Axis Vistara cards zero out CV Points on government and utility spends

From January 3, 2024, Axis Bank’s Vistara-branded cards stopped awarding Club Vistara points on government services and utility bill payments. Zero points — and, more painfully, those transactions no longer count toward the cards’ milestone benefits either.

The milestone clause is the real nerf. The Vistara cards were never about the base earn rate; the game was hitting spend thresholds for bonus CV Points and free tickets. Government and utility payments were one of the easiest manufactured-spend categories loyalists used to grind toward those thresholds. That door is now closed.

This is also the second cut to the Vistara lineup in four months, landing right after the September 2023 transfer-ratio squeeze. Two nerfs a quarter apart isn’t housekeeping — it’s a trend.

Our take: if your Vistara-card strategy depended on padding milestones with utility and government spends, the math just broke. Recount your organic spend honestly, and if it no longer clears the milestone bar, the card’s headline value evaporates with it.