India’s travel and tourism industry has been doing well in recent years. Regular family vacations have become a common financial goal for many individuals. These include leisure vacations, religious tourism, medical tourism, combining work travel with taking some time off with family, etc. Seeing the demand for travel and tourism, some banks have launched travel-centric credit cards. The Axis Atlas Credit Card is one of them.
The card has features like accelerated reward points for travel-related spending like flight and hotel bookings, airport lounge access, transfer of reward points to frequent flyer programs (FFPs) and hotel loyalty programs, etc. Let us look at the card features and benefits, reward points earning and redemption, eligibility criteria, fees, etc.
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Features and benefits
The Axis Bank Atlas Credit Card provides 2 EdgeMiles or EMs (loyalty currency of the card) for every Rs. 100 spent. For travel related spends, the card offers accelerated rewards of 5 EdgeMiles (EMs) for every Rs. 100 spent. The travel-related spends include booking flights, hotel accommodation, and transactions on the Axis Bank Travel Edge portal. The accelerated reward points are applicable for flights booked directly on the airline-owned websites, airline counters, airline helpline numbers, etc. The merchant category codes (MCC) include 3,000 to 3,350 and 4,511.
Similarly, for hotel spends, the accelerated reward points are applicable for direct purchases made at hotel-owned websites and hotel counters. The MCC codes include 3,501 to 3,838 and 7,011.
Welcome benefit
The card offers a welcome benefit of 2,500 EMs on payment of the Rs. 5,000 + taxes joining fee. The EMs are awarded on doing the first transaction within 37 days from card issuance. You will be able to see the EMs in your miles account within 7 days from the transaction date.
Tiers and their benefits
Cardholders get certain benefits based on their tier. All cardholders start as silver members. Based on the amount spent in a card anniversary year, they can get upgraded to gold or platinum tier. On spending Rs. 7.5 lakhs in a card anniversary year, the cardholder gets upgraded from silver tier to gold tier. When the annual spends cross Rs. 15 lakhs, the cardholder gets upgraded from gold to platinum tier.
A member’s tier will be evaluated at the start of every anniversary year based on the previous year’s spends. Based on their tier, the cardholder gets the following benefits.
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Milestone benefit
Apart from the regular spend-based EMs, the card offers additional EMs based on achieving certain spend-based milestones in a card anniversary year as follows.
Thus, a cardholder can get up to 10,000 Edge Miles by spending up to Rs. 15 lakhs in a card anniversary year.
Exclusions
The cardholders will not earn any regular or accelerated Edge Miles for spends in the following categories.
The spends done on the above categories will be excluded for the cardholder’s tier evaluation.
Reward points redemption
The value of one EdgeMile (EM) is Rs. 1. However, the EMs cannot be encashed. Axis Bank has tied up with various domestic and international loyalty program partners across airlines and hotels. Atlas credit cardholders can transfer the Edge Miles to these various partners. The transfer ratio is 1 Edge Mile = 2 Partner Points (except for Marriott Bonvoy, where 2 Edge Miles = 1 Partner Point).
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A cardholder can transfer a total of 1,50,000 Edge Miles per customer ID to various miles transfer partners in a calendar year. The miles transfer partners are divided into two groups as follows.
Two groups
A cardholder can transfer a maximum of 30,000 Edge Miles per customer ID cumulatively to partners in Group A in a calendar year. Similarly, a cardholder can transfer a maximum of 1,20,000 Edge Miles per customer ID cumulatively to partners in Group B in a calendar year.
Thus, with Axis Bank Atlas Credit Card, customers have several options to transfer their Edge Miles to various airline and hotel partners. Also, the transfer ratio of 1 Edge Mile = 2 Partner Points (except for Marriott Bonvoy) offers good value for each Edge Mile.
Eligibility criteria and fees
A salaried person should have a net annual income of Rs. 12 lakhs and above to be eligible for the Atlas Credit Card. A self-employed person should have a net annual income of Rs. 15 lakhs and above. The joining fee is Rs. 5,000 + GST, and the annual fee is Rs. 5,000 + GST.
Should you go for the Axis Bank Atlas Credit Card?
The cardholder can transfer the Edge Miles to a partner of choice and book flight tickets and/or hotel accommodation for their family vacation. Some other travel-centric credit cards include the American Express Platinum Travel Credit Card, Marriott Bonvoy HDFC Bank Credit Card, etc.
Your choice of credit card in the travel segment will depend on the eligibility criteria, annual fees, card acceptance, opportunities to earn and redeem reward points, the value per point, etc.
The Axis Bank Atlas Credit Card ticks in most of the above boxes. It is one of the best travel-centric credit cards. If you are a travel freak, you may consider applying for the Axis Bank Atlas Credit Card.
