How the site pays for itself.
PickMyCard is free to read. The bills get paid by affiliate commissions on a subset of card applications. This page is the full account of how that works, how much money is involved, and why it does not move the rankings.
How we earn
PickMyCard is free to use. There is no paid tier, no subscription, no premium content tucked behind a paywall. The site is funded by commissions paid by credit-card affiliate networks (currently EarnKaro and Cuelinks) on a subset of card applications.
When you click an “Apply Now” button on a card we have an affiliate relationship for, the network logs the click and hands you off to the issuing bank’s application page. If the bank later approves your application, the network pays us a commission. On some cards we have no affiliate relationship and earn nothing; section 03 covers that case.
How this affects recommendations
Short answer: it does not. The recommendation engine ranks cards by the estimated annual rupee value the card delivers for your specific spending profile, not by commission size. Ordering on the results page is a function of rewards earned across your stated categories, plus lounge value if you fly, plus fuel and insurance savings, minus the card’s annual fee.
No commercial override.
A card paying us a smaller commission can outrank a card paying a larger one, and it often does. There is no mechanism in the engine to override ranking for commercial reasons, no manual “promoted” slot, no pay-for-placement tier. We will not add one.
- The engine ranks on estimated annual value to you, full stop.
- Commission rates are not an input to the ranking function. The code does not see them.
- Editorial reviews are written without sight of the commission rate for the card being reviewed.
Cards without affiliate links
Some cards in the Indian market do not currently appear on PickMyCard. The reason is straightforward: we have not yet established an affiliate relationship for that card, so clicking through would not be a tracked link and we would not earn anything.
We hide those cards rather than list them, because surfacing a card we cannot meaningfully send a reader to feels like a worse experience than a clean omission. The trade-off: catalogue coverage is incomplete. We work on expanding network coverage continuously, and any card we add is evaluated on the same merit basis as the existing catalogue. A card is never demoted because the commission is small, and a card is never promoted because the commission is large.
Reviews and the editorial firewall
Editorial reviews are written from the published terms of the card and our own analysis of who benefits from it. Reviewers do not see the commission rate for the card being reviewed; pros and cons are recorded honestly even when a card pays well. If we say a card has a weak welcome offer, a punitive spending cap, or a fuel-surcharge waiver that does not actually save much, that is what we believe.
Visit-and-use claims for premium-card lounge networks, concierge programmes, and similar experiential perks are personal where labelled (the “I” voice) and are tied to specific airports, dates, and outcomes. They are not paid placements. If a card we use ourselves disappoints us, the review says so.
Questions and contact
Questions about how we are paid, or about why a particular card is or is not on the site? Email hello@pickmycard.in. We respond within five working days. For the related question of what data the site collects when you use it, see the privacy policy linked below.