Axis Bank introduced its Cashback Credit Card last year as a direct replacement for the Citi Cashback Credit Card after Citi’s exit from the Indian credit card market. Initially, the Axis Cashback Card was offered exclusively to existing Citi Cashback Cardholders as a migration option.
However, Axis has now made the card available for everyone, allowing everyone to apply for the card. Here’s everything you need to know about the Axis Bank’s Cashback Credit Card:
Table of Contents
Overview
| Type | Premium Cashback Credit Card |
| Reward Rate | Upto 7% Cashback |
| Eligibility | 750+ CIBIL Score helps |
| Best for | Online Spends >50K INR |
It’s a pure cashback credit card, quite similar to the SBI Cashback Credit Card, where the eligible cashback is automatically credited to the card account without the need for manual redemption.
While cashback cards are typically positioned in the entry-level segment, this one stands apart.
While it offers decent reward rate on smaller spends, it requires higher spends to unlock real value, making it more apt to call it a Premium Cashback Credit Card.
Fees
| Joining Fee | 1,000 INR+GST |
| Welcome Benefit | 5,000 Edge Rewards |
| Renewal / Annual Fee | 1,000 INR+GST |
| Renewal Benefit | – |
| Renewal Fee waiver | Spend 4 Lakhs (excludes: rent & wallet spends) |
Given that the Axis Cashback Credit Card is positioned as a cashback product, it feels odd that the welcome benefit comes as reward points rather than direct cashback.
However, since the reward points match the value of the joining fee, it’s totally fine.
Rewards
| SPEND TYPE | REWARD RATE | Max Cashback | Cumulative Reward Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online (upto 5,000 INR) | 2% | 100 INR | 2% |
| Online (5,000 INR – 40,000 INR) | 5% | 1,750 INR | 4.6% (on 40K Spend) |
| Online (> 40,000 INR) | 7% | 2,150 INR | 5.6% (on 70K Spend) |
| Offline & Travel | 0.75% | Unlimited | – |
| Utility | 0.5% | 100 INR | – |
The cashback structure on this card feels unnecessarily complicated for an entry-level product.
Axis Bank markets it with the highlight of ‘7% cashback’, but in practice, the effective rate never really crosses 5.6% because of the way the system is designed, as you can see above.
This makes the 7% claim more of a marketing gimmick than a real-world benefit.
On top of that, the cashback rate on utility spends is extremely low, especially considering this is a card with an annual fee of Rs.1,000.
Caution: Bank is not honouring the accelerated reward rate for online transactions. They’re straight away marking the transaction as offline for an online transaction and offering 0.75% reward rate which corresponds to the offline reward rate.
It’s a daylight robbery, because it’s not the system glitch, it’s intentionally programmed like that. Like, how on planet earth an online transaction be marked as offline transaction?
To verify, You can call support and ask, they’ll confirm that it’s an online transaction and is not excluded based on MCC either.
But you can still get the deserved rewards, how? by sharing the invoice. How many have time and patience to do that? Now that’s the advantage for the bank.
I think some Bank have come to a point that things would look good only when the regular kicks-in.
Lounge Access
The Axis Cashback Credit Card doesn’t offer airport lounge access at the moment.
However, since the Axis Cashback Credit Card is issued on the Visa Signature platform, there’s a possibility that Axis may introduce complimentary lounge access benefits in the future, perhaps linked to a higher spend milestone.
If you’re looking for lifetime free credit card with lounge access, Scapia Credit Card would do the needful and might serve as a great combo alongside Axis Cashback Card for beginners.
Axis Vs SBI Cashback Cards
Among the two, SBI Cashback Credit Card is definitely the superior one over Axis Cashback Credit Card for various reasons.
It offers a higher monthly cashback cap, a simple tier-free reward structure, and has remained relatively stable with minimal devaluations over the past two years.
However, Axis Cashback Credit Card is still better than most other cashback cards within Axis ecosystem like Axis Flipkart or Axis Ace credit cards.
Devaluation meter
- Meter reading: Low
Axis Bank is known for devaluing its credit card benefits quite often, so it’s always good to keep in mind that what looks attractive today might get a haircut tomorrow.
With Axis Cashback Card, I’m not expecting any devaluation because they’re only giving 0.75% rewards as explained above. With programmed robbery well in place, no devaluation is required as they’re not honouring rewards in the first place.
Should you get it?
If most of your spends are on online merchants (excluding travel), with invoice readily available for each and every transaction (for escalation), the Axis Bank Cashback Credit Card can be a solid choice, particularly in the following scenarios:
- If your online spends are around 50K INR a month
- If your online spends are more than 1L INR a month on SBI Cashback Card.
Overall, it’s a good card to stack alongside the SBI Cashback Credit Card, and also works as an alternative for those seeking a cashback option within the Axis ecosystem.
Essentially, one can save 48,000 INR on 8.4 Lakh annual spend, which is quite impressive. The Axis Cashback Card is now open to be applied online.
Bottom line
- Cardexpert Rating: 3.5/5
The Axis Bank Cashback Credit Card is indeed one of the best cashback credit cards in the country by design, but not in reality for most, as the Bank want you to be ready with the invoice to claim the promised cashback.
