HDFC Bank Diners Club Black (non-metal)
KeepThe Diners Black before the metal one — same ₹10,000, ₹3 lakh less to waive it.
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
Welcome: Complimentary annual memberships of Club Marriott, Times Prime and Amazon Prime, plus three months of Swiggy One — and MMT BLACK on ₹8 lakh of anniversary-year spend
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 — the ranking model on /compare adds ~20% of spend at the card's best accelerator, so its ₹ for this card 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 →
Pays for itself at ₹26,000 a month
At ₹26,000 a month — ₹3,12,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹10,400 gross (earn ₹10,400) against its ₹10,000 fee = ₹400 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.
3 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants · why it ranks #739
Why #739 The pre-metal Diners Black, and still the strongest legacy card in Indian circulation: 3.33% at the house value, unlimited lounge access, 2% forex and a ₹5 lakh waiver that is ₹3 lakh easier than the metal edition's. Withdrawn from sourcing — you cannot get it, and if you hold it you keep it.
This card's Reward Points are the good ones. HDFC publishes the ladder on the product page itself: ₹1 against SmartBuy flights and hotels, up to 1.0 AirMile on conversion, up to ₹0.50 on products and vouchers, up to ₹0.30 as cashback. Points can pay at most 70% of a flight or hotel booking, SmartBuy travel redemption is capped at 75,000 points a calendar month and cashback redemption at 50,000, and insurance spends accrue at most 5,000 points a day. Close the card and the balance survives only 30 days.
The take
Two HDFC cards are called Diners Club Black and telling them apart matters, because the cheaper one to keep is this one. Both cost ₹10,000. The metal edition waives that at ₹8 lakh of annual spend; this pre-metal version waives it at ₹5 lakh, and that ₹3 lakh gap is the cleanest way to identify which card is in your wallet. Everything else is the super-premium package HDFC has since stopped selling at this price: 5 Reward Points per ₹150 — 3.33 per ₹100 — with a point HDFC itself values at ₹1 on SmartBuy flights and hotels and at a full AirMile on conversion, so the headline rate is a real 3.33% for anyone who redeems for travel. Up to 10X on SmartBuy hotel and flight bookings sits on top. Lounge access is unlimited, for primary and add-on members, across 1,300-plus lounges in India and abroad, and it runs on the Diners Club network rather than Priority Pass. Foreign spends carry 2%, which is a full point and a half below the Indian norm. Six complimentary golf games a quarter, ₹500 vouchers at ₹80,000 of spend, ₹1 crore of air-accident cover and overseas hospitalisation cover complete it. What you cannot do is get one: HDFC prints "Sourcing of this Credit Card has been stopped" at the top of the page and points new applicants at the metal edition. If you hold it, the arithmetic on renewal is simple — ₹5 lakh a year through the card and the fee disappears.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
Here is the fee, the spend that clears it, and everything that has moved under this card since you last decided.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
₹10,000/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹10,000/yr
The waiver ₹5,00,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹41,667 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹26,000 a month — ₹3,12,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee.
At your spend
₹0 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹20,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹44,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹1,23,900 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹2,03,800 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
- Unlimited lounge access to 1,300+ lounges in India and abroad, for primary and add-on members
- 5 Reward Points per ₹150 — 3.33% at ₹1 a point on SmartBuy travel
- Up to 10X Reward Points on SmartBuy flight and hotel bookings
- 2% foreign-currency mark-up, against India's 3.5% norm
- ₹10,000 renewal fee waived at ₹5 lakh of annual spend — the metal edition needs ₹8 lakh
- 6 complimentary golf games every quarter, worldwide
- Club Marriott, Times Prime and Amazon Prime annual memberships, plus Swiggy One for three months
- Two ₹500 vouchers from Tata Cliq, Uber, BookMyShow or Cult.fit at ₹80,000 of spend
Watch out
- Withdrawn — HDFC states "Sourcing of this Credit Card has been stopped" and no new applications are accepted
- Do not confuse it with the live Diners Club Black Metal Edition: same ₹10,000 fee, but that one waives at ₹8 lakh
- Reward Points pay at most 70% of a flight or hotel booking, and SmartBuy travel redemption caps at 75,000 points a calendar month
- Cashback redemption caps at 50,000 points a calendar month and pays only ₹0.30 a point
- Rent and government payments have earned nothing since 1 January 2023, and rent carries a 1% fee from the second transaction of a month
- Insurance spends accrue at most 5,000 Reward Points a day
- Close the card and the points survive only 30 days, redeemable for products and vouchers only
- Diners Club acceptance is thinner than Visa or Mastercard, in India and abroad
- Dynamic Currency Conversion costs 1.75% on top from 15 May 2026 — always let a foreign terminal bill you in the local currency, not in rupees
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 →
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹5,00,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹10,000 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 HDFC Bank Diners Club Black (non-metal) earns, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver — the ₹5,00,000 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
91 of 793 tracked doors
Opens 91 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 63 airports , via Diners Club — see the full map →
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 has stopped sourcing this card and its own FAQ says so: "We are currently not accepting new applications for the HDFC Bank Diners Club Black Credit Card." Existing holders are grandfathered on the card's full benefit set. The card HDFC sells in its place is the Diners Club Black Metal Edition, which costs the same ₹10,000 but needs ₹8 lakh of annual spend rather than ₹5 lakh to waive it.
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 — 4 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Diners Club Black product page — the sourcing-stopped notice, the 5-per-₹150 accrual, the unlimited-lounge benefit, the ₹5 lakh waiver and the full ₹1-a-point redemption ladder
- official HDFC's 15 May 2026 rewards, fees and charges update — it names Diners Black in its no-change list, confirming the 5-points-per-₹150 accrual, and sets the DCC mark-up at 1.75%
- official Fees and charges — ₹10,000 joining and renewal, waived on ₹5 lakh of spend in 12 months
- official HDFC Bank Key Fact Statement cum MITC, Version 4.6 dated August-2026 — the "Diners Black" row at ₹5 lakh, distinct from "Diners Black Metal Edition" at ₹8 lakh