Kotak discontinues the reward points programme on Dream Different
From 1 April 2026 the Kotak811 Dream Different stopped earning reward points and lost its spend milestone. Kotak's own cardholder agreement dates both cuts; the 2% forex markup that is the card's real draw is untouched.
What changed
Devaluation · Kotak Mahindra Bank
Before
A live Reward Points Programme — 4 points per ₹100 on online spends, 1 per ₹100 elsewhere at 25 paise a point — plus a milestone offer paying ₹750 cashback at ₹75,000 of annual spend (or up to ₹1,000 in Amazon vouchers on the logo-658 series)
After
Both discontinued from 1 April 2026; accrued points redeemable only until 30 September 2026, with a cashback programme of unpublished rates arriving in the September 2026 billing cycle
The card this affects
On 1 April 2026 Kotak switched off the whole earn side of its FD-backed entry card. Two dated notes in Kotak’s Revised Cardholder Agreement Schedule do it.
The rewards section:
“Effective 1st April, 2026, the Reward Points Program on the Dream Different Credit Card will be discontinued.”
The milestone section, seven pages later:
“With effect from 1st April, 2026, Milestone Offer on Dream Different Credit Card will discontinue.”
What went
- Reward points. 4 points per ₹100 on online spends and 1 per ₹100 elsewhere, at 25 paise a point. That is 1% back online and 0.25% on everything else. It is gone.
- The milestone. ₹750 cashback at ₹75,000 of annual spend, or up to ₹1,000 in Amazon vouchers on the logo-658 series. Also gone. The grandfather clause covers only holders who had already reached the spend bar before 1 April, not anyone partway up it.
Points earned up to 31 March 2026 stay redeemable until 30 September 2026 and expire after that. We covered that deadline separately: Dream Different’s unredeemed reward points expire after 30 September 2026.
Why nobody noticed
The same PDF still prints a full accrual table for Dream Different, as if the programme were live. The discontinuation note sits inside the rewards section, and the document carrying it is dated 31 July 2026, four months after the cut it describes. Kotak made the change on 1 April and the paperwork caught up in July. That is why this story is dated to the day the cut took effect, not the day the document appeared.
What replaces it
A cashback programme from the September 2026 billing cycle, whose rates Kotak has not published. The agreement lists ten conditions, including a monthly spend threshold, an active Kotak savings account and payment through Kotak’s own channels, then sends you to “refer website” for the structure itself. With no rates published, we model no earn for this card. Our card page shows the earn as not published rather than guessing.
Our take
This is a major cut on paper and a small one in rupees. Dream Different was never a rewards card. The reason to hold it is unchanged: a ₹10,000 fixed deposit buys a 2% foreign-currency markup, 1.5 percentage points under India’s 3.5% norm, with no annual fee. Count the forex saving and nothing else. The rewards line was a bonus, and as of 1 April it no longer exists.
Source: Kotak Mahindra Bank, Revised Cardholder Agreement Schedule (PDF, ModDate 31 July 2026): the Rewards Program note and the milestone section’s 1 April 2026 clause.
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Sources
- The story’s source: kotak.bank.in
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