Axis Bank Issuing Cancellation Notices for Using Personal Credit Cards for Business Expenses

[TechnoFino]

Dear TFC members,

I would like to inform you that Axis Bank has begun sending commercial use notifications to their HNI cardholders as well. As you may already know, Axis Bank has a history of cancelling their customers' cashback cards such as Axis Ace and Axis Flipkart Card if they are used for business purposes.

Recently, Axis Bank has sent suspected commercial use notifications to their HNI cardholders such as Axis Magnus, Axis Reserve, etc. Unfortunately, I have also received a notification from Axis Bank and they are requesting spending justification within the next seven working days.

In case a customer is unable to justify their spending as personal, the bank will close all their credit cards.
During that time frame (Dec 2022 and Jan 2023), all of my spending was personal. I am currently in the process of submitting all the necessary documents to Axis Bank for spending justification.
The primary reason for this post is to advise our members that even if you are using a high-end credit card from a bank, they may still flag your transactions if they are related to business expenses.
If you intend to charge anything other than personal expenses to your personal credit card, please exercise caution.

Edit:- many people are asking for subject line of the email, Here it is- "Commercial Usage on your Axis Bank Credit Card Accounts"

Update - Axis Bank has already sent notifications to more than 200 accounts on March 4, 2023. Now they have sent such a cancellation notice to more than 500 credit card accounts yesterday. and they are also filtering more accounts. (S.N.)

 

[AllSeeker]

Also there are other pointers. A bank can quite easily get your income levels from several sources. If your credit card bill forms a significant part of your income, then its a red flag. I personally know a person who had his Amex Platinum cancelled which had a million MR points.

 

[arg]

How do we justify BharatNXt transactions? I used it to make payments to bank accounts to suppliers. And it will definitely be companies name on invoice.

 

[ChurningNoob]

How do we justify BharatNXt transactions? I used it to make payments to bank accounts to suppliers. And it will definitely be companies name on invoice.

That is exactly why Axis sent out this notification. You cannot use personal card for business expenses.

 

[Rocky Bhai]

How do we provide invoice for wallet loading?🤔

 

[moonsmart]

Other banks need to do this too. I know for sure that every single electronics goods shop is abusing this, they have dozens of CC's and they take cash payments from customers but swipe their own cc to avail company/merchant discounts and nocost emi discounts in 90 days. All in all, on single transaction these guys are gaining between 5-25% easily. And this is above their legit profit margins.

This is not sustainable. This will ruin the credit card game for end users like us.

Yeah, I knw one such consumer electronics and mobile shop owner who told me that he has 33 cc (including some on the name of his family) and many of the people employed in his shop use their own cards to give the customers a discount.

 

[vaibhav111]

does loading a wallet using credit card and transferring that money from wallet to bank considered as a business transaction/fraud?

have the banks specifically mentioned that this is not allowed?

can the banks cancel cards for card-wallet-bank transactions?

duh... you are paying additional charges so the bank already know and won't close cause the money rotater will do 50-1 lakhs on magnus and since magnus and reserve are in question spending of the admin will quite high and personal expense always have invoice so it recommends if doing money rotation stop now or else who knows.

 

[hariselio]

Ha, this may be the reason why they did not provide any reward points for the transactions happened in March? I made rent, school fees and income tax payment for on March 1st, only for school fees they given me reward points so far.

Obviously income tax payment is part of my self employment, but just for one time yearly payment, we cannot opt for business credit card right

 

[Krishna1905]

It must be exceedingly difficult to justify every transaction, in my opinion.

 

[dileep]

BharTnxt u mean?

Ya sry bharatnxt I mean

 

[moonsmart]

It must be exceedingly difficult to justify every transaction, in my opinion.

well for most online payments, its just annoying and time-consuming to fetch invoice for each transaction. For offline ones, its might be difficult.

 

[Indian]

bank will ask when they face loss otherwise they don’t bother and most of the bank knows this tricks. Every day millions of transaction happened both debit and credit cards, they monitor reward earning and redemption.

 

[dileep]

bank will ask when they face loss otherwise they don’t bother and most of the bank knows this tricks. Every day millions of transaction happened both debit and credit cards, they monitor reward earning and redemption.

This happens when cc user did same type of transactions evey time consistently that's the redflag if one used his cc for all type of payments then no issues

 

[R!ppEr]

@TechnoFino or anyone else who got this notification share the mail subject? I bulk delete bank mails and might have deleted it without checking

 

[panchabhut]

ICICI has also done similar actions in some cases.

 

[rdargar]

Is paying of Income Tax for self employed person a business transaction or personal expense ( IT is paid each month 1L (Adv Tax))

 

[thanix]

Simple, you can easily determine our income through CIBIL. A few days ago, a buddy of mine who works for HDFC provided my CIBIL from their system. I was startled to find many facts, including my yearly salary and other details.

How is the salary details reported to CIBIL?

 

[TheMentalist]

How do we provide invoice for wallet loading?🤔

invoice or evidence is what they asked.. so a simple screenshot of transaction proof in your name will also suffice

Is paying of Income Tax for self employed person a business transaction or personal expense ( IT is paid each month 1L (Adv Tax))

Income Tax is personal, Corporate tax/GST is business

 

[vysakh]

Simple, you can easily determine our income through CIBIL. A few days ago, a buddy of mine who works for HDFC provided my CIBIL from their system. I was startled to find many facts, including my yearly salary and other details.

Banks have the cardholder's PAN and ITR. That's good enough to get an idea of the customer's income and all they need to do is to see if the total expenses is above that. Merely crossing it doesn't mean it has to be a business expense, which is why the bank has asked for clarification.

I think this is a good move and all banks should do this in some form or the other.

 

[AsB]

Simple, you can easily determine our income through CIBIL. A few days ago, a buddy of mine who works for HDFC provided my CIBIL from their system. I was startled to find many facts, including my yearly salary and other details.

This is not a correct information.
My CIBIL report shows my income as Credit Card. Only God knows what that means.
In some other cases, the Annual Income in their CIBIL report shows Annual Income in Crores.

 

[Rocky Bhai]

Yeah, I knw one such consumer electronics and mobile shop owner who told me that he has 33 cc (including some on the name of his family) and many of the people employed in his shop use their own cards to give the customers a discount.

Yeah but only once per card per month Is allowed