Kotak Solitaire
Keep10% back on travel, zero forex — the wealth desk's answer to the Atlas gap.
What it's worth to you — net annual value
Welcome: None — no joining bonus; the standing value is 10x Air Miles on travel and zero forex
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
Solitaire is Kotak's flagship rebuilt as a genuine travel card, and it earns where it matters: 10 Air Miles per ₹100 on flights and hotels booked through Kotak Unbox, redeemable at a clean ₹1 each — a real 10% on travel spend — plus 3 Air Miles per ₹100 everywhere else. Add zero forex markup and unlimited domestic and international lounge access, and for a Kotak Solitaire wealth client (a ₹75-lakh relationship) it lands lifetime-free. The honest asterisks: there is no sign-up bonus, the nine airline and hotel transfer partners all convert at ratios (2:1 to most airlines, 3:1 Marriott) that are worse than just booking travel at ₹1/Air Mile, and if you ever drop out of the Solitaire programme the fee snaps to ₹25,000. For the client it's built for, it's one of the strongest forex-free travel cards open today.
What's good
- 10 Air Miles per ₹100 on Kotak Unbox flights/hotels, redeemed at ₹1 each — 10% on travel
- Zero forex markup on all international spends
- Unlimited domestic + international lounge access for primary and add-on cards
- Lifetime-free for Kotak Solitaire wealth clients (₹75L total relationship value)
Watch out
- ₹25,000 fee if you're not on the Solitaire banking programme
- No welcome bonus — nothing to unwrap on activation
- Transfer ratios (2:1 most airlines, 3:1 Marriott) are worse than the ₹1 fixed travel redemption
- Accelerated Air Miles capped at 1,00,000 per statement cycle
What earns, what doesn't
Base 3 Air Miles/₹100; 10 Air Miles/₹100 on Kotak Unbox travel (capped 1,00,000/statement cycle). Category-level MCC exclusions follow Kotak's standard set — community-mapped and flagged.
- Fuel · excluded Fuel excluded from Air Miles earn (Kotak standard, community, flag)
- Rent & property management · excluded Rent excluded (Kotak standard, community, flag)
- Wallet loads · excluded Wallet loads excluded (Kotak standard, community, flag)
- Government / tax · excluded Government/tax excluded (Kotak standard, community, flag)
per Kotak Mahindra 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.
every Kotak Mahindra Bank route, side by side → · the Kotak Air Miles hub →
Lounge access
Opens 606 of 662 tracked lounge doors across 251 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.
The card rides on the Kotak Solitaire wealth programme: maintain a total relationship value of ₹75 lakh or more with Kotak and the Solitaire card is lifetime-free. Outside that programme it carries a ₹25,000 annual fee and there is no published spend waiver, so it's really a relationship card — bring Kotak the balances, and the card follows. Kotak publishes no separate income or age cutoff for it.
Kotak Mahindra Bank publishes no income or age cutoffs for this card. Blank means blank — we don't invent numbers to fill a grid.
per the official Kotak Mahindra 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.
Visa Infinite. Fee ₹25,000 + GST, waived (lifetime-free) for Kotak Solitaire wealth-programme clients (₹75L total relationship value) — no published spend waiver. Zero forex markup. Accelerated Unbox travel earn capped 1,00,000 Air Miles/statement cycle. APR/late-fee slabs follow Kotak's premium tier (per the White Reserve KFS); Solitaire-specific MITC not fully machine-readable, verify. Kotak publishes no income/age cutoff.
per the official Kotak Mahindra 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.
- 10 Jul 2026BluChip ↔ Accor ALL ratios surface — 6:1 in, 3:2 out, live 13 JulyCorridor announced Apr 2025; no ratios published for 15 months → 6,000 BluChips → 1,000 ALL points (6:1); 3,000 ALL → 2,000 BluChips (3:2); live 13 Jul 2026
India's first airline↔hotel points corridor finally has numbers: ratios spotted on the Accor ALL site ahead of the 13 July joint launch. 6,000 BluChips buy 1,000 ALL points — a respectable 60% of value retained at house values, making Accor the best BluChip exit that isn't an IndiGo seat. The reverse leg (3,000 ALL → 2,000 BluChips) torches 81% of ALL's fixed stay value; use it never. And the fantasy of resurrecting the dead Axis EDGE→Accor route through BluChips dies at this ratio: even inside Axis's intro window the chain recovers just 30%.
