AU CA Metal
KeepThe Zenith benefit sheet — metal, eight lounge visits, 1.99% abroad — handed to Chartered Accountants for nothing.
a year at ₹40,000 a month, after the fee
Skip the arithmetic — the board, ranked → · nothing to sign up for
What it's worth to you, after the fee
Welcome: 2,000 bonus Reward Points (₹500) on ₹5,000 spend within 30 days of activation, plus a dining membership on ₹10,000 in the same window
Priced on the everyday mix — 30% groceries · 10% utilities · 20% travel · 6% fuel · 34% everything else — with this card's published category rules applied. Plus milestones, minus the fee. No accelerator credit — the ranking model on /compare adds ~20% of spend at the card's best accelerator, so its ₹ for this card reads higher.
How these numbers are computed — and why the rankings show a bigger one →
Spend tiers, milestones and fee waivers included, at our house ₹/point. Portal and category multipliers can push higher — run your exact number →
Pays from the first rupee
At ₹1,000 a month — ₹12,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹100 gross (earn ₹100) against its ₹0 fee = ₹100 net — at or above ₹0 from the first rung we price. The ladder runs in ₹1,000 steps to ₹1,00,000 a month and ₹10,000 steps to ₹5,00,000; figures are rounded to the hundred, and the accelerator is never credited.
3 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants · why it ranks #59
Why #59 A lifetime-free metal card with eight domestic lounge visits and a 1.99% forex markup is the Zenith benefit sheet at zero, and only the ₹0.25 closed-loop point keeps it out of the top 40.
The take
This is the most card AU gives away free, and it is not close. A metal Visa at zero annual fee, eight domestic lounge visits a year, a 1.99% forex markup that only Zenith matches on the whole AU shelf, global concierge, ₹50 lakh of air-accident cover and a 2% earn on dining, travel, tax payments and software purchases. AU's own plumbing confirms it is treated as a premium product and not a giveaway: the MITC routes CA holders to the priority servicing desk alongside Zenith, Zenith+ and Vetta, prices a replacement card at ₹2,500 — a number it charges only one other card, the metal Zenith+ — and gives CA and CS the only revolving rate on AU's retail shelf below 3.75% a month. Two things stop it running away with the free-card race. The points are AU Reward Points at ₹0.25 in a closed catalogue with a ₹99 fee per redemption, no airline or hotel partner anywhere, so 2% is a catalogue 2% and not a transferable one; and the accelerator dies at 5,000 points a statement cycle, which a CA billing tax payments through it will hit by the third week. You also have to be a Chartered Accountant. If you are, there is no argument — apply.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
This card is lifetime free. There is no fee due, no renewal to weigh, and nothing to cancel to save.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
nothing due at the anniversary · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹0 — lifetime free
At your spend
₹1,500 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹3,000 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹6,000 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹18,000 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹30,000 a year at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend
Everyday earn plus milestones, with no fee to subtract — the same model as the value panel above, so the two cannot disagree. run your exact spend →
The downgrade
AU Small Finance Bank publishes no document naming a card you can step down to, so we name none — an invented product change is a phone call you would waste. That leaves keep or cancel, and the numbers above are the whole of it.
What has changed under this card
- 1 Apr 2026 AU stops paying reward points on transportation merchant codes issuer-wide
We price what is in force today — a change that has not happened yet is not in these numbers. the full archive for this card →
If you call to cancel
What the bank offers to keep you is the one fact this desk cannot compute. We are collecting those reports — dated, and only in aggregate — before publishing any: an offer one reader was made is not one you are owed. Called about this card? Tell us what they offered →
The desk publishes subscribable .ics feeds for the dates it knows — offer deadlines, devaluations, expiry audits. Your renewal date is not one of them: only your statement knows it.
