Category Archives: Misc
Despite RBI moratorium, pay your full credit card bill
RBI as part of Covid-19 regulatory package announced a moratorium of 3 months on all term loans, including credit card bills falling due between 1st March and 31st May. Many misinterpretations are floating around this announcement; however, I say that pay your credit card bill in full despite RBI’s moratorium.
What makes me believe that paying the credit card bill in full is a wise thing to do? Read further to understand it.
Forex Cards: Niyo Global vs Other Forex Cards
Recently, a friend asked me about the best forex cards available in the market. Although I was sure that Niyo Global is the best forex card but just to convince him I did a data comparison on forex cards of major Indian banks.
While the concept of forex cards is simple and straightforward. Their only benefit is the ability to lock the exchange rate. However, banks seem to be making money at every step in this very simple product.
Pay house rent via credit cards- RedGiraffe vs NoBroker
Nowadays one can swipe credit cards for literally everything. However, are you aware that one can pay house rent via credit cards too? Well, there are multiple options available that allows one to make house rent payment via credit cards.
Benefits of paying house rent via credit cards
- The obvious benefit of using credit cards for house rent payment is reward points. Let’s just assume that the credit card gives 1.5% reward rate and rent payment is 25,000/month. Thus the net reward earned would ~1% on the rent paid (adjusting for charges of service providers), which would be worth 3,000 (25000*12*1%) in one year. In case someone pays higher rent, the value would be higher.
- Further, not to forget the credit-free period. Assuming saving account interest rate of 4%, for an average 30 days credit-free period, one earns an extra 0.3% interest.
- Higher annual spending on credit card helps one to achieve annual spending limit to get an annual fee waiver or additional benefits (as in the case of HDFC’s Dinersclub cards or Amex Platinum Travel Card)
- Another aspect is that this helps in improving one’s credit score. Higher monthly bills and regular payments are seen positively by credit bureaus.
Citibank – Changes in reward program
Citibank has announced changes to its reward program and excluded many major categories from it, effective from 12th October 2019. Personally, Citibank is my primary card (till now that is) because of its simplicity. One gets reward points for all the transactions (no exceptions) and no expiry of reward points. However, this has now changed.
Below are the details on changes made to the Citibank credit card reward program:
What are the changes in Citibank reward program?
If one reads the official update about changes to Citibank reward program (link here), it’s not very clear as to which merchants are excluded from reward points and which are not. Thus I dug up on what these MCC codes meant and found the details here.
Thus, combining information from these sources, I made a ready reckoner for reference, below.
