Checked 20 August 2026 against SBI Card's revision notice, Axis Bank's revised Airtel card terms and HDFC Bank's Swiggy card terms and conditions document, all linked below.

Between 1 and 21 April 2026, three of the cashback cards on this site were revised. They are usually written up as one story about "cashback devaluation". They are not one story. The three issuers reduced the same benefit in three structurally different ways, and only one of them is visible on a statement as a smaller number in a familiar place.

Nothing here is a recommendation to hold or drop a card. The point is narrower: to state what each notice says, and to be clear about which claims we have read in a primary document and which we have not.

What changed, in one table

CardEffectiveWhat the issuer changed
Cashback SBI Card1 April 2026Total cashback capped at ₹4,000 a statement cycle, split ₹2,000 online and ₹2,000 offline. Gaming, tolls and government spends excluded.
Airtel Axis Bank Credit Card12 April 2026Accelerated caps replaced with a multiple of the base cashback you earn that month. Four domestic lounge visits withdrawn. Partner list changed and moved to wallet credit.
Swiggy HDFC Bank Credit Card21 April 2026A transaction must be ₹249 or more to earn the 10% rate.

One date worth getting right

Secondary coverage widely reports the Swiggy ₹249 rule as effective 17 April 2026. HDFC Bank's own terms document says otherwise:

W.e.f. from 21st April 2026, In order to earn 10% Cashback on eligible transactions using Swiggy HDFC Bank Credit Card, the cardholder should make a minimum transaction of Rs. 249 using the card.

17 April is the date attached to the Cleartrip benefit in the same document — Cleartrip spends earn the 5% rate "for statement starting 17th April 2026", and the instant-discount offer runs from that date. Two changes, two dates, one document. We use 21 April for the ₹249 rule because that is the date in the terms that govern it.

SBI: a ceiling where there used to be headroom

SBI Card's notice is the most straightforward of the three, and the easiest to reason about.

Spend typeRateMaximum a statement cycle
Online5%₹2,000
Offline (POS at merchant outlets)1%₹2,000
Total—₹4,000

The sub-caps matter more than the total. ₹2,000 at 5% is reached at ₹40,000 of eligible online spend in a cycle; past that the online rate is zero, and the ₹2,000 of unused offline headroom cannot absorb it, because it is a separate bucket earning 1%.

The notice also adds three exclusion categories on top of the existing list, identified by merchant category code:

CategoryMCCs
Digital gaming platforms and merchants7993, 7994, 5816
Tolls4784
Government-related transactions9222, 9311, 9402

These sit alongside exclusions the card already carried — utility, insurance, fuel, rent, wallet, school and educational services, jewellery and railways, plus merchant EMI and Flexipay EMI. SBI Card notes that the codes themselves are set by the networks and can change without cardholder intimation, which is worth reading twice: the exclusion is defined by a code the merchant submits, not by what you believe you bought.

Axis: the cap is now a function of your other spending

The Airtel Axis change is the one most likely to be misread, because the headline rates did not move. You still earn 25% on Airtel mobile, broadband and DTH paid through the Airtel Thanks app, and 10% on other utilities paid the same way.

What changed is the cap. It used to be a flat ₹250 per accelerated category. From 12 April 2026:

  • 25% category: capped at twice the base (1%) cashback earned in the same statement month
  • 10% category: capped at one times the base cashback earned in the same statement month

So the accelerated rates no longer have a fixed value. They have a value determined by how much ordinary 1% spending goes through the card in the same month. A cardholder who uses this card only for Airtel bills — which is what a co-branded telco card invites you to do — earns very little base cashback, and therefore caps out almost immediately.

