1 AU Reward point is worth ₹0.25 in India.
₹0.25₹250 per 1,000 points, our house mark
held at ₹0.25 · re-marked 10 Jul
How we got this ₹ figure
₹0.25 is our HOUSE value for a point — what a disciplined traveller actually clears, not the best redemption we have ever seen (₹0.67, the ceiling) and not the worst you can always fall back on (₹0.20, the floor). It is the number every route on this page is priced with.
The mark has 2 dated points in data/valuation-history.yaml, each one pinned to a quantified event in the tracker — no interpolation. The last move was re-marked 10 Jul. How we value a point →
Which of my cards reach it? — 20 do
20 cards earn AU Reward Points outright. The figure is the reward rate — what ₹100 of ORDINARY spend earns back at our house ₹/point, before milestones, accelerators and the annual fee. How we compute it →
AU CA Metal0.5%AU Small Finance BankAU CS0.5%AU Small Finance BankAU Ananta0.5%AU Small Finance Bank17 more cards that earn it — same ranking, best first
No longer a closed loop: since 1-Jun-2026 AU points transfer to Maharaja Club — 3:2 on Zenith+ (₹0.67/pt at the mile anchor, the new Zenith+-only ceiling) but a decoy 6:1 everywhere else, which is why the house value stays at the ₹0.25 AU Rewardz travel rate (₹0.20 e-vouchers). Every redemption costs ₹99 + GST.
AU Reward Points has held — we grade its nerf risk stable 3 cuts in 24 months — latest: Apr-2026 lounge cut (minor) How we grade it →
Expiry: 24 months from the transaction date (points earned from 11-Apr-2023)
No corridor on our board prices a seat in AU Reward Points against a published chart — every option that reaches it is dynamic, and an estimate is not a seat. the 2,196 corridors that DO have a verified price →
Every way out
Ranked by real ₹ per point at our house values — the play first, the traps last. Ratios read AU Reward Points : partner miles.
Gone (1)
What a point has been worth
Derived only from quantified, dated events in the tracker — no interpolation, no vibes.
- 10 Jul 2026 ₹0.25 current house value
- 6 May 2026 ₹0.25 program launch / coverage start — no recorded movement while indexed
The nerf log
Full tracker →Every tracked event that touches AU Reward Points.
- 7 Jul 2026AU makes the CheQ AU card lifetime free, dropping ₹499 joining and ₹499 renewal"CheQ AU — Joining Fee ₹499 & Renewal Fee ₹499"; the LED variant "Joining Fee ₹1499 & Renewal Fee ₹499"; renewal waived by spending ₹3,00,000 in a year. → "CheQ AU Credit Card — Lifetime free (₹999 + GST one-time fee applicable for LED Card only)." CheQ no longer appears in the fee-waiver block at all, because there is no fee left to waive.
Caught as live drift on 24 August 2026 and dated to the document that carries it: AU's bank-wide MITC and Schedule of Charges, version 2.21, "Last updated on 7th July'2026". The previous edition — version 2.19, 16 May 2026, still served from a different path on AU's own site — prints the old numbers in the same table, which is what makes this a change and not a reading error. AU announced nothing. A ₹499 card becoming lifetime free is a real buff and the direction is worth naming, but price it honestly, because the fee was never the problem with this card. AU advertises the CheQ AU rungs as percentages — 12% on CheQ Travel and utility bills, 5% on online shopping, 1% on everything — and every one of those headlines is exactly double what it returns, because AU prints the POINT count with a percent sign and a CheQ Point is worth ₹0.50 at AU's own published redemption rates. The base rung AU calls "1%" pays 0.5%. Removing ₹499 a year from a card that returns half what its own page claims makes it a better free card, not a good one — and the earn still lands in a CheQ app account rather than on your statement, and expires two years from credit. ONE READING TRAP, since a later lane will hit it: three editions of this MITC sit at four URLs on au.bank.in, two of them differing only in filename case and punctuation, eight months apart. Only /credit-cards/mitc(with-schedule-of-charges).pdf serves v2.21. A drift check run against any of the others is a drift check against a stale table.
