Which bank provide credit card against fixed deposit in India and also includes airport lounge access?
One of my existing banks advertised for credit card against fixed deposit aka “Secured Credit Card”.
I went to a branch of this bank to apply for this credit card for a family member. This bank is a Top 5 private sector bank in India and this branch confuses the priciness of its shares with its rank on the valuation league table of global banks.
I wrote about the visit in When Will Fintechs Sell What Consumers Want To Buy?. Here’s a tl;dr version:
The branch operations manager summarily rejected the application, saying my daughter wasn’t eligible for a credit card because she was still a student. I asked him to look up her account before hastily offering his expert opinion. He did that on their core banking system – supplied by my ex-employer BTW – and, as I’d hoped, realized that there were a few fixed deposits in my daughter’s name. I also pointed out that banks could issue a credit card to non-earning people as long as they were 18+ and offered collateral like FD. This is an old banking rule but the guy acted as though he was hearing it for the first time in his life.
I urged him to consult his senior colleagues. After doing that, he sheepishly agreed with me and assured me that, as soon as the majority status update happened, the bank would issue the credit card.
Weeks after the majority status update went through, there was no movement on the credit card application. I escalated the matter to the Relationship Manager Head of the branch. She promised to send someone over to my daughter to discuss various credit card products. Months later, my daughter is still waiting.
And this was without tacking on your stipulation about including airport lounge access.
IMO Secured Credit Card fulfills needs but @elenabotella , who created this product at Capital One, thinks it exploits the needy. I never thought the dividing line between fulfilling needs & exploiting the needy was this thin!https://t.co/LEgyinK4qV
— Ketharaman Swaminathan (@s_ketharaman) November 4, 2019
Based on my aforementioned experience, I tend to believe that the answer to your question is determined less by the bank and more by the specific employee you meet at its branch.