ixigo AU Credit Card

Quick verdict: A lifetime-free travel co-brand built around the ixigo app — 10% off flights and hotels (up to ₹3,000 each) and no payment-gateway charge on train bookings. Because it costs nothing to hold, there's no break-even to clear, and the train-booking saving alone can justify it for regular rail travellers. Just know the discounts only fire when you book through ixigo — this is a companion card, not a primary.

The ixigo AU Credit Card is a co-brand tied to the ixigo travel app, and that tie is the single most important thing to understand before applying. Its headline benefits — the flight and hotel discounts, the waived train-booking charge — only apply to bookings made inside ixigo. Book your travel anywhere else, or swipe it at the supermarket, and you're left with an ordinary base earn rate. Read as an ixigo booker's zero-cost sidekick, it makes a lot of sense; read as a do-everything card, it doesn't.

What it earns

The reward structure splits cleanly into "ixigo bookings" and "everything else":

• 10% off flight bookings through ixigo, capped at ₹3,000 per booking.
• 10% off hotel bookings through ixigo, also capped at ₹3,000.
• No payment-gateway charge on train bookings via ixigo — up to 4 waivers a month (2 on ixigo

trains + 2 on ConfirmTkt), a small but genuinely useful saving that regular rail travellers pay on every ticket elsewhere.

• A flat 5 reward points per ₹200 (about 0.625%, at ~25 paisa a point) across **online, offline

and UPI spends, capped at 10,000 points a statement cycle** — the flat rate replaced the old travel tier in April 2026.

• 5,000 bonus points in any calendar quarter you spend ₹75,000 or more — up to 20,000 bonus

points a year.

• A real lounge set: 8 domestic airport visits a year (2 a quarter, unlocked by ₹50,000 spend in the

previous quarter), 8 railway lounge visits with no spend gate, and 1 international visit a year via Priority Pass.

• A welcome of 1,000 reward points plus 1,000 ixigo Money — the voucher is for new-to-bank customers

only and stays valid 90 days.

• A 1% fuel surcharge waiver on transactions between ₹400 and ₹5,000, capped **₹250 a statement

month**.

The base points earn is deliberately ordinary — this card doesn't try to be your rewards engine. Points redeem through the catalogue only (minimum 200 points, ₹99 + GST per redemption; there's no statement-credit option). Its value lives in the booking discounts, and those only exist inside the ixigo ecosystem.

The lifetime-free advantage — and the ixigo catch

Two facts define this card. First, it's genuinely lifetime free: ₹0 joining fee, ₹0 annual fee. That removes the question every other card forces on you — "will I spend enough to justify the fee?" You won't, because there's no fee to justify. A card that costs nothing can sit in your wallet earning its keep on the handful of ixigo bookings you make each year, and that's a perfectly rational reason to hold it.

Second, the catch: the discounts are ixigo-only. This isn't a card that rewards travel broadly — it rewards travel booked through one specific app. If you already use ixigo for flights, hotels or (especially) trains, the discounts pay back on bookings you were making anyway. If you don't, there's little here, because the everyday earn rate is nothing special. It's also RuPay, so UPI-linkable — handy for scan-and-pay — and, unusually for a lifetime-free RuPay card, it carries a 0% forex markup, so it's one of the few no-fee cards that's genuinely fine to carry abroad.

The honest read

The ixigo AU works precisely because it's free. Being lifetime-free flips the usual logic: you don't need the card to "earn out" its cost, so even occasional ixigo bookings make it worth keeping. For a frequent rail traveller, the waived train-booking gateway charge — small per ticket, but paid on every one — can quietly add up to real money over a year, and the flight and hotel discounts stack on top when you use them.

But keep expectations honest. The discounts are capped at ₹3,000 each and gated to ixigo; the base reward rate is ordinary; and general or overseas spend earns you little. This is a companion card, not a primary — its whole case rests on you actually booking through ixigo. If you don't use the app, a stronger all-round travel card will serve you far better.

The bottom line

The ixigo AU Credit Card is an easy "yes" for the right person and an easy "skip" for everyone else. If you book flights, hotels or trains through ixigo, the lifetime-free structure means it costs you nothing to pocket 10% off (up to ₹3,000) on flights and hotels and skip the gateway charge on train tickets — with a welcome of 1,000 points plus 1,000 ixigo Money and UPI convenience thrown in. Because there's no fee, there's no downside to holding it alongside your main card. Just don't mistake it for a primary: outside the ixigo app the earn is ordinary, even though the 0% forex markup means it's one of the rare free cards worth packing for a trip abroad. As a zero-cost companion for an ixigo user — especially a regular rail traveller — it does exactly one job well, and does it for free.