I have a salary account with citibank suvidha. The account is ok. I did not opt for the ready credit and insisted on filling the form myself and did not fill in the ready credit section and clearly marked it as "No" in the application form. So I do not have ready credit.
Things were going fine until they send me a card. I never asked for a citibank credit card so I was shocked. I already have too many credit cards(3) so I did not want any more. Its already difficult to keep track of all that. I mean I have telephone remainders of due dates, GNUcash to keep track of assets and liabilitites, and heck I am not a accountant, but three credit lines are good enough. Nevertheless I decided to take a look at what I was getting into here is what I found:
1. They have a mandatory standing instruction to debit my salary account of the minimum outstanding every month.
If I close the salary account, they will liquidate all the assets(fixed deposits/cash in savings) to pay the outstanding. Also the outstanding will be immediately become payable the moment I quit the job or the company closes the salary account. So if I plan to use the card to buy vegetables while I am changing jobs, I cant do so.[ I use the cards for vegetables and regular stuff[ok sometimes jewellery] anyways not for buying expensive clothes from madurai garments]
The rewards program takes the cake :1 point for Rs125 spent. To redeem I need to have 10, 000 points/annum. They assume I spend 35k per month[some places give 5x rewards, they assume 50% spend there]. Amazing. ICICI asks for 500 points minimum. HSBC asks for 200 pts min.
Its easy to see that they are not interested in retail banking for the average guy, which is fine, even ICICI bank requires a minimum savings account balance of Rs 10, 000. Other mnc banks and even some indian do a far better job and provide a far better product. This bank is mostly meant for business people who travel to the US. Like Deutche bank is meant for businessmen in the India-Europe setup. Keep that in mind when dealing with this bank.