Using American Credit Cards in India
 

I have been trying to decide on giving a credit card to my family back in India.
I am not really thinking of getting a new one, might get if its needed but should be a keep for long term, can't keep sending it from here.
Lot of things to worry about.
1.Foreign Transaction Fee
2.Annual Fee
3.Authorized User Fee
4.Points worth & usage & accrual
5.Acceptance in India.

1.SPG 2.Discover 3.Bofa Travel 4.Chase Reserve are the picks while non category works better.
I have a few more but worthless AA cards which i wont tend to keep after a year.

Or is it better to get another discover card 1.5% cashback to use whenever Amex is not accepted and worst case Bofa. Discover needs SSN to add authorized user :-(

i've been using my spg amex in india for years without any problems....amex is accepted almost everywhere & the card has no foreign transaction fee....

I've had no extraordinary problems using my US credit cards in India over at least the past two decades, at least not any more than I would face when using US credit cards in Europe or tourist destinations in the Americas that are heavily frequented by US persons.

US debit type card accounts -- linked to US bank and/or brokerage accounts -- may have some more issues at times, but even the frequency of having problems of that sort has declined tremendously.

I faced issues when i traveled to India , many machines would not take international cards, many refuse Amex cards.

I think i almost decided to do the below 3 cards by priority.
1.SPG
2.Discover
3.BofaTravel.

My CSR works fine in India. Amex is not super popular, MC and VISA very common though, especially after the demonetisation drama the acceptance of credit cards has increased some more.

That said if you want to send a credit card to your family in order to send them funds I think you are better off using transferwise to send money to an indian bank account directly.

agreed, but I want them to keep plastic instead of withdrawing cash everytime.
Make some points for myself.

My friend's relatives reside in India. Once, he was talking the credit card usage has been increased since demonetisation. The merchants didn't have another option of getting product's price from the customers. I agree with oliver2002 comment.

As far as I know, the MasterCard and Visa credit cards work fine there. Not sure about Amex. If possible, send credit card of 'MasterCard' or 'Visa' to your family.

US credit cards are easy to use at about 95% of the places in India. The places I can't use my US credit card are at online retailers and while paying utilities bills, as well as anything government related.

My preferred card in India (as well as everywhere else these days) is the Chase Sapphire Reserve.