Axis Bank Shoppers Stop Credit Card
KeepFive percent at the Shoppers Stop private-label rail, in points that can only ever be spent at Shoppers Stop.
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: First Citizen points worth ₹300 on the first transaction within 30 days, ₹2,250 of Shoppers Stop vouchers (3 × ₹500 at Shoppers Stop/Homestop, ₹500 on Exclusive Brand apparel, ₹250 online) and a complimentary Golden Glow membership
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 utilities and 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 ₹10,000 a month
At ₹10,000 a month — ₹1,20,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹500 gross (earn ₹500) against a fee of ₹0 — the ₹500 is waived, the spend having cleared ₹1,00,000 a year = ₹500 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 · why it ranks #278
Why #278 A retailer's card that pays a retailer's points: 5% at the Shoppers Stop private-label rail, and a balance that can only ever walk back out through a Shoppers Stop till. There is no lounge, no transfer partner and no exit, so it earns its place on the strength of one shopping habit rather than on anything a traveller can use.
₹0.50 a point, and Axis prints the number itself: the Value Chart's footnote reads "The Redemption Value of Each FC Point = Rs. 0.50". There is no spread to argue about, which is why this desk's floor, house value and ceiling are one number — but there is also no door. The points are credited to a Shoppers Stop First Citizen account rather than to the card, they redeem in full or in part at a Shoppers Stop, Homestop, Arcelia, M.A.C, Clinique, Estée Lauder, Bobbi Brown, Jo Malone or Smashbox counter, and that is the entire list. No cash, no statement credit, no airline, no hotel.
The take
This is a shop's card that a bank happens to issue, and reading it any other way will cost you money. The earn does not land on your Axis account as EDGE Rewards or as cashback — it lands in a Shoppers Stop First Citizen loyalty account, and Axis's own T&C is explicit about the plumbing: on a private-label purchase, 12 of the 20 points come from Shoppers Stop within 48 hours and the other 8 from Axis after your statement cuts. At the ₹0.50 a point Axis publishes, that is 5% back on Shoppers Stop's exclusive brands — Life, STOP, Haute Curry, Fratini and the rest — 3% across the other brands and the beauty counters, and 0.5% on the whole of the rest of your life. The year-one arithmetic is the honest reason to take it. ₹500 to get the card buys ₹2,250 of Shoppers Stop vouchers, ₹300 of First Citizen points on your first swipe and a Golden Glow membership, and the ₹500 renewal disappears at ₹1,00,000 of spend. If your household already puts ₹40,000 a year through Shoppers Stop, the card is free and the 5% is real. If it does not, you are earning half a percent into a currency that buys clothes at one chain and nothing anywhere else — and the points expire 365 days after you close the card, so there is no quiet way to sit on a balance either. As a travel card it is nothing, and we will not pretend otherwise. No lounge, no transfer partner, no award chart, 3.5% forex, and a dynamic-currency-conversion markup that Axis raised from 1.5% to 3.5% on 28 August 2026. Nine spend categories earn zero. Keep it in the drawer for the shop, put a lounge card and a points card in the wallet, and let this one do the one thing it is genuinely good at.
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.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
₹500/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹500/yr
The waiver ₹1,00,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹8,333 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹10,000 a month — ₹1,20,000 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
₹1,300 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹2,500 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹5,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹15,100 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹25,200 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 →
Your copy of this card
You hold this card.
Kept on this device, in your browser. It is never sent to us, never synced, and nothing else on the site reads it yet.
