CIMB Renews 50% Cashback on Flights Campaign for 2026

CIMB has officially renewed its Up to 50% Cashback on Flights campaign, with the latest round now running from 1 April 2026 until 30 September 2026.

At first glance, this looks like a straightforward continuation of the previous promo, especially since the headline remains flashy enough to grab attention immediately. Up to 50% off flights across all airlines is, after all, the sort of line that gets people clicking before they start reading.

But once you actually go through the Terms and Conditions, it becomes very obvious that this is not a simple airline discount, nor is it a carefree swipe-and-save type of campaign. In true CIMB fashion, the proposition is compelling, but the mechanics underneath are doing a lot of heavy lifting.

First, you must make an eligible direct airline transaction of at least RM1,000. Then, separately, you must also qualify either through Quarterly Average Balance in CIMB CASA or through quarterly cumulative eligible foreign spend.

Click here for Full T&C.

How the 2026 CIMB Flights Campaign Works

The renewed campaign is open to principal cardholders of the following cards:

• CIMB Preferred Visa Infinite

• CIMB Preferred Visa Infinite-i

• CIMB Travel World Elite

• CIMB Travel World

To qualify, cardholders must make a direct flight booking of at least RM1,000 with an eligible airline and then meet one of the two qualifying routes below within the same campaign quarter.

As a stark reminder, you should be using your CIMB Travel World Elite and CIMB Travel World Mastercard for this promotion, to ensure you earn 10X Bonus Points on these flight transactions.

Under no circumstances whatsoever should you be using the CIMB Preferred Visa Infinite, unless you do not wield the CIMB Travel credit cards.

2026 CIMB Up to 50% Cashback on Flights Campaign

This immediately tells us two things.

First, the campaign is now more accessible at the entry level because the minimum flight transaction has dropped to RM1,000.

Secondly, the promo is still very much designed around affluent behavior, either through meaningful overseas spend or meaningful cash parked inside CIMB.

What Counts as an Eligible Flight Transaction?

CIMB defines eligible flight transactions as transactions made directly with airlines and billed under the relevant airline merchant category codes. That means direct bookings are the key phrase here.

If you book through a travel agency, online travel agency, or any booking platform or aggregator, that transaction does not count as an eligible flight transaction for this campaign. So if you were planning to run your airfare through Trip.com, Expedia, Traveloka, or similar platforms, forget it. This campaign is clearly designed to reward direct airline spend only.

CIMB is also continuing with the broader all-airlines positioning that it adopted previously. So unlike the very early version of the old campaign which focused on a narrower airline list, the renewed version still covers airline transactions more broadly, provided they are charged directly under the correct airline merchant category codes.

The Catch That Actually Matters

This is the section most people should be paying attention to, because this is where CIMB’s marketing line and CIMB’s actual mechanics start drifting apart.

First, cashback is not awarded on every eligible ticket you buy. It is awarded on the highest eligible flight transaction performed in each campaign quarter. That is a huge distinction. If you buy three separate flight tickets in one quarter, CIMB is not going to happily shower cashback across all three. It is looking at your highest qualifying one.

Second, each tier has a hard cashback cap. So even if you hit the 50% tier, your cashback is capped at RM2,000 per campaign quarter. In practical terms, the full 50% math works neatly only up to a RM4,000 flight transaction. Spend more than that, and the headline percentage starts becoming less relevant.

Third, qualifying through foreign spend is stricter than some readers might assume. The T&C specifically refers to quarterly cumulative eligible foreign spend in each campaign quarter. So this is not one long relaxed runway where you casually accumulate spend across the whole campaign and hope for the best. The targets reset by quarter.

And fourth, foreign spend only counts if the transaction is actually performed in a foreign currency. If the purchase gets converted into Ringgit Malaysia via Dynamic Currency Conversion at the point of sale, CIMB treats it as a local transaction. That means one lazy click on a foreign website that says “Pay in MYR for convenience” can quietly kill your progress toward the foreign spend threshold. It would be peak Malaysian tragedy to lose a cashback promo because of a convenience button.

On top of that, CIMB excludes all the usual suspects from eligible foreign spend, including local currency transactions, fees and charges, quasi cash, cash advances, and cancelled or refunded transactions. So this is very much real overseas spending, not creative accounting.

Cashback Pool and Fulfilment

As generous as this promo may sound, the cashback pool is not unlimited.

For the 2026 campaign, CIMB has allocated a total cashback pool of RM1,000,000. Each campaign quarter has a total pool of RM500,000, and this is effectively split between two routes. One pool is tied to the Quarterly Average Balance route, while the other is tied to the eligible foreign spend route.

