Axis Bank Devalued: Good news or bad news?
News
by
Wisor
Overnight on September 23, 2026, Axis Bank updated its Travel EDGE transfer partner table. Accor Live Limitless is back, five months after being removed in April. Qatar Airways has returned too. Cathay Pacific, Hilton Honors, and Lufthansa Miles & More have all joined for the first time. On the surface, this reads like Axis walking back its own devaluation. It isn't. The partner list is the least important part of what actually changed.
What actually happened
Axis restructured its transfer partner table into two groups, and moved three heavily used partners into the more restrictive one.
Air India Maharaja Club, Air France/KLM Flying Blue, and Qantas Frequent Flyer all moved from Group B to Group A. Their conversion ratios didn't change at all. What changed is that Group A now carries a dramatically smaller annual transfer allowance than Group B, and critically, that allowance is shared across every partner in the group, not given separately to each one.
Card | Overall Annual Cap | Group A Allowance | Group B Allowance |
|---|---|---|---|
Burgundy Private The One Metal | 15,00,000 | 3,00,000 | 12,00,000 |
Magnus for Burgundy | 10,00,000 | 2,00,000 | 8,00,000 |
Olympus | 7,50,000 | 1,50,000 | 6,00,000 |
Magnus, Reserve, Select, Privilege, Horizon, and others | 5,00,000 | 1,00,000 | 4,00,000 |
Atlas | 1,50,000 | 30,000 | 1,20,000 |
On every single card in that table, the Group A allowance is exactly one-fourth of Group B's. Air India, Flying Blue, and Qantas didn't get worse ratios, they got moved behind a door that lets a quarter as many points through per year.
What this actually costs an Air India transfer, in real numbers
Since the ratio itself is unchanged, the impact only shows up when you calculate the actual maximum you can move in a year now versus before.
Card | Ratio to Air India | Max Maharaja Points Before | Max Maharaja Points Now |
|---|---|---|---|
Atlas | 1 EDGE Mile : 2 Maharaja Points | 2,40,000 | 60,000 |
Reserve, Magnus | 5 EDGE Points : 2 Maharaja Points | 1,60,000 | 40,000 |
Olympus | 1 EDGE Mile : 4 Maharaja Points | 24,00,000 | 6,00,000 |
An Atlas holder who could previously convert enough EDGE Miles for 2,40,000 Air India Maharaja Points in a year is now capped at 60,000, a 75% cut, without a single ratio anywhere in the terms actually changing. And that 30,000 EDGE Mile Group A allowance isn't just for Air India, it's shared with Flying Blue, Qantas, Accor, and Cathay Pacific combined. Use some of it on one partner and there's proportionally less left for the others.
Accor's "return" comes at a real cost too
Accor Live Limitless is back after five months away, but not at its old rate. Atlas takes the sharpest hit: the ratio flips from 1 EDGE Mile earning 2 ALL points to needing 2 EDGE Miles for 1 ALL point, a 75% reduction in points received for the same number of miles transferred.
Card | Accor Ratio Until April | Accor Ratio Now |
|---|---|---|
Burgundy Private The One Metal | 5:4 | 5:4 (unchanged) |
Magnus for Burgundy | 5:4 | 5:2 |
Reserve, Magnus | 5:2 | 5:1 |
Select, Privilege | 10:1 | 10:1 (unchanged) |
Olympus | 1:4 | 1:2 |
Atlas | 1:2 | 2:1 |
Horizon | 1:1 | 2:1 |
Only Burgundy Private The One Metal comes through this untouched, both on ratio and on the new group structure, it stays at 5:4 to every partner in the table, Accor included.
The new partners, and the one that's gone
Cathay Pacific Asia Miles joins in Group A, at the same reduced ratios as British Airways, Finnair, and Qatar Airways (Atlas 2:1, Reserve/Magnus 5:1, Olympus 1:2). Hilton Honors and Lufthansa Miles & More join in the more generous Group B, Atlas transfers to Hilton at 1:2 and to Miles & More at 1:1, though Miles & More carries its own separate annual limit of 2,00,000 miles with a 3,000-mile minimum per transfer.
Club ITC, previously in Group B, has been removed from the transfer list entirely.
Why the "partners returning" framing is misleading
Reported as a headline, "Accor and Qatar Airways are back" sounds like Axis reversing course on its April devaluation. Measured in what a cardholder can actually redeem in a year, it's a further tightening dressed up as a restoration. The partners are back. The amount of value you can actually move to them in a calendar year is a fraction of what it was in March, before any of this year's changes started.
What to actually check before your next transfer
Check which group your target partner sits in now, not just whether the ratio looks familiar, since the ratio alone no longer tells you what you can actually transfer this year.
Remember the Group A allowance is shared, if you've already moved points to Flying Blue or Qantas this year, that eats into what's left for Air India or Accor under the same card.
Confirm your current balance against the cap on Travel EDGE directly before transferring, Axis's terms don't clarify whether transfers made earlier this year, while these partners sat in Group B, count against the new Group A allowance.
This is the fourth time in under a year that Axis has restructured this programme, and each round has made it harder to know what your points are actually worth without checking the fine print the same week it changes. That's exactly the kind of shift Wisor is built to track and flag against your specific cards, so a headline that sounds like good news doesn't quietly turn out to be another cut once you run the actual numbers.
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This blog was written with the help of Wisor, India's First credit card expert