- 6 May 2026AU relaunches its card range — Ananta tops a new four-card deckAU's lineup led by Zenith+/Zenith/Vetta → Ananta (₹2,000), Lakshya, Tejas and Prathama join; Ananta gets 16 lounge visits and 50k milestone points
AU's 6-May-2026 portfolio reset puts Ananta on top: ₹2,000 fee, 16 domestic lounge visits a year, an 8,000-point welcome and up to 50,000 milestone points at ₹10L. The brochure is generous; the currency isn't — AU points still redeem at ₹0.25 in a closed catalogue, so the 5X headline is 1.25% and the lounge visits hide behind an AU Rewardz flight-booking gate.
- 10 Apr 2026AU more than doubles its domestic-lounge spend gate to ₹50,000/quarterComplimentary domestic lounge visits gated at ₹20,000 prior-quarter spend → ₹50,000 prior-quarter spend required (bank-wide: Zenith, Vetta, Xcite Ace/Ultra, SPONT, NOMO, ABCL Pro)
AU's 10 April 2026 'Revision of Usage Terms & Conditions' lifts the prior-quarter spend needed to keep complimentary domestic airport-lounge access from ₹20,000 to ₹50,000 a quarter, across the Zenith, Vetta and Xcite range. The visit allotments are unchanged (Zenith 2 domestic + 2 Priority Pass international per quarter, Vetta 1+1), but the bar to earn them more than doubles — the kind of quiet, spend-gated clawback that keeps a closed-loop points card drifting toward downgrade territory.
- 1 Apr 2026AU stops paying reward points on transportation merchant codesTransportation MCCs earned the ordinary retail rate on AU's CA, Xcite, Xcite Ultra and Altura+ cards; only the CS twin already excluded them → "With effect from 1st April 2026, Reward Points accrual on Transportation Merchant Category Codes will be discontinued." ixigo AU co-brand variants are excluded from the transportation treatment
One sentence, repeated verbatim across several AU product pages, and it lands in the footnote under the earn grid where nobody reads: "With effect from 1st April 2026, Reward Points accrual on Transportation Merchant Category Codes will be discontinued." Before this, transportation was a CS-card quirk — AU's CS exclusion list carried it and the otherwise identical CA card did not, which made the pair a genuine difference for anyone charging cabs and transit. It is no longer a difference: both twins now exclude it, and so do Xcite, Xcite Ultra and Altura+. Called minor and meant, because AU's currency was never the reason to hold these cards — points redeem at ₹0.20 to ₹0.25 in a closed catalogue with no transfer partner anywhere — so the rupees lost here are small. What it is worth naming for is the direction and the method. This is the fifth AU exclusion in three years, after the 2023 voucher markdown, the 2024 fuel/rent/education/government sweep, the ixigo MCC rewrite and the April-2026 lounge gate, and not one of them arrived as a notice with a subject line. One carve-out survives, and it is the co-brand: AU's own MITC states "ixigo AU co-brand credit card variants are excluded from Transportation category charges", so the travel card is the one AU left alone.
- 22 Dec 2024AU rewrites where the ixigo co-brand earns — four categories to nil, three to a reduced rateixigo AU earned its flat 5 Reward Points per ₹200 across rent, education and government, BBPS, international spends, utility, telecom and insurance → Rent (MCC 6513), education and government (fourteen MCCs), BBPS and all international spends earn Nil. Utility and telecom (4812, 4814, 4899, 4900) and insurance (5960, 6300) drop to 1 Reward Point per ₹100, insurance capped at 100 points a transaction
AU's notice "Revision of ixigo AU Credit Card Reward Points Usage Terms & Conditions" opens "Below changes will be applicable on your ixigo AU Credit Card with effect from 22nd Dec'24" and then tables the damage by merchant category code. Four categories go to Nil outright: rent, education and government across fourteen MCCs, BBPS, and every international transaction — the last of those explicitly traded away for the 0% forex markup AU launched in December 2023, which is at least an honest exchange and the reason this card is still the only 0%-forex row on AU's shelf. Three categories survive at a reduced rate rather than an exclusion, and that half of the notice is the part the reader gains from: utility and telecom pay 1 Reward Point per ₹100, insurance pays the same with a hard ceiling of 100 points a transaction, so a premium above ₹10,000 earns nothing more — AU's own illustration says exactly that. Why it matters more than the size of the cut: AU's live product page still carries an undated bullet reading "Fuel & rent transactions, insurance and wallets are excluded from Reward Points spends calculation", which is simply not what the dated MCC-level instrument says about insurance. The specific dated document wins. Against the base 2.5 points per ₹100, a reduced row is a 60% haircut on the categories that survive and a total loss on the four that do not — on a card whose points are worth ₹0.50 only as ixigo money, inside ixigo's app, minus ₹99 plus GST per redemption.
