CSC Small Business MoneyBack HDFC Bank
Keep₹250 a year, 5X on fuel, and a village entrepreneur's name on the front.
a year at ₹40,000 a month, after the fee
Skip the arithmetic — the board, ranked → · nothing to sign up for
What it's worth to you, after the fee
Priced on the everyday mix — 30% groceries · 10% utilities · 20% travel · 6% fuel · 34% everything else — with this card's published category rules applied. Plus milestones, minus the fee. No accelerator credit — and a business card's accelerator is usually the point. This card is not on the board, which ranks personal cards only; it is ranked against other business cards on /best/business, where the tax, GST and vendor-payment rungs ARE credited and its ₹ reads higher.
How these numbers are computed — and why the rankings show a bigger one →
Spend tiers, milestones and fee waivers included, at our house ₹/point. Portal and category multipliers can push higher — run your exact number →
Breaks even only by erasing its fee at ₹3,000 a month
At ₹3,000 a month — ₹36,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹100 gross (earn ₹100) against a fee of ₹0 — the ₹250 is waived, the spend having cleared ₹25,000 a year = ₹100 net — the first rung at or above ₹0. The ladder runs in ₹1,000 steps to ₹1,00,000 a month and ₹10,000 steps to ₹5,00,000; figures are rounded to the hundred, and the accelerator is never credited.
2 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · why it ranks #738
Why #738 The cheapest card in this lane at ₹250, sold through Common Service Centres to village entrepreneurs — and the 5X on fuel is the only leg that beats its own fee. A working micro-business card, withdrawn from sourcing.
HDFC states the rate on the product page: "Reward Points as per the product features will be credited in the form of CashPoints, which can be redeemed by the customer against their statement balance (100 Reward Points = up to ₹20)" — twenty paise a point, and the only exit the bank publishes for this card. A closed card's balance survives 30 days for products and vouchers only.
The take
This is the smallest card in HDFC's withdrawn range and the one with the clearest purpose: it was distributed through the Common Service Centre network to the village-level entrepreneurs who run India's rural digital-service kiosks, and it is priced for them — ₹250, waived at ₹25,000 of spend in a year, which is a fortnight of ordinary business turnover. The reward shape is ordinary but the fuel leg is not: 5X Reward Points on fuel, ten points per ₹200 at twenty paise apiece, which is a genuine 1% and capped at 1,000 points a month — about ₹20,000 of fuel, a plausible month for someone driving between kiosks. Four points per ₹200 online, two per ₹200 elsewhere, and 5% cashback on business essentials: electricity, telephone and internet bills, government and tax payments. That 5% has no published ceiling anywhere on the page, which on an Indian cashback card is unusual enough to treat as an omission rather than a promise. A thousand bonus points arrive at ₹90,000 of annual spend. There is no lounge access, no transfer partner and nothing that reaches an airline. HDFC has stopped sourcing it, with wording that differs from its usual marker: "The sourcing of this card has been discontinued."
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
This card reaches break-even by ERASING its fee, not by out-earning it: the waiver is the decision.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
₹250/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹250/yr
The waiver ₹25,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹2,083 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹3,000 a month — ₹36,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee, and it gets there by erasing the fee at the waiver rather than out-earning it.
At your spend
₹600 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹1,200 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹2,400 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹7,200 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹12,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
Everyday earn plus milestones, minus the fee — the same model as the value panel above, so the two cannot disagree. run your exact spend →
Your copy of this card
You hold this card.
Kept on this device, in your browser. It is never sent to us, never synced, and nothing else on the site reads it yet.
The downgrade
HDFC Bank publishes no document naming a card you can step down to, so we name none — an invented product change is a phone call you would waste. That leaves keep or cancel, and the numbers above are the whole of it.
What has changed under this card
- 23 Sep 2026 Axis EDGE brings Accor back, drops ITC, and adds Cathay, Miles & More and Hilton a program these points reach
- 15 Sep 2026 Wyndham splits its three flat free-night tiers into four a program these points reach
- 8 Sep 2026 Flying Blue splits award tickets into Light / Standard / Flex — a 25% rise for the same product a program these points reach
We price what is in force today — a change that has not happened yet is not in these numbers. the full archive for this card →
If you call to cancel
What the bank offers to keep you is the one fact this desk cannot compute. We are collecting those reports — dated, and only in aggregate — before publishing any: an offer one reader was made is not one you are owed. Called about this card? Tell us what they offered →
The desk publishes subscribable .ics feeds for the dates it knows — offer deadlines, devaluations, expiry audits. Your renewal date is not one of them: only your statement knows it.
What's good
- ₹250 joining and renewal fee — the cheapest card in HDFC's withdrawn range
- 5X Reward Points on fuel — a genuine 1%, capped at 1,000 points a month
- 5% cashback on electricity, telephone and internet bills, government and tax payments
- 4 Reward Points per ₹200 on online spends and 2 per ₹200 on everything else
- 1,000 bonus Reward Points at ₹90,000 of annual spend
- ₹250 renewal fee waived on ₹25,000 of spend in the previous year
- 1% fuel surcharge waiver on top of the 5X accrual
Watch out
- Withdrawn — HDFC states "The sourcing of this card has been discontinued" and takes no new applications
- The fees page's own FAQ says ₹500 twice; the fee block above it and the August 2026 Key Fact Statement both say ₹250
- A Reward Point is twenty paise, so the base leg is 0.2% and the online leg 0.4%
- The 5X fuel leg caps at 1,000 Reward Points a month — about ₹20,000 of fuel
- HDFC publishes NO ceiling on the 5% business-essentials cashback, which on an Indian card is an omission rather than a promise
- Rent and education payments earn nothing across HDFC's business range
- 3.5% mark-up on foreign-currency transactions
- No lounge access, no transfer partner, no airline or hotel programme
What these points actually fly
HDFC Reward Points move to Avianca LifeMiles , Air France-KLM Flying Blue , Etihad Guest , United MileagePlus , Air India Maharaja Points , AirAsia Rewards , SpiceJet SpiceClub , Accor Live Limitless (ALL) , Marriott Bonvoy , Club ITC , IHG One Rewards , Radisson Rewards and Wyndham Rewards — and those price every award dynamically. There is no published chart to quote, so we quote nothing: an estimate is not a seat.
what the cards that DO reach a chart can fly — 2,196 corridors priced →
What earns, what doesn't
1 sourced rule
The 5% business-essentials leg HDFC sells across its small-business co-brands, on the one of them whose product page prints NO ceiling for it. Sourcing stopped and existing holders keep the card, which is why the rule is written rather than dropped. Only the government row is asserted here.
- Government / tax · accelerated 5% cashback on government and tax payments — HDFC's own leg, "business essentials like electricity, telephone and internet bills, government and tax payments" — against the 2 Reward Points per ₹200 the card pays on everything else, 0.2% at ₹0.20 apiece. HDFC publishes no ceiling on this leg anywhere on the product page, where its Retailio and Pine Labs siblings fence the same 5%, and the card's own record flags that silence as worth knowing before relying on it. Rent and education earn nothing
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹25,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹250 fee. A different question from the one above — earning points and counting toward a threshold are separate rules, and issuers write them separately.
Not published. HDFC Bank states what the CSC Small Business MoneyBack HDFC Bank earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver and the milestones — the ₹25,000 bar. We won't guess it from the earn table or from a sibling card: Axis published three cards' rules on one day and all three lists differed. If you hold this card and have it in writing from the issuer, send us the document and we'll source it.
Lounge access
0 of 793 tracked doors
No lounge access. This card opens exactly 0 of 793 tracked lounge doors — board with the crowd, or find a card that doesn't →
Can you get it?
the route in — no cutoffs published
The cutoffs and the actual route in — not the "apply now" button, the door that opens.
Closed to new applications — existing cardholders keep the card; there is no way in.
You cannot. HDFC's marker on this card differs from its standard one: "The sourcing of this card has been discontinued. Existing customers of this card will continue to enjoy the benefits." It was never a walk-up product in the first place — it was distributed through the Common Service Centre network to village-level entrepreneurs, so the application route ran through CSC rather than through HDFC's own funnel.
HDFC Bank publishes no income or age cutoffs for this card. Blank means blank — we don't invent numbers to fill a grid.
no MITC row researched for this card yet · filter the board by what you can get →
What's changed for this card
8 dated changes
Devaluations and buffs that touch this card directly, its issuer, or the points and programs it earns and transfers to. Every one is dated here; the tracker carries each one's before → after and the write-up.
- 23 Sept 2026Axis EDGE brings Accor back, drops ITC, and adds Cathay, Miles & More and HiltonAccor and Marriott off the grid since 2 April 2026; Club ITC live; no Cathay, Miles & More or Hilton → Accor live at the punished rates; ITC removed; Cathay, Hilton and Miles & More live; Marriott still gone
Axis's own Travel EDGE terms, re-read 25 September 2026, already show the grid that went live on 23 September. Accor ALL is back, and not at the old Atlas 1:2: EDGE Miles convert at 2:1 (Olympus 1:2) and EDGE Rewards at 5:1, with Magnus for Burgundy at 5:2 and only Burgundy Private still at 5:4. Club ITC is off the table. Three partners are new. Cathay Asia Miles sits on that same punished grid. Hilton Honors is the ordinary one: EDGE Miles 1:2, EDGE Rewards 5:2, Burgundy 5:4. Lufthansa Miles & More is the exception on Atlas, which converts 1:1 there while every other standard airline on that card is 1:2; the EDGE Rewards side of Miles & More is the ordinary 5:2. Marriott stays removed. Qatar Privilege Club was already back. Flying Blue, Air India and Qantas moved into Group A, which is the capped group. The Axis Rewards credit card's Amex network is advertised as joining-fee and annual-fee nil for a limited period; there is no separate Amex variant on this board, so that offer is not modelled as a fee change.
- 15 Sept 2026Wyndham splits its three flat free-night tiers into four
- 8 Sept 2026Flying Blue splits award tickets into Light / Standard / Flex — a 25% rise for the same product
- 1 Sept 2026SmartBuy moves Amazon Pay gift cards to 1X under Insta Deals
- 25 Aug 2026Vietnam Airlines Lotusmiles opens a broad SkyTeam status match — up to Elite Plus
- 21 Aug 2026Club ITC pays up to 50,000 bonus Green Points for spreading 10 nights across all five brands
- 20 Aug 2026IHG Hotels & Resorts becomes a Maharaja Club earning and conversion partner
- 18 Aug 2026Amex India re-rates Virgin Atlantic upward — 2:1 becomes 5:4, the first MR buff in years
Every HDFC Bank change we've dated → 37 events since 2001, 23 of them nerfs — worst year 2026.
Verified against HDFC Bank's own documents on · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 3 of them, each with the day we read it
- official CSC Small Business MoneyBack product page — the discontinued-sourcing notice, the three Reward Point legs, the 5X fuel cap, the ₹0.20 redemption rate and the ₹90,000 milestone
- official Fees and charges — joining ₹250 and renewal ₹250, waived on ₹25,000 of spend in the previous year, with a 3.5% foreign-currency mark-up
- official HDFC's 15 May 2026 rewards, fees and charges update — the revised accrual table that sets this card at 2 Reward Points per ₹200