Axis Bank's own illustration makes the mechanism explicit:

SpendRateBenefit
Electronics ₹25,0001% base₹250
Airtel mobile bill ₹2,50025%₹500 (2 × base)
Airtel other utility ₹4,00010%₹250 (1 × base)
Zomato, Blinkit, District Movies (₹2,000 each)10% partner₹600 to partner wallets

The ₹500 and ₹250 in that table are not produced by the Airtel spends. They are produced by the ₹25,000 of electronics. Remove the electronics and the Airtel cashback goes with it.

Two further changes in the same notice:

  • The four complimentary domestic lounge visits are discontinued.
  • The 10% benefit on Swiggy, Zomato and BigBasket becomes a 10% value back on Zomato, Blinkit and District Movies, paid via Ecom as the payment mode. This is credited to the respective partner's wallet, not as Axis cashback, capped at ₹200 per partner per month, and requires a minimum order value of ₹499 on Zomato and Blinkit. Axis Bank states that its own cashback does not apply to this category at all.

Wallet credit at one merchant is not the same asset as a statement credit. It is worth what you would have spent at that merchant anyway, and nothing otherwise.

Because the card credits cashback on a 60-day cycle, Axis Bank notes the revised capping first appears in statements generated on or after 12 June 2026.

HDFC: a floor under the transaction, not a ceiling over the month

The Swiggy card's tier caps were already in place and did not change: ₹1,500 a billing cycle on the 10% Swiggy tier, ₹1,500 on the 5% online tier, and ₹500 on the 1% tier.

The new condition is at the other end. Since 21 April 2026, a transaction must be ₹249 or more to earn the 10% rate. The ₹100 minimum for the 5% and 1% tiers is unchanged.

This is a targeted cut. It removes accelerated earning from exactly the transactions a food-delivery card generates most of — the single coffee, the ₹180 Instamart top-up — while leaving the headline rate and the cap untouched, so the card's marketing does not have to change.

The document also confirms terms our catalogue previously listed as unverified:

  • Renewal fee waived on ₹2,00,000 of eligible annual spend.
  • The 10% tier excludes Swiggy Money wallet loads, Swiggy Liquor and Swiggy Minis.
  • No cashback accrues on prepaid cards, gift cards, wallets, rent, government spends, fuel, jewellery, SmartPay or the SmartBuy portal.
  • Cleartrip: 20% instant discount on hotel bookings and 6.35% on flight bookings, described as a limited-period offer from 17 April 2026.

Still ahead: Axis Bank Cashback Credit Card, 28 August 2026

Axis Bank's product page for the Cashback Credit Card carries a notice that its terms and conditions will be updated with effect from 28 August 2026. At the time of checking, the notice states the date without publishing the revised terms.

That is eight days away, and this is a different card from the nine covered in Axis Bank's 28 August 2026 card revision, read card by card — that piece deals with MYZONE, SELECT, PRIVILEGE, NEO, MAGNUS, OLYMPUS, RESERVE and PRIMUS, none of which is the Cashback card. We have flagged the date on the card's entry and will report the contents when Axis Bank publishes them, rather than infer them from the other notices. As that piece already found, the notices sharing a date do not share their contents.

A note on issuer web addresses

While re-checking sources for this piece, six of the product URLs we cite returned permanent redirects to the Reserve Bank's .bank.in domain space:

IssuerNow redirects to
Axis Bankaxis.bank.in
HDFC Bankhdfc.bank.in
ICICI Bankicici.bank.in
RBL Bankrbl.bank.in

The old addresses still resolve and redirect, so nothing is broken. It is worth knowing which domain is genuine, because a migration period is exactly when a lookalike domain is most likely to be believed. Reaching a bank by typing the address or using a saved bookmark remains safer than following a link out of a message, on any domain.

What this does not tell you

Whether any of these cards still suits a particular household depends on that household's spending, which we cannot see. Nothing above accounts for the annual fee against the reduced cap, and no figure here should be read as a projection of what you will earn.

Where a term was not in a primary document we could read, we have said so rather than filled the gap. The Axis Cashback card's 28 August terms are the open item.

Sources, all checked 20 August 2026: