AU Ananta
CancelAU's flagship is a lounge pass wearing a rewards card's clothes.
What it's worth to you — net annual value
Welcome: 8,000 Reward Points (₹2,000) on activation and first transaction
How these numbers are computed →
Spend tiers, milestones and fee waivers included, at our house ₹/point. Portal and category multipliers can push higher — run your exact number →
The take
Ananta tops AU's May-2026 four-card relaunch, and the brochure reads well: ₹2,000 fee, 16 domestic lounge visits a year, 8,000 welcome points, up to 50,000 milestone points. Then you price the currency. AU points are worth ₹0.25 in a closed catalogue with a ₹99 fee per redemption and a 24-month fuse — so the 5X headline on shopping, dining and travel is 1.25%, general spend is 0.5%, and no transfer partner rescues it. When AU joined Air India Maharaja Club in Jun-2026 only Zenith+ landed a useful 3:2 ratio; Ananta isn't in the published transfer table at all, so its points stay closed-loop. The lounge visits unlock only in quarters where you put ₹5,000 of flights through AU Rewardz, and the 3.49% forex markup disqualifies it from leaving the country. Even at its ₹10L milestone best this card earns half of what boring mid-tier cards pay. Skip it.
What's good
- ₹2,000 fee, waived at ₹3L spend — cheap seat at the lounge table
- 16 domestic lounge visits/yr (4/quarter) — real, if you clear the booking gate
- 50,000 milestone points (₹12,500) at ₹10L annual spend
- 8,000-point welcome on activation
Watch out
- ₹0.25/point, closed loop — not in AU's Jun-2026 Maharaja Club transfer table (only Zenith+ got a route), ₹99 + GST per redemption
- 0.5% base earn; even the 5X categories pay just 1.25%
- Lounge visits require ₹5,000 of AU Rewardz flight bookings in the same quarter
- 3.49% forex markup — do not take this card abroad
- Points expire 24 months from the transaction date
What earns, what doesn't
AU's 1-Apr-2024 bank-wide revision zeroed rent, education, government, fuel and wallet earn on (almost) all cards, and cut utilities/telecom to 1 RP/₹100 — Ananta launched May-2026 inside that regime. The KFS publishes fair-usage fee MCCs (fuel 5172/5541/5542/5552/5983, utility 4900, rent 6513, education 8211–8299, transport 4111/4112/4784).
- Fuel · excluded Zero RP (bank-wide since 1-Apr-2024); 1% surcharge waiver ₹400–₹5,000, cap ₹200/cycle; 1% fair-usage fee past ₹10k/txn or ₹25k/month w.e.f. 1-Jul-2026 (official KFS)
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero RP; 1% fee on domestic rentals, min ₹99 (official KFS — international rent txns fee-free)
- Wallet loads · excluded Zero RP on wallet loads since 1-Apr-2024
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · reduced 1 RP/₹100 (0.25%), capped 100 RP/txn (Apr-2024 rule); 1% fee past ₹50k/month (official KFS)
per AU Small Finance Bank T&C · rank every card by spend category →
Where the miles go
Ratios read card points : partner miles — 2:1 means 2 points become 1 mile. Never the other way round.
Lounge access
Gate: ₹5,000+ of flight bookings via AU Rewardz in the same quarter
Opens 72 of 644 tracked lounge doors across 40 airports — see the full map →
Can you get it?
The cutoffs and the actual route in — not the "apply now" button, the door that opens.
Direct application — no invite list, no banking relationship required.
per the official AU Small Finance Bank MITC — figures marked (community) aren't in the PDF; the issuer won't say · filter the ranking by what you can get →
The fine print
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
Fee ₹2,000 joining and annual, renewal waived at ₹3L spend. Fair-usage fees bank-wide: domestic rent 1% (min ₹99), utility 1% past ₹50k/month, fuel 1% past ₹10k/txn or ₹25k/month (w.e.f. 1-Jul-2026), transportation 1% past ₹25k/month (w.e.f. 14-Jun-2026), third-party education apps 1% (min ₹99). AU publishes no income cutoff for Ananta; age from community sources.
per the official AU Small Finance Bank MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
What's changed for this card
Full tracker →Devaluations and buffs that touch this card directly, its issuer, or the points and programs it earns and transfers to.
- 1 Jun 2026AU, YES and IndusInd points open transfers to Maharaja ClubAU/YES/IndusInd points locked in closed loops → Maharaja routes: IndusInd Tiger 1:1 (Pinnacle 2:1, Legend 4:1); AU Zenith+ 3:2, other AU cards 6:1; YES Marquee/Reserv 15:1
Three banks joined Air India's transfer roster at once — and the ratios are the whole story. The lifetime-free IndusInd Tiger gets the only honest 1:1 (capped 25k/month); AU Zenith+ lands a genuinely good 3:2 that triples what AU points were worth; everything else — Pinnacle 2:1, Legend 4:1, the AU 6:1 crowd, YES at a punitive 15:1 — is a decoy dressed as a partnership.
- 6 May 2026AU relaunches its card range — Ananta tops a new four-card deckAU's lineup led by Zenith+/Zenith/Vetta → Ananta (₹2,000), Lakshya, Tejas and Prathama join; Ananta gets 16 lounge visits and 50k milestone points
AU's 6-May-2026 portfolio reset puts Ananta on top: ₹2,000 fee, 16 domestic lounge visits a year, an 8,000-point welcome and up to 50,000 milestone points at ₹10L. The brochure is generous; the currency isn't — AU points still redeem at ₹0.25 in a closed catalogue, so the 5X headline is 1.25% and the lounge visits hide behind an AU Rewardz flight-booking gate.
- 10 Apr 2026AU more than doubles its domestic-lounge spend gate to ₹50,000/quarterComplimentary domestic lounge visits gated at ₹20,000 prior-quarter spend → ₹50,000 prior-quarter spend required (bank-wide: Zenith, Vetta, Xcite Ace/Ultra, SPONT, NOMO, ABCL Pro)
AU's 10 April 2026 'Revision of Usage Terms & Conditions' lifts the prior-quarter spend needed to keep complimentary domestic airport-lounge access from ₹20,000 to ₹50,000 a quarter, across the Zenith, Vetta and Xcite range. The visit allotments are unchanged (Zenith 2 domestic + 2 Priority Pass international per quarter, Vetta 1+1), but the bar to earn them more than doubles — the kind of quiet, spend-gated clawback that keeps a closed-loop points card drifting toward downgrade territory.
- 1 Apr 2026Maharaja Club gets cheaper awards and faster creditingHigher award costs; slow points crediting → Domestic awards from 1,500 pts; credited within 2 hours
A rare buff. Air India's post-merger programme drops domestic award flights to 1,500 points, cabin upgrades to 4,000, credits Star Alliance miles within two hours, and eases Platinum to 60 flights. The transfer target Indian card geeks care about actually got better.
- 10 Jan 2026SBI Card splits domestic lounges into tiers, adds entry feesUniform domestic lounge list, free swipe-in access → Set A/Set B lounge tiers by card, plus ₹2–25 entry charges
From 10 January 2026, SBI Card sorts its domestic lounge network into a Set A (top cards like Club Vistara SBI Card, Apollo SELECT) and a broader Set B (PRIME, Pulse, Titan SBI Card and others) — and bolts on a non-refundable ₹2 authorization charge plus a ₹25 validation hold on every visit. It's marketed as an expansion since more airports are covered, but the fine print is a two-tier system with new friction at the gate, right after SBI had already pulled complimentary air accident insurance six months earlier.
- 1 Dec 2024HSBC TravelOne arrives — a 20-partner airmiles cardNo mainstream HSBC airmiles card in India → ₹4,999 card, 4X travel/forex, 1:1 to Avios & KrisFlyer
HSBC's serious play for Indian miles chasers: 4 points per ₹100 on flights, travel aggregators and forex, and instant 1:1 transfers to British Airways and Qatar Avios plus ~20 airline/hotel partners including KrisFlyer and Air India — all from the app. A genuine sub-₹5k alternative to Atlas. (Welcome-offer window opened 1 Dec 2024.)
- 12 Nov 2024Vistara flies its last; Club Vistara becomes Maharaja ClubClub Vistara (Vistara) → Maharaja Club (Air India), points 1:1
Vistara's final flight was 11 November 2024. Over 4.5 million Club Vistara members — and the single most-loved transfer target for Indian card points — folded into Air India's Maharaja Club at 1:1. The premium-cabin sweet spots Indian miles chasers plan around all moved house overnight.
- 1 Apr 2024AU zeroes out rewards on fuel, rent, education and governmentFuel, rent, education and government spends earned points; utilities earned accelerated rates → Zero points on fuel/rent/BBPS/education/government; utilities and insurance base-rate only, utilities capped at 100 points per transaction
Notified on 1 March and live from 1 April 2024, AU's bank-wide exclusion list strips reward earn from fuel, rent, education, government and BBPS payments outright, and demotes utilities and insurance to the 1-point base rate — utilities with a 100-point-per-transaction ceiling for good measure. On cards already earning 0.25% at the catalogue value, the categories most households actually spend on now earn nothing at all.
Go deeper
Sources
Every fact on this page is checked against these documents — the issuer's own paperwork first. Spot something stale? The PDF wins, and we re-verify.
- official Product page checked 11 Jul 2026
- official Schedule of Charges PDF checked 11 Jul 2026
- community CardInsider launch coverage checked 13 Jul 2026
- community CardsWala listing checked 11 Jul 2026
- community Paisabazaar — notes virtual-card UPI link; network still unpublished checked 11 Jul 2026
- community CardInsider — AU joins Maharaja Club Jun-2026 (Ananta absent from the ratio table; honest absence) checked 12 Jul 2026
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