The downgrade
Axis 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
- 23 Sep 2026 Axis EDGE brings Accor back, drops ITC, and adds Cathay, Miles & More and Hilton issuer-wide
- 28 Aug 2026 Axis more than doubles its DCC markup — 3.5% generic, but Olympus and Magnus get their own rates issuer-wide
- 28 Aug 2026 Priority Pass stops opening Indian domestic lounges on every Axis card 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
- 20 First Citizen points per ₹200 on Shoppers Stop Exclusive Brands — 5% back at ₹0.50 a point, and Axis prints the rung as unlimited
- 12 points per ₹200 at Shoppers Stop's other brands, Homestop, Arcelia, M.A.C, Clinique, Estée Lauder, Bobbi Brown, Jo Malone and Smashbox — 3% back
- ₹2,250 of Shoppers Stop vouchers plus ₹300 of First Citizen points in the welcome kit, against a ₹500 joining fee
- Complimentary Golden Glow membership once the card is used
- ₹500 renewal fee waived on ₹1,00,000 of spend in the anniversary year
- Points redeem at the till in full or in part, with no minimum balance, and hold lifetime validity while the card is open
- Two end-of-season sales and one festive sale a year at Shoppers Stop, a 45-day exchange window, and 15% off in your birthday and anniversary month on exclusive-brand apparel
- 15% instant discount on EazyDiner, capped at ₹500 a month on a minimum ₹2,500 order
Watch out
- Everything away from Shoppers Stop earns 2 points per ₹200 — 0.5% back, in points that can only be spent at Shoppers Stop
- The points are credited to a Shoppers Stop First Citizen account, not to the card: no cash, no statement credit, no airline or hotel transfer
- Axis disclaims Shoppers Stop's own changes — "Axis Bank accepts no liability in respect of any such changes made by Shoppers Stop" to the First Citizen programme
- No lounge access of any kind — this card appears in neither of Axis's lounge tables
- 3.5% foreign-currency markup, and the dynamic-currency-conversion markup rose from 1.5% to 3.5% on 28 August 2026
- Transport and tolls, utilities, insurance, education, government, wallet loads, rent, fuel and gift cards earn nothing
- Rent and wallet loads are also excluded from the ₹1,00,000 count for the fee waiver
- The welcome vouchers expire two months after Axis stamps them, are physical-store only, and each needs its own minimum bill — ₹5,000 for the ₹500 store voucher, ₹2,500 for the exclusive-brand one
- First Citizen points expire 365 days after the card is closed
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes Shoppers Stop First Citizen 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
12 sourced rules · 8 pay zero
Two documents, and the second one moved the goalposts without moving the list. The member T&C prints nine excluded merchant-category groups — "Transportation, Bridge fees, Road fees & Tolls / Utilities / Insurance / Educational Institutions / Govt. Institutions / Wallet / Rent / Fuel / Gift Card" — and the revision effective 20 June 2025 says the categories are unchanged but are now identified by SPEND CATEGORY rather than by the four-digit MCC, spelling the list back as "Transportation & Tolls, Utility & Telecom, Education, Rent, Wallet load, Government services, Insurance, Fuel, Cash advances and Repayments". Telecom, cash advances and repayments appear only in that restatement, which is why they are read from it. Everything not on the list earns the base 2 First Citizen points per ₹200, and the T&C's own worked table proves it on two ordinary rows: ₹4,000 at an airline earns 40 points, ₹2,000 at a grocery store earns 20.
- Fuel · excluded Zero First Citizen points — the T&C's worked example spends ₹10,000 on fuel and books nothing. What comes back instead is a 1% surcharge waiver on transactions between ₹400 and ₹5,000, capped at ₹400 a statement cycle, and a 1% transaction fee once fuel spend passes ₹50,000 in a cycle. Fuel is not on the waiver-exclusion list, so it still counts toward the ₹1,00,000
- Rent & property management · excluded Earns nothing and counts for nothing — one of only two categories struck out of the fee-waiver calculation as well, and it carries a 1% fee per rent transaction on top
- Wallet loads · excluded The other category excluded on both sides: no points on a wallet load, and wallet loads do not count toward the ₹1,00,000 waiver. A 1% fee applies once wallet loads pass ₹10,000 in a statement cycle
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · excluded "Utilities" on the T&C's excluded list and "Utility & Telecom" in the June 2025 restatement — zero points, but the spend still counts toward the fee waiver. A 1% fee applies once utility spend passes ₹25,000 in a cycle
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
12 of 15 categories answered
₹1,00,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹500 fee. A different question from the one above — earning points and counting toward a threshold are separate rules, and issuers write them separately.
