How to read a credit card offer before you pay
Updated 30 September 2026
Most disappointment with credit card offers comes from six conditions that are published but not prominent. Rate, cap, cap period, minimum order, channel and route. Check those six and the offer either works or it does not, before you are committed.
The six checks, in order
Run these in order, because each one can rule the offer out on its own and they take seconds.
| Check | What you are looking for |
|---|---|
| 1. Rate | The headline percentage or points rate |
| 2. Cap | The ceiling on payout. Only 28.8% of offers publish one |
| 3. Cap period | Monthly, yearly, per transaction or per statement cycle |
| 4. Minimum order | Present on 35.4% of offers, median Rs 1,500 |
| 5. Channel | Online, offline or both |
| 6. Expiry | 0.0% of offers expire within seven days |
Guaranteed is not the same as estimated
Of the live offers we hold, 9,035 are guaranteed, meaning the terms state the amount plainly, and 2,401 are estimated, meaning the amount had to be derived from what was published. An estimated figure is a reasonable reading, not a promise. Anywhere you see a rupee figure, it is worth knowing which of the two it is.
Work out the break-even spend
Divide the cap by the rate to find the spend at which the offer stops paying. A 5% offer capped at Rs 500 stops at Rs 10,000. Below that the offer is excellent, above it your effective rate falls with every rupee. For a large purchase the uncapped card frequently wins, even at a much lower rate.
Check the date, always
An offer read last month may not exist today. Any page telling you about an offer should tell you when it ends and when it was last read from the source. If it does not, you are reading an opinion about an offer rather than the offer.
Figures on this page are computed from AskTula's offer database, 11,437 live offers read from published terms across 593 cards and 47 issuers, as read on 30 September 2026. They describe what issuers, merchants and card networks publish, not what any individual card will pay you.