YES Essence
Downgrade₹25,000 a quarter buys a lounge — the cheapest door YES sells.
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: Not published — the bank's T&C names the condition (first transaction within 45 days) but never states the benefit
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 ₹9,000 a month
At ₹9,000 a month — ₹1,08,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹500 gross (earn ₹500) against a fee of ₹0 — the ₹799 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 · the network variants
Best real exit: Air India Maharaja Points at ₹0.05/pt (15:1 transfer).
The take
Every other YES card asks ₹50,000, ₹75,000 or ₹1 lakh of quarterly spend before it will let you into a lounge. Essence asks ₹25,000, which is roughly what a household already puts through a card without trying, and that single number is the whole argument for holding it. The rest is ordinary: 4 points per ₹200 offline is 0.5%, online shopping is 1.0%, and online travel, fashion, beauty, dining and grocery earn 1.5% up to 9,000 points a statement cycle — with travel defined by MCC, so airline and hotel bookings genuinely count. Those points are YES Rewardz, which means ₹0.25 inside YES's own flight-and-hotel portal, ₹0.10 as statement credit, and a 15:1 Air India route that pays about ₹0.07 and is worse than not transferring. Forex went to 3.00% in June 2026, so this is not a card to take abroad. Take it for the ₹25,000 gate, waive the fee at ₹1 lakh a year, and stop there.
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
₹799/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹799/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 ₹9,000 a month — ₹1,08,000 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
₹1,400 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹2,800 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹5,600 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹16,900 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹28,200 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
YES 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 a program these points reach
- 25 Aug 2026 Vietnam Airlines Lotusmiles opens a broad SkyTeam status match — up to Elite Plus a program these points reach
- 20 Aug 2026 IHG Hotels & Resorts becomes a Maharaja Club earning and conversion partner a program these points reach
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
- Domestic lounge access at ₹25,000 of prior-quarter spend — half the Elite+ gate, a quarter of Marquee's
- 12 RP/₹200 ≈ 1.5% on online travel, fashion, beauty, dining and grocery
- ₹799 joining waived at ₹20,000 in the first month; ₹799 renewal waived at ₹1 lakh a year
- Buy-one-get-one on movie tickets, up to ₹250 off the second ticket once a month — YES never says on which app
Watch out
- No international lounge access at all — YES's own lounge programme table does not list this card
- Forex is 3.00% since 15-Jun-2026, up from 2.75% — at the Indian norm, not below it
- YES Rewardz pay ₹0.25 only on portal flights/hotels; statement credit pays ₹0.10, halving everything above
- The Maharaja Club exit at 15:1 (≈₹0.07/pt) pays less than not transferring at all
- Accelerated earn caps at 9,000 points a statement cycle; utility spend caps at 150
- ₹100 + GST per redemption request, plus ₹99 + GST per flight booked with points
- A limited-period lifetime-free issuance runs over the published ₹799 grid — confirm which one you are being offered before you apply
What these points actually fly
YES Rewardz (YES CC Rewardz) move to Air India Maharaja Points — and that programme prices every award dynamically. There is no published chart to quote, so we quote nothing: an estimate is not a seat.
what the cards that DO reach a chart can fly — 2,196 corridors priced →
What earns, what doesn't
8 sourced rules · 7 pay zero
Essence's published exclusion list is its own and it is NOT the Select/Elite+ list: it names Fees & Charges but says nothing about railways, toll, ferry or jewellery. Those four are therefore recorded as not published rather than inferred across. Earn is 12 points per ₹200 online in fashion, beauty, travel, dining and grocery, 8 online elsewhere, 4 offline.
- Fuel · excluded "YES Rewardz Points will not be awarded on … Fuel" — MCCs 5172, 5541, 5542, 5983, 9752; YES also charges 1% on a fuel transaction above ₹10,000
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero points (MCC 6513); 1% fee, minimum ₹199 above ₹1,000, capped at 5 rent transactions per 30 days
- Wallet loads · excluded Zero points (MCC 6540); 1% fee on a third-party wallet load above ₹2,000
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · capped Capped at 150 YES Rewardz Points a statement cycle per the master MITC — the same ceiling as Select, and the tightest YES sets; 1% + GST on every utility transaction once last month's utility spend passed ₹25,000
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹1,00,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹799 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. YES Bank states what the YES Essence earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver — the ₹1,00,000 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
Ratios read card points : partner miles — 2:1 means 2 points become 1 mile. Never the other way round.
every YES Bank route, side by side → · the YES Rewardz (YES CC Rewardz) hub →
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 public application with the lowest income bar on the YES shelf: ₹30,000 a month net salary, salaried only, age 21 to 60. The bank builds and markets this one for women — its own page opens "crafted for women who balance passion, ambition, and everyday wins" — though the published eligibility list names age, employment and income and nothing else, so read the marketing as positioning rather than as a rule you can check. The standing YES catch applies: hold any other YES Bank credit card and the online form will not take you.
per the official YES 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.
₹799 joining waived at ₹20,000 within a month, ₹799 renewal waived at ₹1,00,000 a year, with the product page flagging a limited-period lifetime-free issuance alongside both. Domestic lounge access gated on ₹25,000 of prior-quarter spend — the lowest threshold YES sets. Utility points capped at 150 per statement cycle; accelerated categories capped at 9,000. No international lounge feature.
per the official YES 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.
- 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.
- 25 Aug 2026Vietnam Airlines Lotusmiles opens a broad SkyTeam status match — up to Elite Plus
- 20 Aug 2026IHG Hotels & Resorts becomes a Maharaja Club earning and conversion partner
- 6 Aug 2026MaxCoins' full transfer catalogue surfaces — Accor at 2:1 re-prices the coin to ₹1.08
- 3 Aug 2026SBI drops Etihad Guest from the MILES transfer table — the last SBI door into the programme
- 2 Aug 2026Flipkart SuperCoins into Maharaja Club improve to 2:1
- 26 Jul 2026Air India's quiet network retreat: Tokyo moves, Paris and San Francisco go, Malé pauses
- 15 Jun 2026YES's ₹100 redemption fee reaches Marquee and Reserv
Every YES Bank change we've dated → 7 events since 2023, 6 of them nerfs — worst year 2026.
Verified against YES Bank's own documents on · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 2 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product page — 12 RP/₹200 on online fashion, beauty, travel, dining and grocery, 8 on other online, 4 offline; ₹799 fees waived at ₹20,000 and ₹1,00,000; eligibility ₹30,000/month
- official MITC (CMITC_V18_07082026) — ₹799/₹799 with ₹20,000 and ₹1,00,000 waivers; forex 3.00% w.e.f; 15-Jun-2026; domestic lounge gate ₹25,000 a quarter, the lowest YES sets