Axis Bank Vistara Credit Card
KeepOne Maharaja Point per ₹100, no fee, and a ticket voucher the website still promises.
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Welcome: A complimentary Economy class ticket voucher on fee payment — WITHDRAWN. Axis's post-merger T&C discontinued the renewal voucher and every milestone voucher, and the product page still advertises both.
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 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 →
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 #691
Why #691 The thinnest card in a closed family — one Maharaja Point per ₹100 and two spend-gated lounge visits — ranked last of the five, and kept only because it is free.
The take
This is the entry Vistara card, and after the merger there is not much of it left. Axis waived the annual fee on every Vistara card from the renewal cycle beginning 18 April 2025 and discontinued the renewal Economy ticket voucher and all three milestone vouchers at the same time. The product page has never caught up: the ladder at ₹1,25,000, ₹2,50,000 and ₹6,00,000 is still printed there, in the present tense, on a benefit the bank's own terms killed. What survives is two Maharaja Points per ₹200 — one per ₹100, 0.8% at our ₹0.80 mark — and two domestic lounge visits a year that only open if you put ₹50,000 through the card in the previous three calendar months. There is no golf on this tier and no Maharaja Club status. Rent, utilities, government, insurance, gold and watches earn nothing at all. Keep it, because it costs nothing and the points are real Air India currency. Do not spend on it: 0.8% is beaten by almost every free card in India, and the only reason this one is still worth a slot in the drawer is that closing it saves you exactly zero rupees.
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
₹2,200 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹4,300 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹8,600 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹25,900 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹43,200 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
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
- 2 Maharaja Points per ₹200 — 1 per ₹100, 0.8% at our ₹0.80 Maharaja mark
- Points land in Air India's Maharaja Club directly: no transfer ratio, no conversion fee, no waiting window
- Annual fee waived on every Axis Vistara card from the renewal cycle starting 18 April 2025
- 2 complimentary domestic lounge visits a year at participating Visa lounges
Watch out
- Closed to new applications — Axis's own product page reads “Sourcing of Axis Bank Vistara Credit Cards has been discontinued”; existing holders keep the card
- The Economy ticket vouchers are discontinued — welcome, renewal and all three milestones — and the product page still sells every one of them
- Lounge access is spend-gated — ₹50,000 on this card in the previous 3 calendar months, or the 2 visits do not open
- Rent, wallet loads, utility bills, government services, insurance, jewellery, gold, silver, precious stones and watches earn nothing
- 0.8% is the weakest earn of the five surviving Vistara co-brands; the Signature and Infinite tiers pay double and triple on the same spend
- 3.50% forex markup and a dynamic-currency-conversion markup that went 1.5% → 3.5% on 28 Aug 2026
- Since 28 Aug 2026 gift cards, Bridge Fees, Road Fees and Tolls earn nothing, and gift-card spend no longer counts toward any spend-based fee waiver or milestone
- Maharaja Points expire 24 months after your last paid Air India or Air India Express flight; award tickets do not reset the clock
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes Air India Maharaja 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
10 sourced rules · 7 pay zero
Closed to new applications; modelled for holders. The post-merger revision is the only current document, and it answers the earn question in one sentence: "Customers can continue earning Maharaja Points on all spends across all categories except Rent, Wallet load transactions, Utility bill payment, Government services, Insurance, Jewellery, Gold, Silver, Precious stones & metals, Watches." Fuel and EMI are named nowhere in it, so this card answers "not published" for both rather than inheriting an Axis-wide assumption. Base earn is 2 Maharaja Points per ₹200.
- Rent & property management · excluded First on the post-merger exclusion list; a 1% rent-transaction fee applies on top
- Wallet loads · excluded "Wallet load transactions" — named in the post-merger list
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · excluded "Utility bill payment" — named in the post-merger list
- Insurance · excluded Excluded from earn AND from milestone calculation since 20 Apr 2024, on the MCCs Axis published by number: 5960, 6012, 6051, 6300, 6381
Lounge access
12 of 793 tracked doors
Gate: ₹50k spend on this card in the previous 3 calendar months (waived for the month of issuance plus the next 3 calendar months on a newly issued card)
Opens 12 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 6 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.
Closed to new applications — existing cardholders keep the card; there is no way in.
There is no way in. Axis's product page carries the line “Sourcing of Axis Bank Vistara Credit Cards has been discontinued” and offers no application flow. Existing holders are grandfathered and keep earning Maharaja Points on terms Axis describes as interim and revocable on notice. No successor exists: Axis has announced no replacement Air India co-brand, and Air India's own partner directory lists Axis only for EDGE REWARD Points and EDGE Miles conversion, with no Vistara entry of any kind.
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
7 of 7 MITC rows published
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
CLOSED TO SOURCING and now FEE-FREE. Axis's fee table prints ₹1,500 for this tier in both the joining row and the annual row; the post-merger T&C revision cancels the annual one for every Axis Vistara card ("Annual fees on AXIS BANK VISTARA Credit Cards due for renewal will be waived off"), dated on the Infinite page's own footnote to the renewal cycle from 18 April 2025. The same revision discontinued the renewal Economy ticket voucher and the three milestone Economy vouchers (₹1,25,000 / ₹2,50,000 / ₹6,00,000), while keeping lounge and dining — the product page still advertises the withdrawn vouchers. No golf on this tier. DCC markup 1.5% (from 5 March 2023). Processing fees: 1% on rent per transaction; 1% on cumulative fuel ≥₹50,000 per cycle; 1% on cumulative utility ≥₹25,000 per cycle; 1% on each third-party education payment. Card replacement nil; duplicate statement, chargeslip retrieval, outstation cheque, mobile alerts, hotlisting and balance enquiry all waived.
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 Revision of Axis Bank Credit Card Terms and Conditions — the bank-wide notice: DCC 1.5% to 3.5%, and gift cards, Bridge Fees, Road Fees and Tolls out of rewards, from 28 Aug 2026
- official Axis Bank product page — sourcing discontinued, 2 Maharaja Points per ₹200, 2 Visa lounge visits subject to spends, forex 3.50%, DCC 1.5%
- official Axis Bank T&C revision after the Vistara–Air India merger — annual fees waived on renewal, tier memberships and all ticket vouchers discontinued, Maharaja Points earning continues
- official Axis Bank revision effective 20 April 2024 for the Vistara Platinum tier — lounge access gated on ₹50,000 of spend in the previous 3 calendar months; insurance and gold/jewellery MCCs stop earning
- official Air India Maharaja Club partner directory — lists Axis only for EDGE REWARD Points and EDGE Miles conversion, with no Vistara co-brand entry