This year has been brutal for many credit card users.

Banks have been announcing devaluations one after another.

American Express raised its spending threshold required to unlock its special Taj voucher. SBI cuts its cashback limits.

All of this has felt personal to 27-year-old Kartik, who owns a lot of these cards.

Also, he told me that he had spent two years collecting points, which he then used to stay in Singapore for five nights. Now that same card requires you to spend seven lakh to get the same points rather than four lakh rupees.

So what's going on here?

Why are banks announcing devaluations to your rewards and perks? Is it just them being greedy or has the economics fundamentally changed?

To learn more and to hear from consumers and experts, tune into the latest episode of The Signal Brief.

The Core produces The Signal Brief. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts.

NOTE: A machine transcribed this episode. A human has looked at this text but there might still be errors. Please refer to the audio above, if you need to clarify something. If you want to give us feedback, please write to us at feedback@thecore.in.

TRANSCRIPT:

Kudrat (Host): Kartik is 27, he works as a content manager in Chandigarh.

He told me that he has a mix of seven credit cards.

Of them, he uses three most regularly: American Express, Amazon ICICI and Axis Horizon.

This year, he heard some troubling news.

All three of them announced devaluations.

Kartik: 2026 has been a big year because, as I wrote in my tweet as well, Airtel Axis was a huge cashback card, especially for utility.

So you have your bijli bill, you have your LPG, and you pay through that, and you got straight-up cashback. And then Axis went like, "Hey, nah, that's not happening anymore."

So Airtel Axis was a big hit. And in the beginning of the year, one of the major ones was American Express Platinum Travel. So you reach the annual spend of Rs four lakhs, and you got a certain amount of points, and you got a Taj voucher of Rs 10k.

And American Express then changed those rules, and it was made from Rs four lakhs to Rs seven lakhs for the same amount of points, basically.

Kudrat (from clip): So all of them got devalued?

Kartik (from clip): Yeah. Coincidentally, all of them this year.

Kudrat (from clip): This year itself.

Kartik (from clip): Yeah, this year. This year itself.

Kudrat (Host): Kartik says that at first, he found this news distressing.

Kartik: See, now, though, it's difficult because, as I've said, let's take it at income level, okay? If someone is earning Rs 50 lakhs in a year, they have a lot of options. They can get to the same points in different, different ways. But if you are someone who is earning, let's say, Rs 12 or Rs 15 lakhs, so you have that Rs 15 lakhs only.

Those Rs 15 lakhs, you have to make the best out of it. And now that got difficult for me. So that certainly feels like a pinch.

Kudrat (Host): Though Kartik may have accepted his fate, many others in his position have not.

On social media the anger still burns.

So why did banks move the goalposts? And what, if anything, can ordinary users still do?

Kudrat (Host): My name is Kudrat Wadhwa and you’re listening to The Signal Brief. We don’t do hot takes. Instead, we bring you deep dives into the how and why of consumer trends.

In today’s episode: Why did your credit card get devalued? And what can you do about it?

Kudrat (Host): Kartik’s journey with credit cards began about four years ago.

Kartik: American Express, too, it's a status symbol, okay? So there is a friend of mine in Chandigarh who told me, "Amex." So I just got it for the heck of it, okay? I needed to have an Amex, and at that point, I think I got Amex Gold Charge. It was my first Amex credit card.

Kudrat (Host): In the beginning, Kartik says he didn’t really know how to navigate credit cards.

Points were accumulating somewhere in the background, but he had no real sense of what they were for.

Kartik: And I started using it, and to be very honest, I didn't know how to use it. I was just swiping it left, right, and centre. And then someone told me, "You shouldn't use this one. You should use the Platinum Charge one because you can put all your spend on it. So spend just Rs four lakhs in a year, and you'll get this reward point, and you'll get a Taj voucher of Rs 10k."

So the Taj voucher of Rs 10,000 was a big thing for me because, at that point, I hadn't ever been to the Taj or something. So I thought I'll take that. So I took that one, and ever since, I think I held it for three years. So I got three Taj vouchers.

Kudrat (Host): Those Taj vouchers were only the beginning.

Over the next two and a half years, Kartik kept feeding the same card. He learned how points worked. He followed advice from people who had already understood the system.

