Advertiser disclosure
WealthStem is free to read because it earns money in two ways. This page explains both, in enough detail that you can decide how much weight to give what you read here.
Display advertising
Some pages carry advertising served by third-party networks. Those advertisers have no relationship with the editorial content — they do not know what a page says, they cannot request changes, and we do not know in advance which advertiser will appear beside which article.
Affiliate commission
When you apply for a credit card, loan or other financial product through certain links on this site, WealthStem may receive a commission from the issuer or from an affiliate network. This costs you nothing — the product's terms are identical whether you reach it through us, through a search, or by walking into a branch.
Commission amounts vary by product, and are usually paid only when an application is actually approved. Some products pay a few hundred rupees, some pay more, and a great many pay nothing at all.
What this does not affect
These commitments are the point of this page:
- Commission does not determine what we recommend. The product we name as the better option is the one we believe is the better option.
- Commission does not determine ranking order. Comparison tables are ordered by the criteria stated on the page, never by what pays most.
- Products that pay us nothing are included anyway. Several cards we regularly recommend to first-time applicants — including some of the most popular co-branded cards in India — have no affiliate programme we can join. They appear in our tables on merit, and we say when a non-paying product is the best answer.
- No advertiser or issuer reviews content before publication. No bank has approval rights over anything on this site, and none has ever been shown a page in advance.
- We do not sell placement, sponsored posts or paid links inside editorial content.
How you can tell
Any page that contains commission-earning links carries a disclosure at the top, before the content, not buried at the bottom. Where a link earns us money it is an ordinary link to the product — we do not disguise commercial links as editorial references or hide them behind neutral phrasing.
Why we publish this in detail
Affiliate publishing has a poor reputation in Indian personal finance, and it is largely deserved: a great deal of "best cards" content is ranked by payout and written to convert. The only durable answer is to state the incentive plainly and then behave consistently with what we have stated, page after page, where you can check it.
If you ever find a recommendation on this site that only makes sense as a commercial decision, tell us at hello@wealthstem.com. That is a bug in the thing we care most about.
Related
Our editorial policy sets out how content is researched and sourced. Our disclaimer explains the limits of what this site can tell you.