What's good
- Lifetime free, on a metal card — no joining fee, no annual membership fee
- 8 domestic lounge visits a year (2 a quarter), needing only that the card stay purchase-active in the quarter
- 1.99% forex markup — matched on AU's shelf only by the ₹7,999 Zenith, and beaten only by Zenith+/NOMO at 0.99%
- 8 RP/₹100 (2%) on dining, travel, tax payments and software; 2 RP/₹100 on other retail
- Flat 25% discount on the annual ICAI membership renewal fee
- Global concierge, ₹50 lakh air-accident cover, ₹5 lakh credit shield, ₹25,000 purchase protection and baggage/flight-delay covers
- Zero processing fee on Xpress EMI — a concession AU gives only this card, CS and Laksya
- MakeMyTrip: 2 complimentary domestic flight-seat bookings worth up to ₹350 and 15% off select domestic hotels as MyCash; complimentary annual Times Prime membership
Watch out
- Chartered Accountants only, and the two age bands are NOT the same — AU's eligibility panel reads "Self Employed: 25 years to 75 years / Salaried: 21 years to 60 years" (add-ons 18+), so a salaried CA ages out at 60. The 25% ICAI renewal discount settles what CA means
- Transportation spends stopped earning on 1 April 2026 — AU discontinued Reward Points on Transportation MCCs, the same exclusion its CS twin already carried
- The 2% accelerator caps at 5,000 RP a statement cycle — ₹62,500 of category spend a month, then it drops to the 0.5% base
- AU Reward Points are ₹0.25 in a closed catalogue with a ₹99 + GST fee on every redemption; no airline or hotel transfer partner, and CA is absent from Air India's AU conversion table
- Revolving credit costs 2.99% a month (35.88% a year) — cheaper than AU's 3.75% retail standard, still expensive
- Replacement card is ₹2,500 + taxes, not the ₹100 AU charges on every other retail card except Zenith+ — the price of the metal
- No international lounge access, and no Priority Pass: AU's MITC names Vetta, Zenith+, Zenith, ixigo AU and Traverse (NRI) as its Priority Pass cards, and CA is not among them
- Cash advances are capped at 20% of the credit line
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes AU Reward Points into a programme that publishes an award chart. These points buy catalogue and portal redemptions, not award seats — so this page has no flight to show you, and will not invent one.
what the cards that DO reach a chart can fly — 2,196 corridors priced →
What earns, what doesn't
1 sourced rule
AU's own product page splits the government category down the middle — tax payments sit in the 8 RP/₹100 accelerator beside dining, travel and software, under one 5,000-RP cap a statement cycle for all four, while every other government MCC is on the card's own exclusion list. Only the government row is asserted here.
- Government / tax · accelerated Tax payments (MCC 9311) earn 8 RP/₹100 (2%) inside the 5,000-RP-a-statement-cycle cap SHARED with dining, travel and software — AU publishes no split of that ceiling, so no rupee of it belongs to a tax payment alone; every other government MCC (9399, 9222, 9402, 9405, 9211, 9223) is on AU's own exclusion list and earns zero
per AU Small Finance Bank T&C · rank every card by spend category →
Lounge access
50 of 793 tracked doors
Gate: The card must stay purchase-active during the quarter — no spend threshold, which is a far softer gate than the ₹5,000 of AU Rewardz flight bookings Ananta demands
Opens 50 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 32 airports — see the full map →
Can you get it?
income, age and the route in
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.
A public application form, but a closed door for almost everyone: AU issues the CA card only to Chartered Accountants, resident in India, on two different age bands — self-employed 25 to 75, salaried 21 to 60, add-ons from 18 (this file read both as 21 to 75 until 2026-08-23). This desk normally holds profession-gated cards out of the onboarding queue (decision 0012) — not on principle, but because most of that tail is issued through employer tie-ups whose terms are never published. That reason does not apply here. AU puts the CA card on an indexed product page with its own benefit sheet, eligibility panel and fee block, and prices it by name in both bank-wide PDFs, so it meets the evidence standard the exclusion exists to protect. It is carried on the owner's direct instruction.
per the official AU Small Finance Bank MITC — figures marked (community) aren't in the PDF; the issuer won't say · filter the board by what you can get →
The fine print
6 of 7 MITC rows published
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
Lifetime free on a METAL card — the Key Fact Statement and MITC both list AU CA in the "Lifetime Free" row, and the product page's fee block agrees. 8 RP/₹100 (2%) on dining, travel, tax payments and software, capped at 5,000 RP a statement cycle; 2 RP/₹100 other retail (0.5% base); 1 RP/₹100 utility, telecom and insurance with a 100-RP per-transaction cap. 8 domestic lounge visits a year (2 a quarter) needing only a purchase-active card, and NO Priority Pass — clause 12 names Vetta, Zenith+, Zenith, ixigo AU and Traverse (NRI) and not this card. 1% fuel surcharge waiver, ₹400–₹5,000, capped ₹250 a statement month. Zero Xpress EMI processing fee (shared only with CS and Laksya). Reissue is ₹2,500 + taxes — a price AU charges only this card and the metal Zenith+, which corroborates the metal build. AU routes CA holders to Creditcard.priority@aubank.in alongside Zenith, Zenith+ and Vetta; CS is not on that list. AU publishes no income cutoff.
per the official AU Small Finance Bank MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
What's changed for this card
8 dated changes
Devaluations and buffs that touch this card directly, its issuer, or the points and programs it earns and transfers to. Every one is dated here; the tracker carries each one's before → after and the write-up.