And then, in August 2025, he finally cashed in on what he had built.

Kartik: So there's Ankur Mittal, okay, on X, and he told me कि how to best use these points and all. So he guided me, and I think I used up around 145,000 points of Amex.

I transferred them to Marriott Bonvoy, and I stayed for five days in Singapore. It was Courtyard by Marriott in Novena.

So I stayed, I sponsored my whole five-day trip over there with those Marriott points that I got from Platinum Travel. So I accumulated those points for, like, two years, and I had one or two referrals as well, and all of them then combined, and then I planned that whole stay.

So that was the turning point for me कि yeah, you can actually save and get these points. But I am not a high-net-worth individual. I am not ultra-rich or something. So it takes years and years to have a good redemption journey for me.

Kudrat (Host): Now, Kartik isn’t alone.

In fact, there’s an entire community of people who’ve learned how to optimise their points to score trips, helped along by creators like Ankur Mittal.

Another popular channel in this space is The Great Indian Points and Miles Show. They regularly release videos titled things like ‘How to Fly Business Class for Free (Using Credit Card Points, Miles & Insider Tricks)’

CLIP: ‘How to Fly Business Class for Free (Using Credit Card Points, Miles & Insider Tricks)’

Kudrat (Host): Among these active optimisers, the value they extracted has jumped sharply, from roughly Rs 2 for every Rs 100 spent in 2024 to nearly Rs 7 in 2025, according to a Save Sage Credit Card Survey. Flight bookings and airline transfers became their preferred way to redeem.

And then the rules started changing.

In early 2026, American Express raised the annual spend needed for the same Platinum Travel milestone benefits and Taj voucher from four lakh to seven lakh rupees.

Axis sharply reduced the cashback on its popular Airtel co-branded card for utility bills.

HDFC raised the bar on its premium Infinia card — requiring either Rs 18 lakh in annual spends or a Rs 50 lakh relationship value with the bank to keep it.

SBI lowered the monthly cashback cap on its flagship Cashback card.

To understand what happened, I reached out to Raj Khosla. Raj runs MyMoneyMantra, one of the largest financial services marketplaces in the country. He works with almost every major issuer.

Raj: I think the acceleration, like you put it, really started in late 2024, I would imagine, and gathered pace all of 2025 and into most of 2026, where we are right now. Essentially, during the post-COVID years, banks were aggressively acquiring customers and were willing to subsidise generous rewards because credit card spending was booming. But as portfolios matured, banks realized that the economics weren't adding up, and pretty much across the board. So that's how this thing started changing.

Kudrat (Host): Another source, who wanted to talk on background, said such devaluations are par for the course.

When banks launch a new card, they're often willing to spend aggressively to acquire customers.

Generous rewards like Taj vouchers and Marriott stays. are part of that acquisition cost.

But once those budgets run out, they begin cutting back on the rewards.

Raj also pointed to a second pressure that made the cuts feel more urgent.

Raj: Also, at the same time, a growing number of consumers became very aware, very sophisticated, maybe through social media or just word of mouth, perhaps. And card users started optimising rewards, transferring points to airlines, hotel partners, maximising milestone benefits, and avoiding interest by paying bills in full.

They all realised that revolving money on a credit card was the most expensive form of unsecured loans. So they realised the value in clearing bills in full, and that really meant the banks were funding premium benefits without earning enough revenue in return. So what we are seeing today is less of a temporary correction and more of a recalibration. Essentially, the banks are addressing today's reality in the credit card landscape as a whole.

Kudrat (Host): There’s another factor, one that’s unique to India.

Berges Malu, Director of Public Policy at Koan Advisory and an avid credit card user, pointed out that in India, UPI handles a majority of the share of every day payments, meaning banks don’t make as much money on credit cards.

Berges: Especially because people don't use their credit card as much except for the benefits. So for their regular transactions, they are using UPI, and you only have credit cards for lounge access or whatever else. And in those kind of scenarios, it's difficult, I guess, for banks to also provide the long list of features that they originally promised consumers.

Kudrat (Host): One signal comes from SBI Cards, India’s largest pure-play credit card company.

