The CardBuzz blog
Card-by-card write-ups from our team, features, fees, lounge access and who each card actually suits. For the numbers after every cap and exclusion, head to the card pages.
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Buying GuidesUpgrading After 12 Months: When and How to Ask for More
Twelve months of clean card usage is a credential. It is the point where banks start treating you as a proven customer instead of a gamble: limit-increase offers appear, upgrade calls begin, and the cards that declined y
Buying GuidesEmployer-Offered Cards vs Open-Market Cards: The Trade-offs
Not all cards that arrive through your employer are the same product. There is the salary-account card the bank pitches you, and there is the corporate card the company itself issues for work expenses — and both get conf
Buying GuidesAvoiding Lifestyle Inflation With Your First Credit Card
The first salary feels like freedom, and the first credit card feels like a bigger salary. Together they are the classic setup for lifestyle inflation — spending that rises to meet (and then exceed) income, leaving the s
Buying GuidesSalary-Day Bill Scheduling: Automating Card Payments Around Payday
Most first earners pay their credit-card bill whenever they remember — usually a day or two before the due date, in a small panic. There is a better way: schedule everything around salary day, the one date your cash flow
Buying GuidesBuilding CIBIL From Zero: Your First 12 Months, Step by Step
A credit score does not exist until you create it. When you get your first credit card, the bureaus open a file on you with nothing in it, and the number that eventually appears — in India, the CIBIL score runs from 300
Buying GuidesFirst-Year Fee Planning: When to Pay an Annual Fee and When to Skip It
Annual fees are the first-year trap for new earners. The card looks free — "first year free!" — and the fee appears in month thirteen, when you are settled into the card and least likely to act. First-year fee planning i
Buying GuidesSetting Your Own Credit Limits: The Self-Imposed Cap Method
Your first credit card will probably come with a limit that feels generous — often several times your monthly salary. That number is the bank's risk decision, not a spending recommendation, and treating it as permission
Buying GuidesSalary-Account Card vs Open-Market Card: Which Should Come First
When your employer opens your salary account, the bank almost always follows with a credit-card offer — often pre-approved, often pitched as exclusive. It arrives with the comfort of familiarity: the same app, the same r
Buying GuidesWhich Card Types to Get First: Cashback, Rewards Points, or Secured
Cashback, rewards points, and secured cards are the three doors into credit-card life, and they open onto very different first years. A cashback card pays you in money. A rewards-points card pays you in a currency you ha
Buying GuidesBuilding Your First Credit Card Stack: A First-Salary Playbook
The first salary lands, the salary account gets opened, and within a week the offers start arriving: a pre-approved credit card from the salary-account bank, a co-branded card pushed by an app you installed, a "lifetime
Deals & OffersThe Diwali Anti-Gifting Trap List: What Not to Put on a Card This Diwali
Every Diwali gifting guide explains what to buy and which card to use. This one does the opposite: ten traps that turn festive generosity into financial regret, each tied to a specific way credit cards get misused in Oct
Deals & OffersFestive Exchange Offers: How They Actually Work
Exchange offers are everywhere every festive season — trading in an old phone, television, or laptop for a discount on a new one. The banners promise generous values, but the mechanics underneath are specific and occasio