AU Vetta credit card
#151

AU Vetta

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AU's cheapest travel seat: ₹2,999, four Priority Pass visits, and points worth a quarter of face.

₹4,600

a year at ₹40,000 a month, after the fee

Verified · 8 documents

Skip the arithmetic — the board, ranked → · nothing to sign up for

What it's worth to you, after the fee

₹2,300
at ₹0.25L/month
₹4,600
at ₹0.4L/month
₹7,800
at ₹1L/month

Welcome: None — the first-year fee waiver at ₹40k spend in 90 days is the whole hello

Priced on the everyday mix — 30% groceries · 10% utilities · 20% travel · 6% fuel · 34% everything else — with this card's published category rules applied: it earns nothing on fuel here, so that spend is dropped, not paid at the headline, and stops pacing milestones and the waiver. 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 →

Breaks even only by erasing its fee at ₹14,000 a month

At ₹14,000 a month — ₹1,68,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹700 gross (earn ₹700) against a fee of ₹0 — the ₹2,999 is waived, the spend having cleared ₹1,50,000 a year = ₹700 net — the first rung at or above ₹0. 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.

2 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants

AU Small Finance Bank · Visa · premium

Visa RuPay — RuPay variant on new issue/renewal — UPI-linkable
₹2,999 + GST
Annual fee1
₹1,50,000 spend
Fee waiver

The take

Vetta is the entry ticket to AU's travel range, and priced like it: ₹2,999, waived for the first year on ₹40,000 of spend and thereafter on ₹1.5 lakh. The draw is four international Priority Pass visits a year — one a quarter — plus one domestic lounge a quarter gated on ₹50,000 of quarterly spend and two railway lounge visits a quarter, which is the rare Priority Pass access you'll find under ₹3,000. Everything else is thin: 2 points per ₹100 is 0.5% at AU's ₹0.25 catalogue value, groceries reach 1%, and the quarterly milestones drip 500–1,500 points (₹125–₹375). AU joined Air India Maharaja Club in Jun-2025, but Vetta converts at a decoy 6:1 (₹0.17 a point, worse than the catalogue — only Zenith+ got the useful 3:2), so there is still nothing worth transferring for: 24-month expiry, ₹99 redemption toll, and a punishing 2.99% forex that undercuts the whole travel pitch. Buy it only as a cheap Priority Pass wrapper; a lifetime-free Wealth gives you cheaper forex and never charges a fee. Otherwise cancel.

Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel

This card reaches break-even by ERASING its fee, not by out-earning it: the waiver is the decision.

₹1,50,000 annual spend erases that fee
₹14,000/mo is where the waiver, not the earn, saves it

the whole desk — your spend, what changed, the downgrade →

Keep, downgrade or cancel

₹2,999/yr at stake · 5 spend bands

The charge ₹2,999/yr

The waiver ₹1,50,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹12,500 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.

Break-even ₹14,000 a month — ₹1,68,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee, and it gets there by erasing the fee at the waiver rather than out-earning it.

At your spend

₹2,300 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged

₹5,200 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged

₹7,800 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged

₹18,500 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged

₹29,200 a year, net of the fee, at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged

Everyday earn plus milestones, minus the fee — 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

  • 4 international Priority Pass lounge visits a year — rare access under ₹3,000
  • 1 domestic lounge a quarter (₹50k/quarter spend gate) + 2 railway lounge visits a quarter
  • Cheapest of AU's travel cards at ₹2,999, waived at ₹1.5L spend
  • 4 RP/₹100 (≈1%) on groceries and departmental stores

Watch out

  • 2.99% forex — steep for a card sold on travel; take a zero-forex card abroad instead
  • 0.5% base earn at AU's honest ₹0.25 point; only a decoy 6:1 Maharaja transfer (worse than catalogue), 24-month expiry
  • Domestic lounge needs ₹50k of spend the previous quarter; only 4 international a year
  • ₹99 + GST per redemption; AU's marketed ₹1 point redeems at a quarter of that

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

13 sourced rules · 6 pay zero

Vetta earns 2 RP/₹100 general, 4 RP/₹100 on groceries/departmental, 1 RP/₹100 utilities, inside AU's 1-Apr-2024 exclusion regime. Points redeem at ₹0.25 — AU markets them at ₹1. Quarterly milestones: 500 RP at ₹50k, +1,000 RP at ₹1L.

