Credit Cards Need To Make Our Lives Easier, Not More Difficult

Last month between travel, work and family commitments I missed my monthly ritual of trying to maximise earning rewards points via Gyftr, a portal that lets you buy gift cards for various brands at discounted rates. It dawned on me that regardless of which card you own, earning points requires focus and being open to pain. You need to devote time and patience or else while the card may claim to be incredibly rewarding, it really isn’t.

It made me wonder why banks make owning a credit card a difficult experience. From deceptive bills, complicated mileage programmes to making canceling a card very difficult (more on this below), banks have mastered the art of sadism when it comes to rewarding their customers. Credit cards were supposed to make life easier, not more difficult

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Jump Through Hoops

Many card issuers these days have rather amazing schemes and rewards offers during the holiday season, but for you to make the most of it, they require you to sign up for each offer. Similarly to participate in rewards acceleration schemes, one needs to visit a third party like Gyftr and there too, be subjected to various terms and conditions that come with those cards.

For example, if you purchased an Apple product in-store or on an e-commerce service, you aren’t eligible for any additional rewards, but if you buy it via the American Express rewards multiplier programme on their website you earn 5x more rewards points. Those points are then added to your account a whole 60 days later. Most folks can never bother with such schemes and thus feel the card simply isn’t rewarding enough.

Lounge access too has now become a privilege only if you keep up with spending on the card and these spending numbers change every quarter. Why advertise it as a benefit if it's only conditional on paying an annual fee + spending large sums on the card?

Axis Bank (would only recommend this bank to my worst enemy!) will make life hellish for you if you decide to cancel a card after they’ve charged you the annual fee. It’s been well over two months and customer service will refuse to waive the fee and a complaint to the RBI ombudsman has seen no progress. Some banks are much easier on this (AmEx in particular). You simply call them and they happily waive the fee and cancel the card immediately. Why should something so simple be so difficult?

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What’s The Solution?

In a day and age when attention spans are low, there is clearly a market for well-defined credit cards that offer benefits without such friction in the journey. The EazyDiner credit card has clearly mastered this benefit. You save each time you dine and you almost always use their card when dining out.

Banks need to clearly categorise their cards better between rewards, discounts or cash backs. They need to reduce the number of cards on offer, do the math on how their rewards points systems work and make spending points easier as well. Constantly rejigging their mileage programs (Axis Bank has been notorious for this) only hurts the brand more.

Lastly, getting out of a relationship with a bank has to be as easy as getting into one. Closing credit card accounts with some banks like HDFC and Axis Bank, amongst others, has become so laborious there are entire threads on social media devoted to these banks. Something has to change.