Secured credit cards in India demystified

If you are a student and wish to pay for your first domain and hosting on some international website than you will need a valid credit card to do so. You cannot pay using your normal debit card. In India most of the middle class families don’t have credit cards as they don’t need one but with rising trend of global payments and intangible shopping, credit card became a necessity. Banks will not simply lend you a unsecured credit card if you don’t have a positive credit rating. They will ask you to furnish many documents and even after providing everything your application will still have full chances of getting rejected. Unsecured credit card to students is next to impossible.

To rescue us from this situation, banks provide something known as secured credit card which are issued against a Fixed Deposit (FD). Most of the banks will issue you a credit card against a FD of Rs. 20,000. Credit Card will have a credit limit of 85% of the FD amount. Some of the benefits are listed below:

  • Credit Card will be issued to you immediately with least documentation which is normally you FD slip
  • Most of the times these credit will not attract any annual fees (there are some exceptions to this benefit).
  • Rate of interest (ROI) will be lower in these cards than their secured counterparts

You must also note that not all banks offer credit cards against FD. The banks which offer credit cards against FD are listed below:

  1. ICICI Bank
  2. SBI Bank
  3. RBS (Royal Bank Of Scotland)
  4. Axis Bank

Among these all ICICI bank’s instant credit card option is the best because one will get added benefit of availing EMI facility on shopping through selected retail stores and some online shopping sites like Flipkart. This facility is not available on other credit cards.

I hope this article will help you in selecting the best secured credit card available in India.