- 5 Jul 2026Marriott quietly reprices awards up 2–16% overnightWeekend-of pre-hike dynamic award prices (no published chart) → Award costs up 2.4–15.6% (most 3–8%); ~5–10% average across sampled hotels
Over the first weekend of July 2026 Marriott pushed through another no-notice, unpublished-chart devaluation — spotted first on Chinese frequent-flyer forums, then confirmed across the points blogs. Increases ran 2.4% to 15.6% with most properties 3–8% pricier: the Athenee Bangkok went 32k→37k, the London EDITION 107k→115k, the Ritz-Carlton Maldives 168k→176k. Post-hike, sampled Bangkok redemptions cleared only ~0.56¢/point after taxes and fees — one more reason Bonvoy's house value keeps drifting toward its floor. It follows the 2025 round that lifted the Cat-5 ceiling to 76,000 points, a 90% climb from early-2022's 40k.
- 30 Jun 2026Amex India cuts Etihad Guest as an MR transfer partnerMR points transferable to Etihad Guest Miles → Etihad Guest transfer route closed for good
Membership Rewards points could move to Etihad Guest only until 30 June 2026, 11:59 PM IST — after that the route is dead, part of a global Amex-Etihad wind-down already hitting the UK, US, Canada and Germany. Neither side explained why, but Etihad's generous Etihad Guest sweet spots (especially A380 First redemptions) were a favourite MR outlet for Indian cardholders, and this closes one of the better ones with no replacement announced. Points already transferred are unaffected — only future transfers stop.
- 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.
- 2 Apr 2026Axis purges Marriott, Accor and Qatar from its transfer list overnightMarriott, Accor, Qatar Airways at Group A ratios → All three gone; BA, Finnair, Vietnam Airlines added at 2:1
With zero advance notice — despite Axis's own MITC requiring 30 days — EDGE Miles/Rewards cardholders woke up on 2 April 2026 to find Marriott Bonvoy, Accor Live Limitless and Qatar Airways Privilege Club stripped from the transfer partner list. The three replacements (British Airways Executive Club, Finnair Plus, Vietnam Airlines LotusSmiles) land in the worst tier: 2:1 on Atlas instead of the usual 1:2, and 5:1 on Magnus/Reserve instead of 5:2 — so you need up to 4x the points for the same miles. This guts Atlas and Magnus's best hotel-transfer sweet spots in one stroke and pushes the whole EDGE ecosystem toward airline-only redemptions.
- 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 Jun 2025Kotak guts Privy League Signature and pulls it from saleOn open sale; ₹0.25/point cash redemption; ungated quarterly lounge visits; 2.49%/month interest → Closed to new applicants; cash redemption cut to ₹0.20 (min 2,000 points); lounge access gated on ₹75k/quarter; earn caps on education, insurance, utility, govt, gaming and wallet; interest 3.5%/month
Four months after the RBI let Kotak issue cards again, it took the knife to Privy League Signature: the cash value of a point falls 20%, the free quarterly lounge visits now demand ₹75,000 of spend a quarter, six spend categories get earn caps, rent earns nothing, and the interest rate jumps from 2.49% to 3.5% a month — all while the card quietly leaves the shelf for new applicants. Existing holders keep a lounge pass; the rewards story is officially over.
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 — Visa Infinite, unlimited lounge, zero forex, ₹25,000 fee (Nil for Solitaire programme) checked 21 Jul 2026
- official Rewards page — 10 Air Miles/₹100 on Unbox travel, 3/₹100 else, 1,00,000/cycle cap, transfer partners + ratios, ₹1 travel / ₹0.5 voucher redemption checked 21 Jul 2026
- community CardInsider — ₹75L Solitaire relationship for LTF, 9 transfer partners (Etihad/Qatar/BA/United/Cathay/AF-KLM/Accor 2:1, Air India 1:1, Marriott 3:1) checked 21 Jul 2026
- community Paisabazaar — up to 10% reward on travel, zero forex, 4 guest lounge visits/yr checked 21 Jul 2026
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