Put your number in
₹80,000 a month of rent & property management is ₹9,60,000 a year that counts ₹0 toward the fee waiver.
The earn list and the waiver list are NOT the same list, and Axis says so twice. "Rent and Wallet MCCs will be excluded from the Target spends calculated for the Annual Card Fee waiver" in the member T&C, and the 20 June 2025 revision narrows it to exactly those two: "For spend based fee waiver calculation: Transactions made on Rent and Wallet load." So fuel, utilities, insurance, education and government spend earn nothing and still count toward the ₹1,00,000 that waives the ₹500 renewal. A separate clause strikes EMI conversions, balance transfers, cash withdrawals, fees, charges and GST out of any qualifying spend — recorded here rather than as an `emi` rule, because the clause governs the gate and the document says nothing about whether an EMI conversion earns. The waiver itself is population-gated: it applies to cards "issued the Credit Card on or after 01st May 2024 and onboarded through Axis Bank platform".
12 of 15 categories answered · per Axis Bank's own document · in force since 2025-06-20
Lounge access
0 of 793 tracked doors
No lounge access. This card opens exactly 0 of 793 tracked lounge doors — board with the crowd, or find a card that doesn't →
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 straightforward retail application — Axis publishes the eligibility in two lines and no more: the primary cardholder must be 18 to 70 and a resident of India, with a payslip, Form 16 or ITR as income proof. No income floor is published for this card. Two populations do NOT get the welcome kit, and Axis says so in the T&C rather than in the marketing: cards issued before 1 May 2024 or sourced outside an Axis Bank platform, and anyone swapped or migrated onto this card from another Axis card before 31 July 2024.
per the official Axis 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.
Joining ₹500 and annual ₹500, waived on ₹1,00,000 of preceding-year spend. AXIS'S FEE GRID IS TWO COLUMNS AND IS NOT INVERTED: the MITC headers read "Joining Fee (Will be levied after card activation)" and "Annual Fee 2nd year onwards", and this card's row is 500 / 500 (waived) / Nil. The two figures are equal, so the card file carries annualFee only. The waiver applies to cards issued on or after 1 May 2024 and sourced through an Axis platform, and rent and wallet loads do not count toward the ₹1,00,000. Earn is NOT an Axis currency: 20 First Citizen points per ₹200 on Shoppers Stop Exclusive Brands, 12 per ₹200 at the chain's other brands and its beauty counters, 2 per ₹200 elsewhere, credited to a Shoppers Stop First Citizen loyalty account at ₹0.50 a point and redeemable only at Shoppers Stop. Fuel surcharge refunded at 1% on transactions between ₹400 and ₹5,000, capped ₹400 a statement cycle; fuel itself earns nothing. NO LOUNGE ACCESS — the card appears in no lounge table in the MITC and none on the product page. Axis publishes no income criteria and no redemption fee for this card. Cash payment fee ₹175; duplicate statement, charge-slip retrieval, outstation cheque and balance enquiry all waived; card replacement Nil.
per the official Axis 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.
