 0.25% additional value.
- Recurring Benefit: Cashback of ₹750 or 4 PVR tickets on spending ₹75000 in a year.
- Reward Points: 0.25% - 1 reward point for every ₹100 spent.
- Accelerated Reward-Points: 0.5% - 2 reward points for every ₹100 spent online.
- Exclusions: Fuel transactions and railway ticket purchases won’t accrue reward points. Wallet load is not explicitly mentioned, but my guess is wallet load won’t accrue points too.
Thoughts on Kotak 811 credit card
Kotak Bank’s 811 credit card is a simple entry-level credit card that honestly has no interesting features apart from its very ultra-modern minimalistic design. Maybe that is the reason why Kotak Bank launched this card without much fanfare.
At best you can get a 1.5% reward rate on this card if you spend ₹75k in a year (all of it online to get 2 reward points). This is including the fee waiver benefit and ₹750 cashback as a milestone benefit. If your spending is lower than 75k in a year, then your reward rate drops down to 0.5% which is abysmally low.
The 1.5% reward is the maximum reward rate you can earn and that too if you spend exactly ₹75k in a year. If you spend less than ₹75k you won't get 4 PVR tickets or ₹750 cashback and your reward rate drops drastically. Further, if your spending is above ₹75k there are no incremental benefits or milestone benefits. Thus, in practice, the reward rate will be much lower than 1.5%.
On the other hand, Kotak 811’s secured counterpart #DreamDifferent has the same reward rate and milestone benefits but without any annual fees. You may argue that one has to make an FD for that, but then again you get a competitive interest rate on your deposits.
Should you apply for the Kotak 811 credit card?
The straight answer is No. There is no sense in applying for this card unless you are into collecting plastic for their designs. There are numerous credit cards, nearly from every bank, that will give better reward rates than what Kotak 811 offers. Just to name a few, ICICI Amazon, Axis Freecharge, Axis Flipkart, HDFC Millennia, IDFC First Millennia etc. Not to forget that HDFC Regalia is currently offered as lifetime free to many and has a much better reward rate. After the recent reward structure changes to SmartBuy, HDFC Regalia has become more attractive.
