Abhi
Credit cards are God’s gift to “those who know how to use them”. In this post I am going to review the CRED App and how I get rewarded for all my Credit Card payments. You might have noticed that I use credit cards quite extensively. In my November’19 report on Cashbacks and Rewards, I had pointed out how I have about Rs.15,000 savings from credit cards. You can see my credit card stack that makes this possible here.
Credit cards are God’s gift to “those who know how to use them”
Abhi @ LittleSaves.com 😉Tweet
Before reading my CRED App review any further, get one thing straight. Never take money on credit or use a credit card for transactions that you cannot afford to pay back. Credit cards interest rates ranges between 30% to 50% on outstanding bills. When I say I use my credit card a lot, I use it for transactions I clear end of the month. In other words, I never pay the card companies any interest.
Credit Card Bill Payments
I don’t like paying credit card bills. Not one bit, first off, I hate to give them my money (yes the money I took from them in the first place). But more importantly, the hassle of logging into 6 different websites and portals. Then making multiple payments and tracking them after 2 days to ensure all the payments went through and there are no month end shockers. Then there is the pain of maintaining one extra excel file with all your payments, due dates and minimum amount due etc.
CRED App: Rewards for paying Credit card bills
Enter the CRED App. This is another no-brainer, must use app from Kunal Shah, the founder of Freecharge. Kunal Shah and the CRED team bridges the pain around having multiple credit cards by building one nifty little app that tracks your credit cards, due dates, amount due. And even better, every Re.1 you pay towards your credit card, you earn 1 CRED point! Effectively, you are getting rewarded for making credit card payments.
How much is a CRED point worth?
CRED brings you a large variety of offers and deals from both well established and new to market startups. These deals can be purchased using your CRED points. Here is an example. I love Bombayshirts, I’ve got a large collection of their custom made shirts. Now, Cred gives me an offer to buy Rs.750 gift card of Bombay Shirts for 15,000 points. This puts my points value at 5 paisa/point (giving me back 5 paisa for every rupee I paid towards my credit cards. That is 5%!)
The value of the points vary from deal to deal. But, based on my usage I would estimate each point to be worth 2.5%. So to put things into perspective, in the last 1 year, my wife and I have made Rs.11,00,000 as credit card payments. For this we got back a tonne of reward points and airmiles. Plus CRED has given us about Rs.27,500 more!
What Kind of offers come up on CRED App
Thus far, I have got all kinds of deals. From free socks and sanitary napkins to Board games, magazine subscriptions, food delivery coupons, free pizzas, clothing, infant products, accessories etc. All of these are curated by the CRED team to ensure that you get the best of value for your CRED points. They were even giving away Noise Shots earpods worth 5K and Mi Bands. You come across innovative startups with great products and most of them offer you some great deals to try out their products.
Other inCREDible features
There are two other great things about the CRED App:
- For every payment over Rs.1000, you get a “Kill the bill” card. This is a scratch card that pays anywhere between Rs.1 to Rs.10,000 to your credit card. Here is how this works. I pay Rs.10,000 towards my American Express card. For this I get two Kill the bill cards, 1 for 1000 CRED points and another for 5000 CRED points (for making over Rs.10,000). I need to pay 1000 points to scratch the 1000 points card. The reward is an additional Rs.1 to Rs.1000 value of hard cash paid to my credit card, courtesy CRED. I usually end up getting anywhere between Rs.6 to Rs.25 extra for all my credit card payments. I pay 6 cards a month. Taking the minimum of Rs.6, I get a total of Rs.36 just for paying my bills.
- Consolidated place to find all offers on your credit card. CRED app shows you all the existing offers that are running on your credit cards in one place. It makes it easy to avail better discounts and save smart!
- CRED Protect: This is a nifty feature that alerts you when there are suspicious transactions, double transactions, additional charges on your card etc. In the past 1 year, I have had a couple of instances where their alerts have saved me.
How to get CRED membership
Signup Process
CRED is a membership based app. Access is given based on your credit scores.
Sign up on cred (use this link to get a free Amazon or Uber gift card on your first payment!). Once you have the app, sign up using your mobile number. This has to be the number that is on your PAN card and linked to your cards. CRED will check with CIBIL for your credit history and get your credit scores.
How much CIBIL Score do I need for a CRED Membership
You should have a CIBIL score of 750 or more. And here is a bonus, when you sign up, you get an equal number points. I had 834 score at the time of signing up (I score better now!). I got 834 CRED points when I signed up on CRED.
There is no cost involved nor does it reflect on your CIBIL ratings when CRED validates your score.
Adding your Credit Cards
Once you have your CRED membership, just pop in your credit cards. CRED app will validate them. Also if you want, you can enable CRED Protect. This links your email address with CRED and gives CRED access to your emails. If you are alright with that, then this is a useful feature to have.
Here is something for you
I’ve been a member of CRED for a while and can refer you to get an account. Sign up with my link below to get an Amazon or Uber rewards card on making your first credit card payment!