Fuel excluded — Zero RP (bank-wide since 1-Apr-2024); 1% surcharge waiver; 1% fee past slabs (official KFS)
Rent & property management excluded — Zero RP; 1% fee on domestic rentals, min ₹99 (official KFS)
Government / tax excluded — Zero RP since 1-Apr-2024
Utilities (electricity/water/gas) reduced — 1 RP/₹100; 1% fee past ₹50k/month (official KFS)
Insurance reduced — 1 RP/₹100 per AU's earn table — flag
Education excluded — Zero RP since 1-Apr-2024; 1% fee via third-party apps (official KFS)
Wallet loads excluded — Zero RP on wallet loads since 1-Apr-2024
Groceries & supermarkets full — 4 RP/₹100 (accelerated groceries/departmental) ≈ 1%
Dining & food delivery not applicable
Telecom reduced — 1 RP/₹100 — bundled with utilities, flag
Jewellery / gold full — No published restriction — inferred from absence, flag
Forex / international spends full — 2 RP/₹100 + 2.99% markup — the highest of AU's travel cards
UPI (RuPay-on-UPI only) full — RuPay variant links to UPI and earns standard RP — community consensus (TechnoFino/DesiDime); Visa variant cannot link
EMI conversions / merchant EMI excluded — EMI conversions earn nothing — AU standard, community, flag
  • Fuel · excluded Zero RP (bank-wide since 1-Apr-2024); 1% surcharge waiver; 1% fee past slabs (official KFS)
  • Rent & property management · excluded Zero RP; 1% fee on domestic rentals, min ₹99 (official KFS)
  • Wallet loads · excluded Zero RP on wallet loads since 1-Apr-2024
  • Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · reduced 1 RP/₹100; 1% fee past ₹50k/month (official KFS)

per AU Small Finance Bank T&C · rank every card by spend category →

Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?

not published — and we say which

₹1,50,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹2,999 fee. A different question from the one above — earning points and counting toward a threshold are separate rules, and issuers write them separately.

Not published. AU Small Finance Bank states what the AU Vetta earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver and the milestones — the ₹1,50,000 bar. We won't guess it from the earn table or from a sibling card: Axis published three cards' rules on one day and all three lists differed. If you hold this card and have it in writing from the issuer, send us the document and we'll source it.

Where the miles go

1 program · 0 live

Ratios read card points : partner miles — 2:1 means 2 points become 1 mile. Never the other way round.

Air India Maharaja Club
—
Gone. Air India ended AU as a Maharaja Club partner, and the Jun-2025 Zenith+ 3:2 buff that made this the best non-Atlas way into Maharaja went with it. AU points now have no airline exit at all — the catalogue is the only door left.
removed

· the AU Reward Points hub →

Lounge access

717 of 793 tracked doors
4/year (1 per calendar quarter) at AU's own 50-room domestic list + 8 railway/year
Domestic
4/year (1 per calendar quarter) on Priority Pass, outside India
International
Guests

Gate: ₹50,000 of net retail spend in the previous calendar quarter (domestic); primary cardholders only

Opens 717 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 283 airports and 19 railway stations , via Priority Pass Global, DreamFolks Railway — 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.

Route Direct application
Income · salaried not published
Income · self-employed not published
Age band 21–60 salaried / 25–65 self-employed (community)

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 board by what you can get →

The fine print

7 of 7 MITC rows published

What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.

Forex markup 2.99% + GST — the highest of AU's travel cards
APR 3.75%/mo (45%/yr) — AU retail-card standard
Late fee 15% of Total Amount Due, min ₹10, max ₹1,300
Cash advance 2.5%, min ₹100
Add-on card Nil (launch communication)
Overlimit 2.5% of overlimit amount, min ₹500
Redemption fee ₹99 + GST per successful redemption

Fee ₹2,999; first-year fee waived at ₹40k spend in 90 days, renewal waived at ₹1.5L spend. 2.99% forex undercuts its own travel pitch. Four international Priority Pass visits a year (1/quarter); one domestic lounge a quarter on ₹50k/quarter spend. Same bank-wide fair-usage fees. AU publishes no income/age cutoff for Vetta.

per the official AU Small Finance Bank MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026

What's changed for this card

8 dated changes

Full tracker →

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 2026
    Buff moderate AU Small Finance Bank
    AU 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 2026
    Launch minor AU Small Finance Bank
    AU relaunches its card range — Ananta tops a new four-card deck
  • 10 Apr 2026
    Lounge minor AU Small Finance Bank
    AU more than doubles its domestic-lounge spend gate to ₹50,000/quarter
  • 1 Apr 2026
    Devaluation minor AU Small Finance Bank
    AU stops paying reward points on transportation merchant codes
  • 22 Dec 2024
    Devaluation moderate AU Small Finance Bank
    AU rewrites where the ixigo co-brand earns — four categories to nil, three to a reduced rate
  • 1 Apr 2024
    Devaluation moderate AU Small Finance Bank
    AU zeroes out rewards on fuel, rent, education and government
  • 21 Mar 2024
    Launch minor AU Small Finance Bank
    AU unveils Zenith+ — a metal card built for the departure gate
  • 5 Jul 2023
    Devaluation major AU Small Finance Bank
    AU Rewardz devalues vouchers 20% and tolls every redemption
    E-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.