Your Credit Card Points Are Worth Thousands. They Are Expiring, and Your Bank Is Not Going to Tell You
Editorial Team · 2026-08-16
Your Credit Card Points Are Worth Thousands. They Are Expiring, and Your Bank Is Not Going to Tell You
TLDR: Reward points on Indian credit cards expire anywhere from 12 months to never, depending on the bank, and most issuers do not proactively warn you before it happens. When points lapse, the liability the bank was carrying against them turns into pure profit, so there is no real incentive to remind you. Check your statement, redeem the oldest points first, and see the full bankwise validity and fee table below.
Indian cardholders let an estimated ₹10,000 crore worth of reward points expire unused every year. That number is not a bank's problem. It is yours. You already earned those points. They were the deal you signed up for when you swiped the card. Letting them expire is the closest thing to leaving cash on a table and walking away.
Here is the part that should annoy you a little more. Your points sit on the bank's books as a liability, money they owe you. The day they expire, that liability disappears and turns straight into profit. Accountants call it breakage. Your bank calls it Tuesday. So no, you are not getting a loud "your points expire in 30 days" text. You are getting a small line on page 4 of your statement, just enough for them to say they told you.
None of this makes reward points a scam. It makes them a use it or lose it asset, same as a gift card or unused annual leave, except nobody reminds you to redeem gift cards either.
Put a number on it. Say you spend ₹40,000 a month on a card earning roughly 2 points per ₹100, redeemable around 25 paise a point. That is 800 points a month, close to 9,600 a year, worth about ₹2,400. Not life changing, but it is real money you already earned through spending you were doing anyway. Now assume you are on a bank with 24 month validity and you never check the app. Every rupee you earned in your first year of holding that card is gone before your second renewal date arrives, and you never even saw it go. Do this across two or three cards in a wallet, which is normal for anyone who has been building credit for a few years, and the leak stops being trivial.
Why this is worth five minutes of your time
You do not need to become someone who obsesses over point valuations to benefit here. This is genuinely one of the lowest effort ways to extract value from a credit card, lower effort than chasing accelerated categories or timing a big purchase around a milestone bonus. You already did the spending. The points already exist. All that is left is not letting them rot.
The catch is that the rules are not standard. Validity ranges from twelve months to never, redemption fees range from zero to close to a hundred rupees a pop, and two cards from the same bank can carry different expiry rules depending on when you opened the account. A blanket "check every two years" habit will still lose you points on at least four or five issuers in the table below.
The bankwise picture
This table covers every issuer represented on ValueNinja. Validity periods and fees below are sourced from each bank's own terms and conditions or FAQ pages, current as of August 2026. A few banks genuinely conflict across their own pages depending on the card variant or when it was issued, noted where relevant.
| Bank | Points valid for | Redemption fee | Redemption options |
|---|---|---|---|
| HDFC Bank | 2 years on most cards, 3 years on Infinia and Diners Black. Lapses entirely if the card sits unused for 365 days | ₹99 + GST per redemption | SmartBuy travel, vouchers, cashback, product catalogue, InterMiles |
| SBI Card | 24 months, cut down from 36 months in June 2024. AURUM card: never expires | Not separately disclosed for standard catalogue redemption | Vouchers, products, Points+Pay, IRCTC, 30-day redemption window on voluntary closure |
| Axis Bank | 3 years, also lapses after 365 days of no rewardable transaction | ₹49 + GST for 300 to 10,000 points, ₹99 + GST above that | Vouchers, merchandise, cashback, travel, partner stores |
| ICICI Bank | No expiry, as long as your ICICI accounts are in good standing and not overdue | ₹99 + GST per redemption | Cashback, vouchers, product catalogue, InterMiles and co-brand miles |
| Kotak Mahindra Bank | 2 to 3 years depending on card, 2 is the more common figure | No single published fee, but some catalogue redemptions value a point below its stated face value | Air tickets, merchandise, mobile recharge, Kotak Rewards catalogue, PayByPoints at merchant |
| Bank of Baroda (BOBCARD) | 2 years. Eterna card: never expires | None | Cashback as statement credit, gift vouchers, merchandise |
| IDFC FIRST Bank | 24 months, effective 18 June 2026. This is a real change worth flagging: the bank marketed these points as evergreen for years and only recently moved to a fixed window | ₹99 + GST per redemption | Pay with Points at checkout, gift cards, travel, merchandise via Rewards Gallery |
