IDFC since day 1 never had statement credit option. Its either voucher redemption or pay with points (which is kind of same as statement credit). In anycase you have to pay redemption fee with GST.
And this is not new trend, this fee charged by other banks even before IDFC started distrubuting credit cards. HDFC, ICICI, SBI all of them charge these fees from a long time (Indian banks). Even AXIS has fee but after certain points.
New banks, or those who wants fresh customers usually start with this approach but eventually like IDFC will charge the fee. Also, recently AU joined similar way. Don't compare cashback with rewards, each has their advantages and disadvantages but reward redemption fee exist for most of the banks.
The whole point of rewards is to keep that customer long time, by purchasing more, stay more and accumulating.. not take money next month and close it. It also benefits to banks either through expiry or forgot to redeem.
@Deepak_Shetty : SBI won't charge fee for SimplyClick but same not applies to other variants (excluding co-brand cards).
source:
https://www.sbicard.com/en/most-important-terms-and-conditions.page
Fees&Charges - J.Other Charges
Note: IDFC points as of today never expires, so ideally you can keep accumulate and redeem once to reduce redemption fee (its same for 100 points and 1L points, the higher the better).
Also, another note: similarly till now, YES reward points never expires but since Sep'23 they made changes that reward expires after 3 years. So, assume worst and don't hold longer. I think only AMEX case you can trust but anything can happen anytime.
