Kunal Shah's CRED launches 18 carat gold credit card with IndusInd Bank

Cred's founder Kunal Shah also unveiled Sovereign, an invite-only society for India’s elite, featuring a bespoke 18-karat gold credit card made with guilloché engraving.

Bengaluru-based fintech player CRED unveiled Sovereign, an invite-only society for India’s elite, on September 15, featuring a bespoke 18-karat gold credit card with guilloché engraving.

Alongside, the company also launched the CRED IndusInd Bank RuPay Credit Card. This lifestyle-focused card offers 5 percent rewards on all e-commerce transactions and 1 percent on offline and UPI spends via CRED Scan and Pay.

In India, only banks can issue credit cards, and hence the partnership with IndusInd Bank. CRED will take care of the marketing and sales in a typical co-branded card partnership.

The card allows redemption across more than 500 CRED Pay merchants, 2,000 products on CRED Store, flights (powered by the ixigo platform), and over 8 lakh hotels (by Expedia) bookings. Every reward point earned is equivalent to one rupee, with instant application at checkout.

Speaking at the launch, Kunal Shah, founder of CRED, said the card was designed to address a fundamental gap in the market: the lack of freedom in rewards.

Most other e-commerce and payment firms also have co-branded cards from Amazon, Flipkart, Swiggy, PhonePe, and Paytm, among others.

“We found that the gap was the gap of freedom. All the cards were going in the direction of saying, ‘Work with this merchant, work with that merchant.’ But consumers want freedom. This card is about rewards that follow taste, not terms,” Shah said at the press conference.

He added that the shift in consumer behavior has made flexibility crucial.

Shah added that 60-65 percent of all spending on cards is already moving to e-commerce, up from 25-30 percent just a few years ago. “The new generation of creditworthy customers want to explore a wide range of brands, not be tied to a few forced loyalties.”

Meanwhile, the card comes with zero joining fees and a two-minute digital onboarding process. According to IndusInd Bank, the product is positioned to capture India’s fast-growing segment of affluent and digital-first consumers.

A prominent angel investor, Shah, was upbeat about the prospects of the new products, especially the Sovereign Gold Card. “Take a good look because you will probably not see it. Most people will not get it.”

Cred, launched initially as a credit card bill payment platform, is the sixth largest UPI app. With multiple financial services offerings, the company has turned into a diversified payments fintech.