SaveSage Report: India Credit Card Rewards Shift
Analysis based on 6 articles · First reported Dec 18, 2025 · Last updated Dec 25, 2025
The report by SaveSage indicates a significant shift in consumer spending behavior in India, with credit card reward points increasingly used for travel rather than cashback. This trend suggests a growing preference for premium travel experiences and strategic financial planning among consumers, potentially boosting the travel and hospitality sectors while impacting financial institutions offering credit card rewards.
A report by SaveSage, an AI-driven credit card optimization platform, reveals that flight bookings and airline mile transfers have become the most preferred use of credit card reward points in India in 2025, surpassing cashback for the first time. Nearly one-third (32%) of all reward points redeemed by SaveSage users were for travel, totaling Rs 850 crore. This shift reflects growing consumer awareness of high-value redemptions amid rising travel costs, with strong growth in business-class seats, long-haul international flights, and luxury hotel stays. The report, based on anonymized data from over 110,000 users and 500,000 credit cards, also highlights improved overall reward efficiency to 7% in 2025 from 2.2% in 2024. Ashish Lath, Founder and CEO of SaveSage, noted that Indian consumers are increasingly treating reward points as a strategic financial tool. Data from the State Bank of India also shows a 19.6% year-on-year increase in monthly credit card spending to Rs 2.14 lakh crore in October 2025.
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