Glossary
The words, defined once.
This desk writes in shorthand — MITC, YQ, 2:1, saver, metal, house value — because the shorthand is precise. Precise is useless if you've never met the word, so here is all of it: 46 terms, in the desk's own words, with the number or the contrast that makes each one stick.
why a glossary at all fold that back up
Reviewed 2026-08-15
What a point is worth · Moving points around · Flying on points · On the card itself
Three words that mean two things
- metal — the aircraft, not the card. Infinia Metal is a slab of steel.
- ceiling — the top of a valuation band — or a hard cap. Two different things.
- fuel surcharge — about ₹100 back at the petrol pump, or tens of thousands on a London award.
What a point is worth
Every ₹ figure on this site starts here.
- House value also: ₹/point, our mark
- Our rupee mark for one point of a currency — what a disciplined traveller actually clears, not what the issuer's catalogue implies. It is community consensus, it is dated, and it gets re-marked when a program moves. Every ₹ figure on this site is computed off it. the valuation index →
- Floor and ceiling
- The honest range around a house value. The floor is the guaranteed portal or cashback rate — what you get with zero effort. The ceiling is the realistic best-case sweet spot, not a unicorn redemption. Discipline lives in that range. Marketing rates live nowhere on this site.
- Ceiling, the other one
- On a card page "ceiling" usually means a cap, not a valuation. Standard Chartered Ultimate's hard ceiling is ₹1 per point — no transfer partners, so its floor and its ceiling are the same number. A monthly earn ceiling is a third thing again: the spend past which base earn simply stops.
- The ₹1-per-mile anchor
- Every transferable bank currency is priced against the community standard of one partner airline mile ≈ ₹1 — the same basis behind "Atlas 4%, Infinia 3.3%". We use it deliberately, and it is conservative: saver business seats routinely clear ₹2 a mile. how we value points →
- Peg / FX-pegged
- Some programs price in a foreign currency rather than in points — Accor sells 2,000 points for €40, Shangri-La 15 points per US$1. Their rupee marks are exchange-rate arithmetic, so each carries its FX vintage and gets re-marked when the rupee moves 3–4% against it.
- Haircut
- The gap between a point's house value and what a particular card can actually get for it. Regalia Gold earns 2.5 points per ₹100 but caps out at ₹0.50–0.65 against HDFC's ₹1.00 — a 35–50% haircut. We bake it into the card's earn figure so the headline rate stays honest.
- Catalogue rate
- What a point is worth spent inside the issuer's own rewards catalogue — vouchers, goods, a statement credit. Almost always the worst exit available. HDFC BizPower's points could leave only as ₹0.20 of cashback or ₹0.35 of catalogue goods until transfers opened in July 2026.
- Accrual
- The moment points are credited to your account — which is when the expiry clock starts. Not when you spent, not your statement date. HDFC's default is two years from accrual, and an upgrade, replacement or re-issue restarts the clock from scratch.
- Nerf / buff
- Desk slang, and the two directions the tracker records. A nerf is any change that makes your points worth less — a chart hike, a partner purged, an earn rate cut. A buff is the rare opposite. Every event is dated and carries a source you can click. the devaluation tracker →
- Net annual value also: ranking value
- Two different rupee figures for the same card, on purpose. Net annual value is earn plus milestones minus the fee, with no accelerator credit at all — the conservative number. Ranking value adds the accelerator uplift, and it orders the board. the calculator →
- Headline earn rate
- A percentage: what a rupee of ordinary spend earns at our house ₹/point, before milestones, accelerators and the fee. Where a page instead says "X% net of fee at ₹5L/mo spend", that is net annual value divided by the spend that produced it.
Moving points around
How points get from a card to an airline.
- Transferable points
- Points that can leave the bank for an airline or hotel program. It is the whole difference between two cards: Infinia's points leave for 22 programs, while an ixigo AU point never leaves the ixigo app. Closed-loop points are stuck at their catalogue rate forever. the transfer desk →
- Ratio (2:1, 1:2)
- Always read our points : partner miles. So 2:1 means two of your points buy one partner mile — worse — and 1:2 means one point buys two miles — better. The direction is the entire meaning, and it never flips anywhere on this site. every live route →
- Transfer partner
- An airline or hotel program your card's currency can move points into directly, at a published ratio. It is the only reason a bank point ever beats plain cashback — and the only card feature an issuer can withdraw overnight.
- Hop
- A transfer between two loyalty programs rather than out of a card — Club ITC into Marriott Bonvoy, say. Hops are how a program no Indian card touches becomes reachable at all.
- Chain / multi-hop
- A route of more than one transfer: card → program → program. We show one only where the destination is unreachable directly, or where the chain provably beats the best direct route. Most chains are traps, and we say so. the optimizer →
- Leg
- One transfer inside a chain. Leg one is always the bank route out of your card; every later leg is a program-to-program hop. Each leg costs days, and usually points.
- Decoy
- A transfer route that exists so a bank can advertise a partnership, priced so badly that using it burns your points. IndusInd Legend into Air India at 4:1 and AU into Maharaja Club at 6:1 are decoys wearing a partnership. Half the roster is like this.
- Accelerator
- A card's best realistic booster — SmartBuy, iShop, 5X online, an app hotel portal. Our rankings credit it on about 20% of spend, disclosed, rather than applying the issuer's "up to" number to everything you buy.
- Portal
- The issuer's own booking site, where a multiplier applies — SmartBuy, iShop, Travel EDGE. Portals multiply raw points and then cap them: the multiplier is the headline, the monthly cap is the actual story. the portal matrix →
Flying on points
The award side, where the jargon is thickest.
- Award chart
- A published table of what a seat costs in points. A program that publishes one has made a promise you can hold it to. A program that does not can reprice you overnight, and several have.
- Zone / band
- The two ways a chart prices distance. A zone chart prices region pairs — India to Europe, one number. A band chart prices brackets of great-circle distance. Either way it prices the PAIR, not the direction, which is why a corridor reads the same both ways.
- Saver
- The cheapest published award tier, and the one with almost no seats. Every "business class for 60,000 points" headline is a saver price. When saver space is gone, the same seat prices dynamically, at a multiple.
- Dynamic pricing
- No chart. The program prices awards off cash fares and can move them with zero notice — IHG lifted its Asia properties 15% overnight in July 2024. We price these as estimates that state their assumption, and an estimate never wins THE PLAY.
- Sweet spot
- A cell of an award chart the program has failed to reprice — where the points cost far less than the seat is worth. Sweet spots are the entire reason to hold transferable points instead of cashback. the sweet-spot guides →
- Corridor
- Our word for a city pair priced on points — DEL→DXB — showing every program that can book it, in every cabin, with the cash surcharge beside each. A corridor is a board, not a flight. the award board →
- Great-circle
- The shortest path between two airports across a sphere, and the distance every corridor on this site quotes. It is what a band chart measures, and it is not what a ruler on a flat map says.
- Metal
- The airline that actually operates the flight, as opposed to the program you book it through — you can fly Air India metal on Aeroplan points. Nothing whatever to do with a metal card: Infinia Metal is a slab of steel, Air India is the metal on the DEL→DXB row.
- YQ / fuel surcharge also: carrier-imposed surcharge
- The cash surcharge an airline piles onto an award, on top of the points — the difference between a cheap redemption and a ruinous one. Aeroplan passes none on Air India's nonstop; a British Airways award to London adds tens of thousands of rupees, which is how a 62,500-Avios seat loses to a 70,000-point one. not the card thing of the same name →
- Stopover
- A deliberate break in an award itinerary long enough to be a second trip. Programs used to give them away: KrisFlyer sold a Singapore stopover for $100 until 1 August 2022, then killed it outright and capped free stopovers at 30 days.