- 15 Nov 2026The Reserve's memberships stop renewing unless you say yesClub ITC Culinaire, Accorplus, handcrafted Club Marriott Asia Pacific, EazyDiner Prime and Priority Pass renewed automatically each year for as long as the card was open → From 15 Nov 2026 complimentary memberships linked to the card renew only with the cardholder's explicit consent — Axis says renewal and consent details will be shared closer to each renewal date. The same notice flips Priority Pass off at Indian domestic lounges from 28 Aug 2026 (present the Reserve card itself) and adds a ₹1,300 late-payment slab above ₹50,000 outstanding
The Reserve's whole defence of a ₹50,000 fee is the membership stack — Club ITC Culinaire with its free third night, Accorplus, handcrafted Club Marriott Asia Pacific, EazyDiner Prime, and the unlimited Priority Pass. Axis's own Reserve revision notice says that from 15 November none of them renew unless you actively consent. Framed as a choice, it works as breakage: the failure mode of an opt-in is silence, and a cardholder who misses the renewal email keeps paying ₹50,000 for a card whose benefits have quietly lapsed. Reserve is on the same list as Select, Magnus, Magnus for Burgundy, Burgundy Private, Olympus and both Miles & More cards, so this is the whole Axis premium book learning the same trick. Two other things ride the notice: from 28 August the Priority Pass card stops opening Indian domestic lounges — you present the Reserve itself against Axis's own eligible-lounge list, and post-immigration lounges at Indian international terminals still count as international — and a fifth late-payment slab of ₹1,300 appears above ₹50,000 outstanding. Notably, the Reserve notice carries no dynamic-currency-conversion line at all while the bank-wide grid goes 1.5% → 3.5%, and the card's 1.5% foreign transaction fee is untouched.
- 1 Nov 2026Privilege's movie buy-one-get-one becomes a spend gate
- 1 Nov 2026IndiGo Axis Premium's movie BOGO grows a ₹25,000 spend gate
- 1 Nov 2026The movie-BOGO spend gate reaches My Zone too — ₹25,000 in the previous 3 months
- 1 Nov 2026NEO's BookMyShow discount grows a ₹25,000 spend gate
- 1 Oct 2026SELECT's ₹3L milestone stops counting the spends it never rewarded
- 23 Sept 2026Axis EDGE brings Accor back, drops ITC, and adds Cathay, Miles & More and HiltonAccor and Marriott off the grid since 2 April 2026; Club ITC live; no Cathay, Miles & More or Hilton → Accor live at the punished rates; ITC removed; Cathay, Hilton and Miles & More live; Marriott still gone
Axis's own Travel EDGE terms, re-read 25 September 2026, already show the grid that went live on 23 September. Accor ALL is back, and not at the old Atlas 1:2: EDGE Miles convert at 2:1 (Olympus 1:2) and EDGE Rewards at 5:1, with Magnus for Burgundy at 5:2 and only Burgundy Private still at 5:4. Club ITC is off the table. Three partners are new. Cathay Asia Miles sits on that same punished grid. Hilton Honors is the ordinary one: EDGE Miles 1:2, EDGE Rewards 5:2, Burgundy 5:4. Lufthansa Miles & More is the exception on Atlas, which converts 1:1 there while every other standard airline on that card is 1:2; the EDGE Rewards side of Miles & More is the ordinary 5:2. Marriott stays removed. Qatar Privilege Club was already back. Flying Blue, Air India and Qantas moved into Group A, which is the capped group. The Axis Rewards credit card's Amex network is advertised as joining-fee and annual-fee nil for a limited period; there is no separate Amex variant on this board, so that offer is not modelled as a fee change.
- 1 Sept 2026Burgundy Private's lapse fee doubles to ₹1 lakh
Every Axis Bank change we've dated → 38 events since 2019, 25 of them nerfs — worst year 2026.
Verified against Axis 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 Product page — joining ₹500 "only for new card issuance", annual ₹500 waived at ₹1 lakh, the 20/12/2 First Citizen grid, and the Value Chart footnote "The Redemption Value of Each FC Point = Rs. 0.50"
- official Member Terms & Conditions — the 20/12/2 FC points per ₹200 grid with its Shoppers Stop/Axis split, the nine excluded categories, the welcome vouchers, and redemption at Shoppers Stop counters only
- official Axis Bank MITC — Shoppers Stop at ₹500 joining and ₹500 annual, waived on ₹1,00,000 of preceding-year spend, add-on Nil; 3.75%/mo finance charge and the 3.50% "all other cards" forex tier
- official Revision effective 20 June 2025 — the excluded spends are now identified by spend category rather than by MCC, and only rent and wallet loads are struck from the fee-waiver count
- official Axis Bank card-wide revision effective 28 August 2026 — the dynamic-currency-conversion markup rises from 1.5% to 3.5% and gift cards become their own excluded spend category