Their latest earnings call shows that the share of customers who revolve their balances, that’s the ones who pay a hefty interest, has settled around 22%.

Just a few years ago, that number was much higher, closer to 35-40%.

Management added this share has a slight downward bias, meaning newer customers are even less likely to revolve.

In other words, more people are paying their bills in full, which means banks are giving away expensive rewards while earning less interest income.

Think of every credit card as a spreadsheet.

Banks estimate how much customers will spend, how many will redeem rewards, how many will carry balances and pay interest, and how much benefits like airport lounges will actually cost.

When those assumptions stop matching reality, banks recalculate. And that’s when the devaluations begin.

And all of this is fully legal.

The RBI requires banks to give customers at least 30 days’ notice before they change the terms and conditions of a credit card — things like interest rates, fees, and late charges.

But reward structures, milestone benefits, and lounge access are treated more as perks than core contractual terms.

In most countries, banks have similar freedoms.

In the United States, for example, banks also have wide freedom to change rewards programmes.

The main consumer financial watchdog there, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has repeatedly flagged the practice. It warned that devaluing rewards that banks once promised can cross into unfair or deceptive territory. But even there, the core ability of issuers to redesign rewards remains largely intact.

So devaluations are legal and make commercial sense, as Raj explained earlier.

But that still leaves a question: was the way it was done fair? And could it have been handled better?

Raj: It was really the speed and scale of some of those changes. When multiple issuers start making similar moves within a relatively short period, it tells you that the industry is facing a common profitability pressure rather than isolated product issues. So it was really the speed and scale that was surprising, but it was coming for sure.

Kudrat (Host): Spend ten minutes on Reddit or X and you'll see different reactions from consumers on devaluations.

Some people say the “era of freebies” is over and that banks were always going to pull back.

Others are more frustrated — especially those who recently signed up for cards like the Amex Platinum Travel or the Airtel Axis, only to see them cut key benefits within weeks.

Kartik, the consumer we started the episode with, says that banks are now clearly prioritising customers with higher spending capacity.

Kartik: I would say it is still quite easy for those who have a high net worth, but I think for all of those who don't, it is now getting difficult to get into the game and get the real stuff out of there as before, as compared to before.

Kudrat (Host): Kartik’s point hits hard.

When the best benefits start needing higher spends, it really does feel like the game is shifting towards people who already spend more.

Raj from MyMoneyMantra doesn’t quite see it the same way, though. He says banks still want customers at different spending levels.

The bigger change is that the old style of collecting multiple high-reward cards and trying to get maximum value out of a modest annual spend is becoming tougher.

He believes the people who’ll continue to do well are the ones who adapt quickly, and not just the ones with the highest spends.

And, that brings us to the practical question.

What should regular cardholders do now?

Raj: First of all, I know the feeling. But anyway, the advice that I would give, for whatever it's worth, is actually don't chase every new card. And don't make decisions based only on what worked two years ago for you or three years ago for you. Look at yourself in today's time and age, and see where you are, and then how does that align to a new card or benefits that a new card is offering.

Essentially, review your cards annually, what you hold and how you're spending. Ask yourself, "Am I actually using the benefits? Does the annual fee still make sense? Which card best aligns with my spending patterns today?"

Now, the best strategy is no longer collecting the maximum number of cards. It's owning a small portfolio where each card has a clear purpose, whether that's travel, shopping, fuel, or just everyday spending.

So ultimately, the rewards should be a bonus for spending you would have done anyway, and not the reason you spend.

You're not supposed to spend because you're trying to collect cards. They come to you, by the way, and your analysis of your spend pattern should be so, so, so smart that it best aligns to maximise benefits from any rewards that may be on offer. And that's the mindset that helps you stay ahead regardless of how products evolve. Your evolution has to be at a faster pace than the product, spoken lightly.

Outro: That's all for today. You just heard The Signal Brief. We don't do hot takes. Instead, we bring you deep dives into the how and why of consumer trends. The Core produces The Signal Brief. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts.

To check out the rest of our work, go to www.thecore.in.

If you have feedback, we'd love to hear from you. Write to us at feedback@thecore.in or you can write to me personally at kudrat@thecore.in.

Thank you for listening.