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.
6094 posts · Page 326 of 508 · View the full archive
Credit HealthThin file, no score: what the bureaus show when you have never borrowed
You've never taken a loan, never held a credit card, paid for everything outright — financially responsible by any common-sense measure. The bureau file says "NH": no history. No score. To the credit system, you are invi
Credit HealthCIBIL 300 to 900: what the score bands actually signal to a lender
The CIBIL score runs from 300 to 900, and every Indian borrower eventually learns their number. But the number alone is trivia — what matters is what each band signals to the lender reading it, and what moves you between
Credit HealthDisputing a credit report error: the lender-first route across all four bureaus
Your report shows a ₹45,000 personal loan you never took, or a "30 DPD" on a card you closed two years ago. Errors like these are common — lender reporting mistakes, identity mix-ups, settled accounts showing as open — a
Credit HealthWhich credit bureau does your lender actually check
You've polished your CIBIL file to a shine. The home loan lender pulls Experian. Your perfect CIBIL score is suddenly irrelevant, and the Experian file — which you haven't looked at in two years — carries a wrongly-repor
Credit HealthWhy your CIBIL score and Experian score never match: reading two numbers honestly
CIBIL says 782. Experian says 741. Same person, same month, a 41-point gap — and both numbers are "correct". India's four bureaus compute their scores from different files with different formulas on different update cycl
Credit HealthOne free full credit report a year from each bureau: the RBI rule and how to claim it
Buried in RBI's regulations is one of the most underused consumer rights in Indian finance: every individual is entitled to one Free Full Credit Report (FFCR) — including the score — per calendar year from *each* of the
Credit HealthIndia's four credit bureaus: CIBIL, Experian, Equifax, and CRIF High Mark
Ask ten Indians to name a credit bureau and nine will say "CIBIL". There are four. TransUnion CIBIL, Experian, Equifax, and CRIF High Mark are all licensed credit information companies in India, all regulated under the C
How-To GuidesEstate planning for cardholders: a practical addendum to your will
A will distributes a person's assets. It almost never mentions their credit cards. That omission is understandable — nobody writes "and my three credit cards" into a legal document — but it leaves the family to reconstru
How-To GuidesThe document checklist: death certificate, succession papers and bank letters
Ask any family that has settled a deceased person's card accounts what slowed them down, and the answer is almost never the bank's process — it is the documents. One certificate missing, a name spelled differently on two
How-To GuidesDormant cards of the deceased: the fraud risk families miss
Every estate has them: the cards nobody was using. A card taken for a joining bonus and forgotten. An old card kept "just in case." A card the deceased stopped using years ago but never formally closed. In life, a dorman
How-To GuidesPower of attorney and operating someone else's card account: the limits
In Indian families, one person often ends up managing everyone's money — the son who pays his elderly mother's bills, the daughter who handles her father's cards because he finds apps confusing, the spouse who runs the e
How-To GuidesRecovering unclaimed rewards, deposits and refunds of a deceased cardholder
When families settle a deceased person's card accounts, almost all the attention goes to the bill. Almost none goes to the other side of the ledger: the reward points sitting on the account, the security deposits the ban