4 earlier events on this program
- 1 Apr 2024AU zeroes out rewards on fuel, rent, education and governmentFuel, rent, education and government spends earned points; utilities earned accelerated rates → Zero points on fuel/rent/BBPS/education/government; utilities and insurance base-rate only, utilities capped at 100 points per transaction
Notified on 1 March and live from 1 April 2024, AU's bank-wide exclusion list strips reward earn from fuel, rent, education, government and BBPS payments outright, and demotes utilities and insurance to the 1-point base rate — utilities with a 100-point-per-transaction ceiling for good measure. On cards already earning 0.25% at the catalogue value, the categories most households actually spend on now earn nothing at all.
- 21 Mar 2024AU unveils Zenith+ — a metal card built for the departure gateAU's range topped out at the ₹7,999 Zenith → Zenith+ at ₹4,999: 0.99% forex, 16 domestic + 16 Priority Pass lounge visits, 4 Meet & Assist
AU's stainless-steel flagship gets the two numbers right that the rest of the lineup gets wrong: a 0.99% forex markup — lower than most full-service banks — and 32 lounge visits a year with airport Meet & Assist on top. The earn side stays AU: 1–2 points per ₹100 at a ₹0.25 catalogue value with no transfer partners, which is why this card is a lounge-and-forex tool, not a rewards engine.
- 5 Jul 2023AU Rewardz devalues vouchers 20% and tolls every redemptionE-vouchers at ₹0.25/point; free redemptions; uncapped Zenith earning → E-vouchers cut to ₹0.20/point; ₹99 + taxes per redemption; Zenith capped at 40k points/cycle (20k per category)
AU's first big rewrite of its points program hits from three directions at once: the e-voucher rate — the redemption most cardholders actually use — drops from ₹0.25 to ₹0.20 per point, every successful redemption now costs ₹99 plus taxes, and Zenith's earning gets a 40,000-point statement-cycle ceiling. A closed-loop currency with no transfer partners just got 20% smaller and pay-per-exit.
- 21 May 2021AU becomes the first small finance bank to deal credit cardsNo small finance bank issued credit cards → Four-card range launches: Zenith (₹7,999), Vetta (₹2,999), Altura+ and Altura
AU's spring-2021 launch made it the first small finance bank in the credit-card business, leading with Zenith's 5% on dining and a fee-waiver ladder across all four cards. The fine print aged faster than the ambition: the points redeemed only in AU's own catalogue, and every rewrite since — the 2023 voucher cut, the 2024 exclusions — has made that closed loop worth less.
Straight answers
The questions people actually type about AU Reward Points — answered from the same data as everything above, with the same numbers.
What is 1 AU Reward point worth in INR?
Our desk marks AU Reward Points at ₹0.25 a point — so 1,000 points are worth ₹250 and 10,000 are worth ₹2,500. That is the number every route on this page is priced with. The ₹0.20 floor is the redemption you can always fall back on; the ₹0.67 ceiling is the best sweet spot we have actually verified. The mark is holding flat, last reviewed 10 Jul 2026. The valuation index prices it against every other program we cover.
Which Indian cards earn AU Reward Points?
20 Indian cards earn AU Reward Points outright. Best-ranked earners: AU CA Metal, AU CS and AU Ananta, the best of them at 0.5% reward rate. The card list above names each of them with its rank, its ratio and what one of its points becomes here.
When did AU Reward Points last devalue?
1 Apr 2026 — AU stops paying reward points on transportation merchant codes. That is the newest cut on our record. The nerf log below carries 9 tracked events touching AU Reward Points, and the program grades stable on nerf risk.
Verified against AU Small Finance Bank's own documents on · our house ₹/point, ₹0.25 today
Not published , and we will not invent it: how long posting takes · its award terms — surcharges and the booking window.
Every document behind this page — 2 of them, each with the day we read it
- official The AU Rewardz FAQ — a Reward Point is worth ₹0.25 across the catalogue and travel exits and ₹0.20 against e-vouchers and gift cards since 5-Jul-2023. Value and floor, on one page.
- official Air India's own AU conversion page — the Maharaja Club door that opened on 1-Jun-2026 and ended this currency's closed loop, and the only route out of it today.