IDFC First Bank Private Debit Card (Metal) Experience

By | January 15, 2023

IDFC First Bank launched First Private debit card on Visa Infinite, the country’s first-ever standalone metal debit card on 30th November 2021. It’s a lifetime free debit card designed specifically for customers who are part of the Bank’s First Private Program.

Eligibility Criteria

  • Expected NRV: 50 lakhs via Investments

IDFC First Bank requires you to join its First Private Program by maintaining minimum NRV (primarily from investments) in the range of 50 Lacs in order to be eligible for this card, which is quite high by any standard. This may vary with location & time.

Earlier this Program was offered, if you had very high savings balance/ FD with the bank (to the tune of minimum 1.5-2 Crores) to select few.

“I have learnt via IDFC Bank top authorities that First Private Program is no longer being offered via savings account AMB”. High investment is a must for onboarding. Otherwise country head approval is required.

Investment choices are versatile with few unique options like Pre-listed & Pre-IPO equity, Bonds, PMS, AIF, Offshore investments, Real estate investments etc.

The program entitles you to various lifestyle benefits viz. 1 free locker (subject to availability) and many more.

Features & Benefits

There are some industry first features embedded in this debit card. Will try to list out as many as possible here–

  • Exquisitely crafted from hybrid Metal with details etched in Silver
  • Unbelievably high per day ATM withdrawal and Purchase limit of 10 & 15 lacs respectively
  • 4 domestic airport lounge access along with a companion (thereby making it 4+4) each quarter, charged INR 2 everytime.
  • 6 international airport lounge access per quarter (charged 32$ and reversed within 10 days). You don’t need either PP or Dreamfolks card for access. New!
  • Complimentary Welive membership which works like mini Timesprime (benefits are bigbasket 250/- GV, 3 months Amazon prime, 6 months PharmEasy and few more memberships plus discount coupons for few services). Even Wealth Credit Card, and Wealth/Select debit cards offer this benefit
  • Complimentary ID Sentry membership (Protects your cards from ID theft). Wealth and Select debit cards also offer this benefit
  • Handsome insurance cover for cardholder — Air Accident Insurance cover- 5 Cr, Personal Accident cover- 1.5 Cr, Lost Card Liability cover- 15 Lacs, Purchase Protection cover- 2 Lacs (Minimum 1 POS transaction >= 500 in each of the previous 3 months immediately preceding the month of incident)
  • Complimentary Road Side Assistance
  • Complimentary Golf access of 1 per month at partner Golf clubs over India
  • Upto 10X accelerated reward points program on debit card, delayed too much already (Yet to start, couldn’t find any details except in Program/ Card promo)
  • Visa Infinite privileges

Welcome Kit Unboxing

Outer Box
Opened outer box
Main Box
Main box with LCD screen describing brief features of Private Program
Main box with contents

Happy to see more and more private banks experimenting in giving their HNW customers exclusivity and premium experience.

Card look & feel

The card is beautifully crafted & finished, in statement Black colour with details in Silver. Name is in front whereas card number is at the back.

Note: Being a card with metal form factor, be ready to keep your hand/ card super straight in ATM else there will be operating issues as the card is stiff enough. You may think card is thick, but this is normal with operation of any metal card.

Drawbacks

International ecom or POS transaction markup fee at 2% (Grossly unfair for a card of this status, should have been NIL). Even Indusind bank Exclusive debit card (requires just 1 or 2 lacs AMB depending upon location) provides with NIL markup fee.

No EazyDiner offers, which has become basic requirement of even Semi-Premium/ Regular cards now a days.

Surprise !! A card of this status has no movie benefits except Visa Infinite offer. Something like 1000/- bookmyshow voucher should have been given every month (atleast to Primary card holder).

In comparison, most premium debit card offerings from Axis, AU, Indusind, Yes bank or for that matter even their semi- premium/ regular debit cards offer B1G1/ 50% off upto varied amounts.

Application Experience

Once on-boarding criteria was fulfilled by initiating adequate investments and funding, the onboarding process started but took quite a lot of time.

Understandable, as it’s a recently launched product with initial hiccups but hope it improves.

Bottomline

IDFC First Private Program is designed keeping in mind the requirement of their affluent HNW customers with less or no time to manage their investment portfolio. The product is tailored to suit requirements of select rich / ultra rich people.

As getting this exclusive debit card is very tough due to high onboarding eligibility, this product complements individuals having above mentioned investment requirements.

And not to mention, absence of NIL markup fee, BookMyShow/ EazyDiner offers & reward points on spends leaves a lot to be desired!

Even-though the card has decent benefits as listed above, most of them are available even on the IDFC Wealth Debit card. So for 5X more requirement in investment, IDFC did not go anywhere close to even 3X of what Wealth debit card offers.

Author: Satish Kumar Agarwal

Charmed by the world of finance especially Credit Cards, Bank Accounts. Helping friends in becoming financial savvy gives joy n pleasure to me.

24 thoughts on “IDFC First Bank Private Debit Card (Metal) Experience

  1. Ajai Singh

    @Sid does that international lounge access free from PP mean we can access any lounge even the ones outside PP network?

