Every promise has a price list
Published 30 September 2026
Every rewards promise in this file sits on top of a price list the issuer publishes, version-stamps, and almost nobody reads. It is called the Most Important Terms and Conditions. Four issuers' MITCs, read side by side: this is the menu the marketing never shows you.
The rewards are the lure; the fee grid is the business. A reward point costs the issuer a fraction of a rupee. A single revolved month costs you 3.75% of the balance. The chapters before this one documented what was taken from the rewards side; this one prices what was always charged on the other. Same document, both sides of the business.
45% a year, printed in black and white
The number the entire industry converges on is 3.75% per month - 45% a year. HDFC Bank's MITC, version 2.3 dated October 2024, charges 3.75% per month on revolving credit and cash advances. SBI Card's MITC carries "up to 3.75% per month [45% per annum]". ICICI Bank's lists 3.75% per month, effective 15 November 2024. Axis Bank's states 3.75% per month. Four issuers, one price. Personal loans in India change hands at half that rate; the card in your pocket prices its credit like an emergency.
Except at the top. HDFC's schedule runs a second, quieter tariff: 1.99% per month - 23.88% a year - for Infinia, Diners Black and the premium shelf. The price of debt depends on the card you hold: 23.88% for the customer the bank courts, 45% for everyone else. The same document that sells you status in the brochure prices it in the schedule.
The HDFC document even teaches the arithmetic, with worked examples: interest computed on ₹15,000, on ₹8,000, on ₹5,000, month after month. An issuer that prints the compounding in its own disclosure is not worried you will read it.
The lateness ladder
Miss the due date and the grid lights up. HDFC's current version lists a late payment fee of ₹1,100, an over-limit charge of ₹550, and a payment return fee of ₹500 - three separate meters for one bad month. SBI Card's late payment slab runs to ₹750. The slab is graded by what you owe - the larger the balance you missed, the larger the penalty, so the fee climbs precisely as the difficulty does. Axis's schedule has two lines where the others have one: a late payment fee, and a recurring late payment fee. ICICI prices over-limit at 2.5% of the excess, minimum ₹550. Each amount is small enough to absorb and large enough to notice too late - and each carries GST on top, as the schedules themselves note. That is the design point of every fee on this page.
The travel tax
Spend abroad - or spend with a merchant settled abroad - and the grid takes 3.5% before your points are counted. Axis, ICICI and SBI all print a 3.50% foreign currency markup; SBI exempts its Elite card. A card advertising 2% rewards on travel is, on foreign soil, a card that charges 3.5% to earn 2%. HDFC adds the gentler trap: a 1% markup on dynamic currency conversion - the "pay in rupees?" offer at a foreign terminal, which feels like a courtesy and bills like a fee.
The refund that doesn't
The travel tax has a barb. Axis's MITC notes that when a foreign transaction is refunded, the conversion markup is not - the merchant sends your money back, the grid keeps its 3.5% of the round trip. ICICI's schedule carries the same clause. Book a hotel abroad, cancel it inside the free-cancellation window, and you have made a charitable donation to the foreign-exchange desk: nothing bought, nothing owed, 3.5% collected. The fee is not on what you spend. It is on what passes through, in either direction.
Your own cash, at a price
Withdraw cash on the card and two meters start at once: a 2.5% cash advance fee at HDFC (Infinia excepted), plus finance charges from the day of withdrawal - the interest-free period never applies to cash. SBI's MITC carries the same rule. The ATM treats it as your money; the MITC treats it as a same-day loan at 45%.
The minimum that isn't
The kindest-looking number on the statement is the minimum amount due. Axis's MITC prints the formula without shame: 2% of the balance, plus 100% of every fee, interest charge and tax - its own worked example lands at a "minimum" of ₹1,953.65. And then the document says the quiet part in plain type: if you spend ₹5,000 and pay back exactly the minimum amount due every month, it will take you up to seven years to repay. Seven years, for ₹5,000, at the grid rate - written down by the issuer itself. The minimum due is not a repayment plan. It is a subscription to the 45%.
Everything the card may not do
The same documents keep a growing list of payments the card refuses to be used for at all. ICICI's current MITC bars cash withdrawal on credit-card-on-UPI transactions and names the restricted categories outright: peer-to-peer transfers, lending platforms, digital account opening, IPO applications, foreign inward remittances, mutual funds. Each line is a door that was open once and is closed now - closed not because customers abused it more than last year, but because the grid learned what that traffic cost. The credit card was sold as money anywhere. The schedule narrows "anywhere" a clause at a time.
The add-on shelf
Below the headline charges sits the long tail, and it is priced with the same confidence. ICICI's January revision added a ₹3,000 one-time fee for an add-on Emeralde Metal card - a fee for a second piece of metal on an account you already pay for. HDFC's schedule lists a payment return fee of ₹500: your cheque or auto-debit bounces, and the grid bills you for the privilege of having billed you. Over-limit at ICICI is 2.5% of the excess, minimum ₹550 - charged, note, when the bank itself chose to approve the transaction that took you over. Every one of these is a few hundred rupees. That is the point. A fee grid does not need to hurt once; it needs to be brushed past a million times a month.
One month on the grid, priced
Take a ₹40,000 statement on a standard card and make one mistake: pay only the minimum. The grid answers in order. The minimum is engineered small - 2% of the balance plus 100% of every fee and tax, per Axis's printed formula - so most of the balance survives. The surviving balance starts turning at 3.75% a month immediately, and at most issuers new transactions join it in the interest pool from the day they are made, because the interest-free period dies the month you revolve. Miss the due date entirely and the lateness ladder adds its rungs - up to ₹1,100 at HDFC, ₹750 at SBI, a recurring line at Axis. Go over the limit and ICICI adds 2.5% of the excess. Spend abroad and 3.5% comes off the top. Then GST is applied to the charges themselves. A cardholder who runs that month twice a year has donated more to the grid than the year's rewards were ever worth - and the brochure's "up to 5% back" was true the entire time.
Version-stamped
These are living documents. HDFC's is version 2.3, dated October 2024 - the same version that capped utility points at 2,000 a month. One PDF, revised on the issuer's schedule, carries both the rewards being trimmed and the fees being charged. The chapters before this one tracked the first half of that document. The grid is the second half, and it is why the rewards can exist at all: the 45% finances the 5%. Read it once a year, the way the issuer writes it.
- HDFC Bank MITC, v2.3 (Oct 2024) - 3.75%/month and the 1.99% premium tier; late fee ₹1,100; over-limit ₹550; payment return ₹500; cash advance 2.5%; DCC markup 1%; the worked interest examples.
- SBI Card MITC - "up to 3.75% per month [45% per annum]"; late payment slab to ₹750; 3.5% foreign currency fee except Elite; cash advance finance charges from day one.
- ICICI Bank MITC - 3.75%/month effective 15 Nov 2024; 3.50% forex markup; over-limit 2.5%, minimum ₹550.
- Axis Bank MITC - 3.75%/month; 3.50% foreign currency markup; late payment and recurring late payment fees.