AmBank Moves Closer to Irrelevance with Another Devaluation in 2026

I’m currently travelling across Norway with my wife, so this update almost slipped under my radar. It wasn’t until a Refined Points reader pinged me on Telegram that I realised AmBank had quietly issued yet another devaluation notice.

Over the years, I’ve often been asked why Refined Points rarely covers AmBank credit cards in detail. The explanation is rather simple: AmBank’s credit cards have historically been among the worst tools in Malaysia for earning airline miles. This is true across their entire lineup, including the co-branded Enrich Visa credit cards that many assume should be competitive by default.

I've written clearly in my 2026 Airline Miles Strategy that you should NOT be holding any AmBank credit cards of any kind if you take your airline miles accrual seriously.

Before we dive deeper into that broader issue, let’s first take a look at the latest devaluation itself.

The 2026 AmBank Devaluation

Announced several days ago, this latest revision affects virtually the entire AmBank credit card portfolio. In other words, this is not a minor adjustment or targeted tweak. It is a broad, full-scale devaluation across the bank’s lineup.

Source: AmBank

Interestingly, the announcement specifically highlights changes related to conversions into Enrich Miles. That said, this isn’t particularly surprising. AmBank’s conversion rates into other frequent flyer programmes such as KrisFlyer and Asia Miles were already uncompetitive long before this update.

Starting from the top of the lineup, the AmBank SPB Metal Visa Infinite now earns a rather astonishing 0.08 Miles per Ringgit (MPR) on local spend and 0.83 MPR on overseas spend.

Let’s pause and think about that for a moment.

This is AmBank’s flagship metal credit card targeted at ultra-high-net-worth customers — individuals required to maintain at least RM2 million in Assets Under Management (AUM) with the bank. Yet despite this positioning, the earn rate is now worse than what UOB offers on some of its credit cards available to customers in the RM100,000 annual income bracket.

Simply put, it raises a rather obvious question: what exactly is AmBank thinking?

Even if we assume the decision was driven by profitability pressures, pushing your most valuable wealth clients onto a credit card that is materially weaker than mass affluent competitors is a questionable strategy at best. It genuinely feels as though little to no benchmarking against the wider Malaysian credit card market was done before implementing this change.

Moving down the ladder, both the AmBank SPB Visa Infinite and the AmBank Visa Infinite have also been hit with similar devaluations.

Perhaps the most bizarre outcome of this revision is that the AmBank SPB Visa Infinite — which requires a RM200,000 AUM commitment to qualify — now earns fewer Enrich Miles than the AmBank Enrich Visa Infinite itself.

This creates a rather comical situation. AmBank is effectively telling its wealth banking clients that committing assets to the bank and maintaining a privileged banking relationship will actually result in a worse credit card rewards proposition.

One can only imagine the awkward conversation between a relationship manager and a customer who already holds the AmBank Enrich Visa Infinite. Trying to upsell the SPB Visa Infinite becomes rather difficult when the customer can simply point out that the non-AUM credit card earns more miles without requiring any banking relationship whatsoever.

Further down the lineup, most of the remaining AmBank credit cards are largely irrelevant in the airline miles conversation, so listing each one individually does little to add value here. But for completeness, the AmBank Visa Infinite now earns around 0.4 MPR on overseas spend — roughly the same rate as the SPB Visa Infinite.

In other words, the entire ecosystem has been dragged further down the competitive ladder.

Who’s Running the Show at AmBank?

Let’s be clear about one thing. Devaluations are not unusual in the credit card industry. They are an inevitable part of the business model, especially in an environment where interchange economics and rewards liabilities constantly shift.

From a consumer perspective, most devaluations can be understood as cost adjustments. But the situation with AmBank feels slightly different.

The problem is not that the bank chose to devalue its credit cards. The problem is how these changes were implemented and the broader message they send.

After all, AmBank’s credit card lineup was already largely irrelevant in the airline miles space to begin with. Anyone still using AmBank credit cards in 2026 specifically for airline miles is likely either unaware of the alternatives available in the market or simply too loyal to the bank to consider switching.

What makes this situation particularly puzzling is the lack of alignment with the broader market.

Take the AmBank SPB Metal Visa Infinite again as an example. With a RM2 million AUM requirement, it is positioned squarely at the ultra-affluent level. Yet HSBC’s Premier Travel Mastercard already offers 1.11 MPR, and the newly launched Standard Chartered Beyond Visa Infinite Priority Private can earn up to 2.14 MPR on overseas spend.

Both of those cards come with zero annual fees under normal conditions, and both operate within wealth banking ecosystems as well.

Now compare that with AmBank’s offering.

Even at the lower end of the affluent spectrum, the situation becomes equally confusing. The AmBank Visa Infinite and AmBank SPB Visa Infinite both earn around 0.4 MPR on overseas spend, while competing cards in similar segments offer as much as 1.42 MPR on overseas transactions.

But perhaps the most baffling design decision is internal.

AmBank’s own Enrich Visa Infinite now earns 0.5 MPR on overseas spend, higher than the SPB Visa Infinite’s 0.4 MPR.

In other words, AmBank is literally telling its customers that maintaining a wealth relationship with the bank will earn them fewer points and miles than simply applying for a standalone credit card.

It is difficult to interpret this as anything other than a complete lack of coordination between the bank’s wealth management team and its credit card product team.

Final Thoughts

If you’ve been following the Malaysian credit card industry for long enough, you’ll know that banks rise and fall in cycles. Some institutions innovate, adapt, and stay relevant. Others slowly drift into the background until their products become little more than relics of a past era.

Right now, AmBank appears to be heading down the latter path.

With this latest round of devaluations, the bank is edging dangerously close to the same fate that befell Alliance Bank’s once-popular credit card ecosystem. At one point, Alliance cards were widely discussed among miles enthusiasts. Today, they barely register in serious conversations about airline miles strategy.

AmBank risks becoming the next example of how quickly relevance can disappear in this market.

What’s particularly frustrating is that this outcome feels entirely self-inflicted. Malaysia’s credit card landscape is one of the most competitive in the region, and banks that succeed are those willing to study the market, benchmark against competitors, and design products that actually make sense for their target customers.

Instead, AmBank’s recent moves suggest the opposite: decisions made in isolation, without regard for the broader ecosystem.

If there is one takeaway from this episode, it is that accountability and common sense matter. Premium credit cards are not simply pieces of metal or plastic — they are relationship anchors that influence how affluent customers interact with a bank’s entire ecosystem.

When those anchors stop making sense, customers simply walk away.

And if AmBank continues down this path, the uncomfortable truth is that the bank may soon find itself fading into irrelevance in the airline miles space — not because the market pushed it out, but because it quietly removed itself from the conversation.