What a bank offer is actually worth
Bank offers, coupon codes and wallet cashback are real money, but only if you hold the card, and rarely as much money as the banner implies. Here is how to price one honestly.
Last updated 28 August 2026
Read the cap, not the percentage
“10% instant discount” is almost always followed by a maximum. Once the cap binds, the percentage stops being a percentage. On a ₹5,000 pair with 10% off capped at ₹750, you save ₹500 and the 10% is real. On a ₹12,000 pair the same offer still saves you ₹750, which is 6.25%, and it keeps shrinking from there.
Three other conditions decide whether the number is real at all: a minimum order value, a card type (often credit only, sometimes only on EMI), and a per-card monthly limit that you may already have spent.
Work out the actual price
- Start from the checkout price everyone pays, with no codes applied.
- Subtract only what you can actually claim. An HDFC offer is worth exactly nothing if you do not hold that card, and a first-order coupon is worth nothing on your second order.
- Apply the cap before you compare. The offer with the bigger percentage frequently loses to the one with the higher cap.
- Count cashback separately from a discount. Money arriving in a wallet in 90 days, usable only at that retailer, is not the same as money not leaving your account today.
Why we keep offers out of the headline price
We sort by the price anyone can get. Folding a card-specific discount into the number at the top of the page would mean showing you an HDFC-only price when you may not have an HDFC card: a lie with extra steps, and one that would quietly reorder the comparison table in favour of whichever retailer had the most exclusionary offer that week.
So offers are shown next to the price, never inside it. You apply the ones that are yours.
Coupons expire quietly
Codes die without any announcement, and a dead code is worse than no code: it sends you off to hunt for a working one, which is how people end up abandoning the purchase. Where we list a code we say when we last saw it work, and if it fails for you, tell us and we will re-check it.
How we make money from any of this is set out in full in our affiliate disclosure. Offers do not affect our rankings, and neither does commission.
Read next
- How to tell a real sneaker discount from a fake oneWhy every listing in India shows a discount, and the three checks that tell you whether this one means anything.
- When sneakers actually go on sale in IndiaThe sale calendar that moves sneaker prices, which events are worth waiting for, and when waiting costs you the size.