YES Private Prime
KeepYES Private's 0.50% forex at ₹30,000 less to walk in — with the small print intact.
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: Oberoi e-gift vouchers worth ₹9,000
Priced on the everyday mix — 30% groceries · 10% utilities · 20% travel · 6% fuel · 34% everything else — with this card's published category rules applied. 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 for itself at ₹34,000 a month
At ₹34,000 a month — ₹4,08,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹10,200 gross (earn ₹10,200) against its ₹10,000 fee = ₹200 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
Denied or downgraded? The head-to-heads: Axis Bank Reserve, ICICI Times Black, YES Private, YES Bank Marquee, Axis Bank PRIMUS, HSBC Taj.
Best real exit: Air India Maharaja Points at ₹0.05/pt (15:1 transfer).
The take
Private Prime is the same card as YES Private everywhere it matters to a traveller and ₹30,000 cheaper to get. Identical 0.50% forex — still the lowest markup in India — identical 20 points per ₹200 at home and 40 abroad, identical unlimited international lounges for primary and add-on cards, identical NIL spend gate on domestic access, and a renewal fee that is the same ₹10,000 waived ₹5 lakh earlier. What you give up is the concierge layer: the ₹100-per-redemption fee, the late-payment charge, the cash-advance fee and the re-issuance fee are all waived on Private and none of them are waived here, guest lounge visits drop, and the bank's own page values the benefit bundle at "3 lakh plus" against Private's "4 lakh plus". The currency trap is unchanged too: YES Rewardz are ₹0.25 only inside YES's flight-and-hotel portal at 70% of invoice, statement credit pays ₹0.10, and the Maharaja Club route at 15:1 is a decoy. Take Prime unless you will actually spend ₹25 lakh a year — below that, the extra ₹30,000 buys fee waivers you will not notice.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
Here is the fee, the spend that clears it, and everything that has moved under this card since you last decided.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
₹10,000/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹20,000 joining, then ₹10,000/yr
The waiver ₹20,00,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹1,66,667 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹34,000 a month — ₹4,08,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee.
At your spend
−₹2,500 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹5,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹20,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹90,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹1,50,000 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
- 0.50% forex markup — matched only by YES Private among Indian cards
- Unlimited international lounges for primary AND add-on cardmembers; domestic access carries no spend gate
- 40 RP/₹200 international ≈ 5.0%; 20 RP/₹200 domestic ≈ 2.5% at ₹0.25
- ₹20,000 to join against Private's ₹50,000, for the same ₹10,000 renewal
Watch out
- ₹20,000 joining fee is not waivable — the ₹20L spend waiver only kills the ₹10,000 renewal
- None of Private's fee waivers apply: ₹100 + GST per redemption, plus ₹99 on flight bookings, late fees and cash-advance fees all charged
- ₹0.25/point only on portal flights/hotels at 70% of invoice, capped at 6,00,000 points; statement credit pays ₹0.10
- The Maharaja Club exit at 15:1 (≈₹0.07/pt) loses money — these are portal credits, not miles
- Guest lounge visits: YES Bank's own two documents disagree — the MITC says 4 a year, the lounge programme PDF says 8
- No standalone application journey; the bank's own nav lists it under YES Private
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 →
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹20,00,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹10,000 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 Private Prime earns, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver — the ₹20,00,000 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
728 of 793 tracked doors
Opens 728 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 291 airports , via Priority Pass India, Priority Pass Global — 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.
Invite-only — there is no public application form. The bank calls you.
A YES Private Banking product, not a retail one — there is no apply button anywhere on the bank's site, and the card sits inside the YES Private section rather than the credit-card catalogue. Expect the same route as the flagship: a relationship manager offers it, and the ₹20,000 joining fee is the published price rather than an opening bid. The one thing worth asking on the way in is which of the two guest-visit numbers your welcome pack actually carries, because the bank publishes both.
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.
Joining ₹20,000, renewal ₹10,000 waived at ₹20L spend; the joining fee is "Not applicable" for waiver. Domestic lounge spend threshold NIL, shared with YES Private. Rewards redeem at 70% of invoice up to 6,00,000 points on flights/hotels. Guest lounge visits are 4/yr in this document and 8/yr in the bank's own international-lounge programme PDF.
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 — 3 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product page — ₹20,000 first-year fee, ₹10,000 renewal reversed at ₹20L; 20 RP/₹200 domestic and 40 RP/₹200 international; 0.50% forex; Oberoi vouchers worth ₹9,000
- official MITC (CMITC_V18_07082026) — ₹20,000/₹10,000 fee grid waived at ₹20L; 0.50% forex; lounge spend threshold NIL; redemption 70% of invoice up to 6,00,000 points
- official YES BANK International Lounge Program — Private Prime: unlimited international visits for primary and add-on cardmembers