    Otherwise is there a list which can be referred?

    Also if a lounge is more than $32 will they only refund $32 and leave the rest on us?

    Reply
  2. Abhi

    AMB requirement : I think it’s quite variable as I only got wealth account despite well over 50L AMB maintained over 12 previous months. Hence even credit card given was Wealth variant, not Private. Whereas some people got Wealth even with 10L AMB. Apparently thresholds are driven at branch and RM level. Similarly, downgrades also are not automatic when your AMBs drop.

    Complimentary locker : It’s subject to availability and it’s never available. One of the tier 1 cities I know has 20+ bank branches but only one has locker facility.

    Markup fee : 2%+gst is high, idfc credit card has lower fee, even RBL Insignia debit card has nil fee.

    Reward Points : Have checked thrice with CC for my Wealth debit, they say it will be launched now or then, but never happened. They are a poorly prepared bank. Have even stopped spends on it. But as per them it will apply retrospectively regardless of when the program goes live.

    Bookmyshow : Presumably visa infinite debit offer should work? It’s supposed to work across issuers, only bin range should be expanded to cover idfc.

    Reply
    1. Satish Kumar Agarwal Post author

      In fact Yes First debit card offer is even better than B1G1. Yes Private debit card is better than Yes First offer.

      Reply
    2. Abhi

      Yes first world debit card gives flat 250 off every month on bookmyshow.

      Reply
  3. AAJ

    First private cc fees etc. are getting displayed on statements, likely launch soon, fees 50K

    Reply
  4. Raju

    @sid – Is welive membership offered with Wealth credit card, as you mentioned above? I have checked your article on Wealth credit card but didn’t find any details on this. I have wealth credit card and no such mention about this from bank.

    Reply
    1. Abhi

      When you say Sid, do you mean Satish (the author of this article)? Welive is offered with Wealth DEBIT card.

      Reply
      1. Raju

        Yes Abhi, I meant for Satish. As mentioned on above, Do we get welive membership with wealth credit card? Specifically mentioned as wealth credit card in this article, hence confused!

        @satish – Can you confirm?

        Reply
        1. Abhi

          Welive and few other memberships are offered as part of privilege banking (select/wealth/pvt). Not as part of credit card alone i.e. memberships are not offered if you avail credit card only. Also the memberships are only for first one year.

          Reply
          1. Satish Kumar Agarwal Post author

            Dear Abhi

            Wealth CC is accepted for Welive membership. Confirmed by Sid himself, who owns Wealth CC.

          2. Abhi

            Hi Satish, possibly yes welive comes with wealth credit card but various other memberships like amazon prime, zomato pro, timesprime etc come with privilege banking.

          3. Satish Kumar Agarwal Post author

            You onboarded early, so might have received Timesprime. It’s discontinued almost 3-4 months back and replaced with Sony LIV.
            To be precise, looks like for new onboarders they have removed Amazon prime, Zomato pro n Sony LIV as well.
            These memberships are no longer mentioned in Select/ Wealth/ Private program benefits.

            Welive is offered though with all 3 RB program as of now. So, devaluation with IDFC started in 1st phase of implementing them.

  5. Nikhil Bhirud

    Hi Siddharth, Could you please write a post with your review/opinions about health/fitness credit cards in India like SBI Pulse, Yesbank Wellness, Yesbank Wellness Plus, Axis Aura, SBI Apollo, RBL Practo Plus. I personally feel like the top two are SBI Pulse and then Yesbank Wellness Plus, and I wish to know your opinion to decide between the two. I do not care much about the joining bonus, but looking for long term benefits. Also, the 2 competitors only mention 12 complimentary Gym sessions per month, But the information is not very elaborate, as they don’t give details like whether the 12/month gym visits are available every month, or only the first month after joining/renewal.

    Reply
  6. Sanjiv

    Upgraded to Select relationship in July 2022. Apart from Welive benefit, received emails from bank with details for activating complimentary one year Amazon Prime and V1 heatlh subscription couple of days back.
    Also, Welive seems to be a Visa Infinite offer as I was able to successfully activate the same on Visa Infinite debit card from other bank.

    Reply
    1. AAJ

      Yes, but didn’t work for HDFC/IndusInd/Citi, it worked for StanC/Axis. FYI

      Reply
  7. Rohit

    Is there any hidden charges for cash withdrawal at atm abroad or it’s just 250+ gst?
    Like no interest, markup fee etc.. Things are absolutely not clear unless some used atm abroad. I wanted to apply idfc first credit card only for this reason but again I am thinking like how soon bank would devalue their cards.

    Reply
  8. Amex Guy

    So many words come to mind about this card. So few that I can use on a public forum.

    Reply
  9. Rahul

    There is no special benefit in this card. Private and Wealth are almost the same

    Reply
  10. Rahul

    Also on NRV requirements, we recently met the chief of wm at IDFC.. he said in metro locations 3Cr for private and 50lakhs for wealth.. Unless there is a corporate salary account with Annual ITR of 50 lakh plus

    Reply

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