- Star Alliance / oneworld / SkyTeam
- The three airline blocs. Membership is what lets one program's points book another airline's metal — Aeroplan is Star, so it books Air India. It moves, too: ITA joined Star on 1 April 2026, SAS left for SkyTeam in September 2024.
- THE PLAY
- Our crowned pick on a corridor: the cheapest all-in way to fly it in that cabin. All-in means points valued at their house rate PLUS the cash surcharge — which is how the fewest-points option regularly loses.
- Crown / crownable
- Only a verified chart price can be crowned. An estimate may sort into a board and may even sit at the top of it, but it never takes THE PLAY — a crown is our promise that the number is bookable, and we will not make that promise about a guess.
On the card itself
The paperwork, the acronyms and the traps.
- MITC
- Most Important Terms and Conditions — the document every Indian card issuer must publish, hand you with the welcome kit and re-send every year. It is where the fees and the finance charge actually live, and it is what we verify a card against. RBI Master Direction on credit and debit cards, 2022 — Chapter VII, para 30
- KFS
- Key Fact Statement — the one-page summary of rates and charges an issuer must give you with the application form, before you sign anything. It is the shortest honest document in the pile. Read it before the brochure, not after. RBI Master Direction on credit and debit cards, 2022 — Chapter II, para 6(a)(i)
- MCC
- Merchant Category Code — the four-digit code that says what a merchant sells, and therefore whether your spend earns fully, earns less, or earns nothing at all. Rent is 6513 and 7349, which is precisely why rent stopped earning. the spend guide →
- Qualifying spend
- Whether spend EARNS points and whether it COUNTS toward the fee waiver are two different questions, and the answers routinely differ. Axis Reserve earns on rent up to ₹1,00,000 a month and counts ₹0 of it toward the ₹35L waiver.
- DCC
- Dynamic Currency Conversion — when a foreign terminal offers to bill you in rupees and charges you for the privilege. Axis took it from 1.5% to 3.5% on 28 August 2026. The fix has never changed: always choose the merchant's local currency.
- LTF
- Lifetime free — no joining fee and no annual fee for as long as you hold the card. Usually an acquisition offer with a deadline that keeps moving: BOBCARD's Eterna window rolled 31 Mar → 30 Apr → 30 Jun → 31 Jul 2026. live offers →
- OTA
- Online travel agency — MakeMyTrip, ixigo, Yatra, Cleartrip. An OTA co-brand's points usually spend only inside that one app, which caps them at whatever rate the app feels like offering that quarter.
- Co-brand
- A card a bank issues in partnership with an airline, hotel or retailer. The points are usually the partner's rather than the bank's, which means no transfer choice at all — you are married to one program from the day you sign.
- Charge card
- A card with no preset spending limit and no revolving balance: the statement is due in full every month. Amex's Platinum Charge is the Indian example — with no preset limit, Amex underwrites your documents rather than an existing bureau limit.
- Grandfathered
- Kept on the old, better terms after a change, because you were already there. IDFC FIRST ended lifetime point validity on 18 June 2026 but let existing WOW! balances stand until July 2028. Grandfathering always has an end date.
- Fuel surcharge waiver
- The card-side one, and it is not the award-side YQ. Petrol pumps add about 1% for paying by card; your card refunds it, capped — typically ₹1,000 a month at the very most, and usually worth a hundred rupees or two. YQ is measured in tens of thousands.
- Priority Pass
- A lounge membership your card carries — the world's biggest network, and in India pointed almost entirely at international terminals. A Priority Pass in your wallet frequently comes with zero free visits. Check the visit count, never the logo. the lounge map →
- DreamFolks
- The aggregator that ran India's domestic swipe-and-enter lounge visits until it exited that business on 16 September 2025. What survives is its international network and the railway-station lounges; banks now contract domestic access direct.
A word that isn't here is a word we couldn't define from our own data or a primary document — and we'd rather leave the gap than invent a meaning. Every number these words describe is computed, and the arithmetic is disclosed on the methodology page.