| AU Small Finance Bank | 24 months | No flat fee, but gift voucher redemption values a point at 20 paise against a 25 paise base, an effective haircut | Flights, hotels, e-vouchers, merchandise via AU Rewardz |
| IndusInd Bank | 1 year from accrual, per the bank's own Indus Rewards Program terms | ₹149 + GST for cash credit redemption, ₹10 to ₹20 plus GST tiered on the Twid Pay with Rewards option | Cash credit, vouchers, InterMiles and KrisFlyer transfers, Twid pay at checkout |
| RBL Bank | 24 months | ₹99 + GST, waived on Insignia and Insignia Prime cards | Flights, hotels, vouchers, electronics, prepaid recharge |
| IDBI Bank | 3 years | ₹100 per redemption | Delight catalogue, gift cards, cashback, bus and movie tickets |
| Punjab National Bank | 3 years | None | JP Miles, movie, hotel and mobile recharge, PNB Rewardz catalogue |
| American Express | Never expire while the account stays open and in good standing, forfeited 30 days after cancellation | None | Vouchers, Pay with Points, transfers to Marriott Bonvoy and airline partners |
| YES Bank | 3 years on point-based cards. Klick and PaisaSave run pure cashback with no points to expire | ₹100 + GST | Vouchers, air miles via Club Vistara or InterMiles, YES Rewardz catalogue |
| Federal Bank | 36 months on standard cards, lifetime on the OneCard co-branded card | None on OneCard, not clearly published on standard cards | Merchandise, vouchers, cashback, Federal Rewards catalogue |
| HSBC | 3 years on Platinum and TravelOne. Premier and Cashback cards: never expire | ₹50 per request | Vouchers, airline miles, Rewards Marketplace via the app |
| Standard Chartered | 3 years, per the bank's current Beyond and Rewards card terms | ₹99 | Vouchers, cashback, airmiles via the 360 Rewards portal |
| Union Bank of India | 12 months for credit card points, tightened from 3 years effective 17 December 2022 | Not clearly published | Vouchers, air, bus and movie tickets, cashback via Union Rewardz |
| DBS Bank | 24 months | ₹99 + GST | Vouchers, flights, hotels, annual fee waiver on select cards, air miles |
A pattern worth noticing on its own: the newer or smaller a bank's card book, the more likely it is to still advertise no expiry, and the more likely that promise is to quietly tighten a couple of years later. IDFC First just did exactly that. If a card's entire pitch to you was non-expiring points, it is worth checking that promise again every year or two rather than filing it away as permanently true.
What actually moves the needle
Redeeming late costs you more than the points that expire. It also costs you the difference between what a point is worth when you cash it in calmly versus when you are staring at a countdown with three days left and grab whatever is in the catalogue. Panic redemptions are rarely the highest value ones.
A few habits fix most of this.
- Trust the statement, not your memory. That tiny "points expiring this cycle" line on page 4 is boring, but it is the one place your bank is contractually forced to tell you the truth.
- Redeem oldest points first, every time. A mediocre voucher today beats a perfect travel redemption you never got around to.
- Never let a card go dormant. Half the banks in the table above will kill your points early just for sitting idle a year. One coffee on the card every few months keeps the whole balance alive.
- Do the fee math before you redeem. ₹99 off a ₹500 voucher is a 20 percent haircut. ₹99 off a ₹5,000 redemption is a rounding error. Panic-redeeming in small batches to beat expiry can cost you more in fees than the points were worth.
If you would rather check directly, here is where the expiry information actually lives on the major apps, since it is rarely on the home screen. HDFC buries it under NetBanking, Cards, then Reward Points, or on the SmartBuy portal. SBI Card shows it in the app under Rewards, Points Summary. ICICI shows an Expiring Soon tab inside iMobile under Cards, Reward Points. Axis puts it under the Reward Points section of the Axis Mobile app, labelled Validity. Amex does not show an expiry date at all, because for most of its cards there genuinely is not one. None of this is intuitive navigation. Every bank has made this at least two taps harder to find than your points balance itself, which is on the home screen of every single one of these apps.
If a card's real redemption value keeps disappointing you, that is worth acting on beyond just redeeming faster. ValueNinja's Card Recommender ranks cards on guaranteed, not marketed, reward rates, so you can see whether a different card would actually pay you more for the same spending, points that expire on you included.
You do not need to turn reward point management into a hobby. You just need to stop treating points like they are permanent, because on every single bank in that table, they are not.