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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.

6352 posts · Page 348 of 530 · View the full archive

Credit Health

India'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

8 Oct 20264 min read
How-To Guides

Estate 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

8 Oct 20264 min read
How-To Guides

The 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

8 Oct 20264 min read
How-To Guides

Dormant 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

8 Oct 20264 min read
How-To Guides

Power 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

8 Oct 20264 min read
How-To Guides

Recovering 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

8 Oct 20264 min read
How-To Guides

Saved cards, subscriptions and autopay mandates after a death: the digital cleanup

In an earlier era, a deceased person's credit cards were physical objects in a wallet, and closing them ended the story. Today the story continues online: the card number lives on in merchant vaults, subscription billing

8 Oct 20264 min read
How-To Guides

Supplementary cards after the primary holder's death: what happens to family members' cards

Supplementary cards are everywhere in Indian families — a spouse's add-on card on the husband's account, a child's card piggybacking on a parent's limit, an elderly parent's card tied to a working child's account. When t

8 Oct 20264 min read
How-To Guides

Who pays the credit card bill after the cardholder dies

One of the most anxious questions families face after a death is also one of the most misunderstood: is someone in the family now personally liable for the deceased's credit card bill? The short answer is no — unless you

8 Oct 20264 min read
How-To Guides

Nominees on credit card accounts: what the nomination actually does

Many Indian credit cardholders have at some point filled in a "nominee" field during onboarding or in the bank's app, often without reading the fine print. After a death, families frequently arrive at the bank believing

8 Oct 20264 min read
How-To Guides

Closing a deceased family member's credit cards: the process, step by step

When a family member dies, closing their credit cards is one of those quiet administrative tasks that can easily get lost between the rituals, the mourning, and the paperwork that feels more urgent. But leaving a card ac

8 Oct 20264 min read
How-To Guides

Designing your card stack around MCCs

Most people choose credit cards by headline features — the joining bonus, the advertised reward rate, the lounge access. But cards don't earn rewards on headlines; they earn on MCCs. Designing your card stack around merc

8 Oct 20264 min read