Axis Bank is blocking “non-personal spends” on Credit Cards

Axis Bank has been generous with the rewards on their credit cards, especially ramping it up over the past one and a half years and making market-leading products such as the Magnus Credit Card. However, with great power comes great responsibility, and Axis Bank is now out to weed out the bad actors who might have been gaming the system.

Per various reports since last night, Axis Bank has locked out many users from their Rewards Accounts. When logging into their EDGE Rewards account, these users will see a warning message.

It seems transactions with the following merchants have been singled out:

• Instant Mudra Technology
• BharatNXT
• Accupayd Tech Pvt Ltd
• Paypermint Pvt Ltd (dba Payabhi)
• Big Store (dba BigStore.org)
• Facebook SI
• Brainum Payments Pvt Ltd (dba Payagent)
• Spay Tech Pvt Ltd
• Vasi Gateways Pvt Ltd (dba runpaisa.com)
• Slenpay Pvt Ltd (dba slenpay.in)
• Electronic Cash and Payment Solutions (s) Pte. Ltd (dba Ecaps.in)
• Speckle Internet Solutions (dba Paymatrix.in)

If you look at these closely, many of these services can be classified into one of three sections: Payday loans, bill payments for commercial enterprises or cash transfers against credit card swipes. Those who might have put their credit card for their FB Ads account may have also gotten the notices if doing large spends.

What Axis Bank wants to reiterate for customers is that their cards are meant for their personal spending, and if they have spent on their cards for commercial expenses or manufactured spending to earn points, they will go after these customers. Axis Bank has given a 30-day notice period to these customers to collect proof that their spending was personal, not for “non-personal spend”, and send this back to the Bank to get their points unlocked again.

These suspensions have also coincided with people receiving emails from Axis Bank asking them about transactions made with certain vendors/payment gateways made during March-June 2023. The email looks as follows.