This also means cashback is not simply guaranteed just because you crossed the minimum thresholds.

If you qualify through the CASA route, CIMB awards cashback in descending order of the highest Quarterly Average Balance in that campaign quarter until the relevant pool is exhausted. If you qualify through the foreign spend route, CIMB awards cashback in descending order of the highest quarterly cumulative eligible foreign spend until that pool is exhausted.

So yes, there is a ranking element involved here. This is important because some people will read “meet the criteria” and assume the cashback is automatic. It is not that simple.

If you do receive cashback, it will be credited within two months from the end of the respective campaign quarter. As usual, only the principal cardholder receives the cashback, although CIMB does allow spending across multiple eligible cards under the same account, including supplementary cards, to be consolidated for qualification purposes.

What Has Changed Versus the Previous Promotion?

This is where things get interesting, because the renewed campaign is not merely a carbon copy of the previous one.

The first obvious improvement is the lower minimum flight transaction. The previous promo required a minimum of RM1,500 on flights, whereas the renewed campaign now lowers that threshold to RM1,000. That is a positive move, and it makes the promo relevant to a wider range of tickets, including shorter regional routes.

The second major change is the introduction of a new 20% tier. Previously, the campaign effectively began at 30%. Now, cardholders who hit RM10,000 in quarterly eligible foreign spend or maintain RM50,000 in Quarterly Average Balance can still get 20% cashback on their highest eligible flight transaction, capped at RM250 per quarter. This is clearly CIMB’s attempt to widen the funnel.

The third difference is that the renewed campaign is shorter. The previous campaign ran from 1 July 2025 until 31 March 2026, while the latest round only runs from 1 April 2026 until 30 September 2026. In other words, readers now have a six-month window rather than a longer multi-quarter stretch.

The fourth change is where the campaign becomes noticeably stricter. Under the previous promo, the foreign spend language was framed much more loosely around cumulative spend throughout the campaign period. In the renewed version, CIMB has tightened this to quarterly cumulative eligible foreign spend in each campaign quarter. That is a very meaningful shift. Hitting RM60,000 over a long campaign horizon is one thing. Hitting RM60,000 inside a single quarter is a far more aggressive ask.

The fifth difference is the cashback pool. Based on the previous campaign materials, CIMB appears to have materially enlarged the pool this time around. The earlier version was operating with a much smaller quarterly and overall allocation, whereas the renewed campaign now comes with RM500,000 per quarter and RM1,000,000 in total. So while the qualification mechanics are tougher in some respects, the actual funding behind the campaign is also more substantial.

My Thoughts

I still think this is one of the more compelling flight-related promotions in Malaysia, especially if you are already sitting inside the CIMB ecosystem.

In fact, if you are already using the CIMB Travel World Elite for overseas spend, this renewed campaign still makes the card more attractive. Not only are you earning Bonus Points from your usual spending strategy, but you now stand to claw back a meaningful chunk of your direct airline booking in cashback as well. That is a pretty powerful double dip, especially for readers who were already going to book airfare anyway.

But let’s also be realistic. This is not a casual promo for the average reader who just wants to swipe once and feel good about life. CIMB has made the structure more accessible at the bottom end, but it has also made the foreign spend route much harsher at the top end by forcing the thresholds into quarterly measurement.

So while the 20% and 30% tiers may now be more realistic for a broader audience, the 40% and 50% tiers remain heavily tilted toward people with serious overseas spend or sizeable balances parked with CIMB.

And frankly, that is probably the whole point.

Final Thoughts

CIMB has renewed its Up to 50% Cashback on Flights campaign for 2026, and on balance, I would still call this a strong promo, but only if you understand what the bank is actually asking you to do.

The lower RM1,000 entry point is welcome. The new 20% tier is useful. The larger cashback pool is also a positive development. But none of this changes the fact that the campaign is now more structured, more quarter-driven, and more conditional than the headline suggests.

Most importantly, this is a two-step campaign. You must make an eligible direct airline booking, and you must also qualify separately via either Quarterly Average Balance or quarterly cumulative eligible foreign spend. The “or” only lives inside the second leg of the mechanic. It does not replace the need for the flight booking itself.

So yes, the promo is real. The value can be meaningful. But this is classic CIMB. The banner gets you excited, the Terms and Conditions remind you that nothing in life comes easy, and somewhere in the background there is probably a spreadsheet waiting to be opened.

If you are already a CIMB Travel World Elite or Preferred Visa Infinite cardholder with meaningful overseas spend, this is absolutely worth looking at. Just do yourself a favor and read the fine print before you start mentally spending that cashback.

PS: Any feedback on these AI-generated infographics is much appreciated. Send me an email if you have ideas :)