- 7 Jul 2026AU makes the CheQ AU card lifetime free, dropping ₹499 joining and ₹499 renewal"CheQ AU — Joining Fee ₹499 & Renewal Fee ₹499"; the LED variant "Joining Fee ₹1499 & Renewal Fee ₹499"; renewal waived by spending ₹3,00,000 in a year. → "CheQ AU Credit Card — Lifetime free (₹999 + GST one-time fee applicable for LED Card only)." CheQ no longer appears in the fee-waiver block at all, because there is no fee left to waive.
Caught as live drift on 24 August 2026 and dated to the document that carries it: AU's bank-wide MITC and Schedule of Charges, version 2.21, "Last updated on 7th July'2026". The previous edition — version 2.19, 16 May 2026, still served from a different path on AU's own site — prints the old numbers in the same table, which is what makes this a change and not a reading error. AU announced nothing. A ₹499 card becoming lifetime free is a real buff and the direction is worth naming, but price it honestly, because the fee was never the problem with this card. AU advertises the CheQ AU rungs as percentages — 12% on CheQ Travel and utility bills, 5% on online shopping, 1% on everything — and every one of those headlines is exactly double what it returns, because AU prints the POINT count with a percent sign and a CheQ Point is worth ₹0.50 at AU's own published redemption rates. The base rung AU calls "1%" pays 0.5%. Removing ₹499 a year from a card that returns half what its own page claims makes it a better free card, not a good one — and the earn still lands in a CheQ app account rather than on your statement, and expires two years from credit. ONE READING TRAP, since a later lane will hit it: three editions of this MITC sit at four URLs on au.bank.in, two of them differing only in filename case and punctuation, eight months apart. Only /credit-cards/mitc(with-schedule-of-charges).pdf serves v2.21. A drift check run against any of the others is a drift check against a stale table.
- 6 May 2026AU relaunches its card range — Ananta tops a new four-card deck
- 10 Apr 2026AU more than doubles its domestic-lounge spend gate to ₹50,000/quarter
- 1 Apr 2026AU stops paying reward points on transportation merchant codes
- 22 Dec 2024AU rewrites where the ixigo co-brand earns — four categories to nil, three to a reduced rate
- 1 Apr 2024AU zeroes out rewards on fuel, rent, education and government
- 21 Mar 2024AU unveils Zenith+ — a metal card built for the departure gate
- 5 Jul 2023AU Rewardz devalues vouchers 20% and tolls every redemptionE-vouchers at ₹0.25/point; free redemptions; uncapped Zenith earning → E-vouchers cut to ₹0.20/point; ₹99 + taxes per redemption; Zenith capped at 40k points/cycle (20k per category)
AU's first big rewrite of its points program hits from three directions at once: the e-voucher rate — the redemption most cardholders actually use — drops from ₹0.25 to ₹0.20 per point, every successful redemption now costs ₹99 plus taxes, and Zenith's earning gets a 40,000-point statement-cycle ceiling. A closed-loop currency with no transfer partners just got 20% smaller and pay-per-exit.
Every AU Small Finance Bank change we've dated → 9 events since 2021, 5 of them nerfs — worst year 2024.
Verified against AU Small Finance Bank's own documents on · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 5 of them, each with the day we read it
- official CA Metal Credit Card product page (AU Small Finance Bank) — lifetime free, 8 RP/₹100 on dining/travel/tax/software, 2 domestic lounge visits a quarter, 1.99% forex
- official AU bank-wide Key Fact Statement v1.8 (7-Jul-2026) — AU CA listed Lifetime Free, 1.99% currency markup, ₹250 monthly fuel-surcharge cap, zero Xpress EMI processing fee
- official AU MITC with Schedule of Charges (7-Jul-2026) — AU CA on the priority servicing desk with Zenith/Zenith+/Vetta, 2.99%/month revolving rate, ₹2,500 replacement fee, 20% cash-advance cap
- official AU Usage T&C (w.e.f. 10-Apr-2026) — the domestic lounge programme runs on AU's OWN 50+ room list, not a card scheme; ₹50,000 prior-quarter spend gate
- official AU's own domestic lounge list for every card except Zenith+ — 50 rooms in 24 cities (Adani, Encalm, Travel Club, 080, Earth, Primus, Pearl, Blackberry, Airr)