To incentivise the use of the BHIM app, the government declared that people paying for petrol through the app will get a marginal discount of 49 paise per litre on petrol and 41 paise per litre on diesel.

While this surely comes as an incentive, if you use your car frequently there are other ways you can reduce your petrol bills. Let us see how.

Cards: There are a several fuel credit cards available. They will mostly be working as a tie-up with a bank and a petroleum company like Indian Oil or HPCL. Basically, these cards give you points when you refuel and make other purchases and these points can be redeemed for fuel purchase.

For example the Indian Oil Citi Platinum credit card gives you loyalty points on purchases. So you get 4 loyalty points on Rs 0.150 of fuel purchases at authorized Indian Oil retail outlets across the country, 2 points on Rs 0.150 at grocery and supermarkets and 1 point on Rs 0.150 spent elsewhere like shopping, dining and more. Each reward point is equal to one rupee and you can instantly redeem them at Indian Oil retail outlets, select merchants or even redeem them for gift vouchers.

Similarly ICICI bank offers you the ICICI Bank HPCL Coral Credit card which lets you earn 2 reward (PAYBACK) points on every Rs 100 spent on retail purchases except fuel. One can redeem 2,000 PAYBACK Points for fuel worth Rs 500. You can also get 2.5 per cent cashback and 1 per cent surcharge waiver on fuel purchases at HPCL pumps.

Most of these cards charge a nominal annual fee, however, in some cases these fees are waived for spending more than a certain amount every year on your credit card. Choose your card based on the petrol pumps you frequently visit for maximum benefits.

Not just credit cards, some debit cards also allow you to earn and redeem points for fuel purchases. When purchasing fuel, most of these cards waive off the fuel surcharge of 2.5 per cent. Some of them also have a loyalty point programme.

Digital wallets: Digital wallets also offer you incentives when you use them to buy petrol. These offers are however mostly season specific and are withdrawn after a period. Mobikwik for example, is giving customers 10 per cent SuperCash for fuel purchases from 16 to 22 October 2017 at selected outlets. A percentage of the SuperCash earned can be used for making purchases through the wallet. Other digital wallets like Paytm and FreeCharge have also tied up with petrol pumps and you can make purchases by scanning the QR code. Keeping a tab of these offers is a great way to earn and redeem reward points.

anagh@outlookindia.com