Axis Bank Cashback Credit Card combined with Axis Atlas and Axis Magnus Burgundy / Axis Olympus (not open yet) is a powerful combo as long as Axis Bank honours the promised reward rate.
Do you’ve the Axis Bank’s Cashback Credit Card? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.
Even now Axis Bank is marking online transactions as offline. Transaction made on AJIO was wrongly marked as offline transactions on Axis Cashback Credit Card. On sharing the invoices with the customer care on email, they mentioned that AJIO themselves decides the MCC and POS thorugh which the transaction goes through and hence AJIO has marked it as offline and they cannot do anything regarding it. How did they resolve your query?
I called Burgundy premium support and they did it without much of back and forth. I was little surprised though. Haven’t been using it since then. I’ll try sometime this month and update the article if I find any additional info.
Are there any updates on rewards being properly delivered and not devalued? Update for March 2026?
SBI Cashback’s biggest problem is overleveraged for anyone who has multiple credit cards. For this reason alone, Axis Cashback is superior to SBI Cashback until it is devalued.
Whats the transfer ratio for edge rewards points ? Thanks
I’m yet to see the welcome benefit kick-in, so it’s too early to comment, might get merged with Magnus Burgundy Points in my case, let’s see.
As per my Calculation, Axis Cashback Credit Card is better if your monthly online spends are between 52,500 to 77,000. For any amount other than that, SBI Cashback is better than Axis Cashback Credit Card.
Absolutely
It’s a good credit card but with so many restrictions on merchant categories
Well, it’s a card to avoid at all times. After a month of usage, I can say that it’s a clear scam, worse than those Axis fuel cards.
They’ve marked my online transaction as offline and gave 0.75% cashback. Have updated the article!
Hi Sid,
Noted. This was the reason i closed my SBI Cashback cc as there was no clarity on cashback earned. I had to literally fight with customer care asking for unfair cashback earned for my online transactions but they always had an answer ready.
SBI CB Card rarely had that issue when looking at scale, except for travel related spends, more of MCC issue with some merchants from what I know.
But with Axis CB, the Bank is going to extreme levels. Like, saying online txn as Offline is another level of manipulation.
Hi Sid,
Exactly, its a clear manipulation or their system isn’t ready yet to calculate Cashback based on MCC segregation- online/offline.
But with SBI also similar issue i faced as most of the transactions were not recorded for cashback and was informed by cc reps. that MCC for such transactions are in exclusion list so cashback wont be given. Even though I went till Nodal officer escalation but they were reading their MCC for such transactions & did not listen to my point or transaction receipts. Which transaction will take which MCC, it is beyond our control and transaction wise cashback or RP’s should be provided as a breakup in the monthly statement which is missing in SBI.
Axis cashback card must be having similar issue of no clarification or clarity on cashback earned, your calculation will always differ than theirs.
With SBI or any, they just blindly go with MCC, kind of understandable but yes, that’s the whole challenge.
But with Axis, it’s pure play manipulation.
Over Call, the support executive clearly says it’s an Online txn & not an excluded MCC. Yet, executive says he has to talk to product and get back. Like why? 😀
Over Email, they ask for invoices! I don’t know which invoice will give them Online/Offline type or even MCC for that matter.
its wrong to say that CITIBANK customers were offered Cashback card. they were offered Rewards card which have the Yearlly fees of 1500/- but now they have reduced to 1000/- which is not offered to the CITIBANK Customers depsite bringing into their knowledge. they instead force to take another card. felt like cheating and came to know when i was charged annual fees. now when then feees woudl be charged, would be closing the same.
Hi Sachin,
I also had a Citibank Rewards CC with an annual fee which got converted to Axis Rewards CC as LTF as I requested them to close it so they converted it to LTF. You can request them anytime for closure they will convert it to LTF for sure and will replace the old Citi card with their new Axis Rewards card. I also had 2 add-on card with Citi which I got renewed by Axis bank with Amazon pay vouchers of Rs. 500 for each card.
Please mention 3 Primary Axis Bank Card Name.
Axis Cashback, Atlas & Magnus Burgundy.
I hold ace from axis and they denied issuing citing reason that axis does not approve multiple cashback cards. Escalated to MD desk. I wonder how do you get approved for most of the cards?
I didn’t get into the two cashback cards issue. But why not let go of ACE now?
How many credit cards do you have from Axis Bank?
3 Primary Cards Sir.
Hi Farhan,
You can close Axis ACE card as its of not much use now due to Gpay charging convenience charges for every recharge or bill payments.
I also had ACE, i got it closed due to cashback limit & not much use.
Now GPay doesn’t levy convenience charge for ace transactions.
Convenience charges are still okay considering they’re a small %. For electricity, it’s usually ~1% for example.
This looks like another rewarding card from Axis Bank. But is the cashback actually getting credited on time, similar to how it works with the SBI Cashback Card?
I would be able to comment on the cashback fulfilment in a month.
My Citibank Cash Back card (LTF) got migrated to Axis Bank Cash Back card. I have been getting the correct cash back posted a day after the statement has been generated. In fact the cash back terms are now much better than under Citibank.
I used to keep this card for Citi offers and experience. After it was moved to the Axis Cashback card, I called Axis customer care for service, after that they started aggressively pushing their products even after I refused multiple times. Thats when I decided to close the card.