Air India is preparing to launch a new co-brand credit card. But that is not all; they also use this time to tweak the existing cards’ features. While SBICards and IDFC First Bank have tweaked the features on their Club Vistara cards, SBI Cards is also tweaking its Air India co-brand cards.
Air India SBI co-brand cards to cut earnings on Air India
Air India’s SBI co-brand partnership dates back to 2013 or so. The Signature Card offers 10 points per INR 100 spent on Air India, and the Platinum Card offers 5 points per INR 100. However, both cards offer 3x the points on tickets booked for the card member. Although this feature made the card very lucrative, it hardly ever flew because people rarely used to get their 3X points.
Anyhow, Air India SBI Credit Cards is killing the feature for good. SBI Cards has notified the customers of their co-brand cards’ (Signature Variant) with Air India,
With effect from 31 Mar’25, the accelerated reward benefit of 30 Reward Points per Rs 100 spent by the Primary Cardholder on purchase of Air India tickets for himself / herself, via Air India website or Mobile App, will be revised to 10 Reward Points.
All the other benefits applicable on the card remain unchanged.
A similar notice went out to the other card (Platinum), informing them about the cut from 15 Reward Points to 5 Reward Points, effective March 31, 2025.
I know this will be considered a devaluation, but it is just lowering hopes to bring them in line with reality. The only people who might be affected are the high rollers on Air India who used their cards to book tickets.
Bottomline
Air India SBI Credit Cards will reduce the points earned by booking Air India tickets on the card, effective March 31, 2025. The airline co-brand used to offer 3X the usual Air India points for booking tickets for yourself, but now, like the rest of them, it will just be 1X.
What do you think of move from Air India and SBI Cards?
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This makes this card effectively useless for almost all purposes as Atlas is already giving 10% miles with better flexibility to use those miles instead of being locked to the poor redemption system and value of AI points for A* bookings along with getting rid of SBI Cards unique policy of reversing points for ANY discounted purchase which uses SBI offers, and the worst part is that reversal can happen anytime, upto 8 months after the fact. Good riddance, hopefully the new lineup of cards brings something better.
Hopeless CARD.. Even those 20X Reward Points are never credited and All Time is Wasted With Folow UP… Only Mr Gaurav Sharma helped me once in While… Now that they have reduced POINTs… There is No POINT using the same CARD….