Paytm HDFC Bank Mobile
KeepHalf a percent on everything, two percent on three corners of Paytm, ₹149 to hold.
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: Not published — the card's own benefits block lists no welcome or activation benefit
Priced on the everyday mix — 30% groceries · 10% utilities · 20% travel · 6% fuel · 34% everything else — with this card's published category rules applied: it earns nothing on fuel here, so that spend is dropped, not paid at the headline, and stops pacing milestones and the waiver. 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 →
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 ₹200 gross (earn ₹200) against a fee of ₹0 — the ₹149 is waived, the spend having cleared ₹25,000 a year = ₹200 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 #220
Why #220 The weakest earner of the four Paytm cards HDFC still issues — a 0.5% floor rather than the 1% its siblings pay — held up only by a ₹149 price tag it waives on ₹25,000 of spend. There is no travel benefit of any kind on it, so it sits at the bottom of the family rather than beside them.
What this card pays is CashPoints, not money: HDFC's own line is that "CashBack as per the product features will be credited in the form of CashPoints, which can be redeemed by the customer against their statement balance". Against the statement that is ₹1 a point. Pointed anywhere else it is worth much less, and HDFC caps overall CashBack redemption at 3,000 points a calendar month whatever avenue you use.
The take
This is the smallest of HDFC's four live Paytm cards and the one to be most careful about, because it looks like its siblings and pays less. Where the Paytm Digital and Paytm Business cards floor at 1%, this one floors at 0.5% — half the rate on everything that is not a Paytm transaction, and Paytm's own share of your spending is unlikely to be large. Above that floor there are two narrow legs: 2% on Paytm Mall, Movies and the Mini App, capped at ₹250 a calendar month, and 1% on other select Paytm spends, capped at the same ₹250. The 0.5% leg has a ₹500 monthly ceiling of its own, so it stops paying at ₹1,00,000 of monthly spend. Add it up and the card is worth about ₹1,000 a month at the absolute maximum, against a ₹149 annual fee that is waived on ₹1,000 of non-EMI spend in the first 30 days and ₹25,000 in each year after. There is a fee vintage worth knowing: HDFC's fees page says holders onboarded before 1 April 2023 are still on monthly pricing — ₹29 a month plus GST, waived on ₹5,000 of retail spend that month — until the bank moves them to annual. Two cautions. The earn is CashPoints, not rupees; ₹1 a point holds only against the statement, and HDFC caps overall CashBack redemption at 3,000 points a month. And an FAQ accordion on the card's own page pastes HDFC's premium-card welcome club onto it — Club Marriott, MMT Black, Swiggy One, Amazon Prime "by spending over ₹1.5 lakh within the first 90 days" — which is boilerplate from another product line and appears nowhere in this card's own benefits block; we do not carry it. Travel-wise there is nothing: no lounge, no partner, no programme. A ₹149 card that earns like one.
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
₹149/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹149/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
₹1,400 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹2,800 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹5,600 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹6,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹6,000 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
- 1 Sep 2026 SmartBuy moves Amazon Pay gift cards to 1X under Insta Deals issuer-wide
- 1 Jul 2026 HDFC caps SmartBuy brand-voucher rewards issuer-wide
- 15 May 2026 HDFC lifts its DCC markup to 1.75% across the card range issuer-wide
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
- ₹149 a year, waived on ₹25,000 of non-EMI spend in a 12-month period
- First-year fee waived outright on ₹1,000 of non-EMI spend in the first 30 days
- 2% on Paytm Mall, Movies and the Mini App; 1% on other select Paytm spends
- 0.5% on every other retail transaction, credited as CashPoints against the statement
Watch out
- The base rate is 0.5%, half what the Paytm Digital and Paytm Business cards pay on the same spend
- Every leg is capped monthly — ₹250 on the 2%, ₹250 on the 1%, ₹500 on the 0.5% — so the card tops out near ₹1,000 a month
- The 0.5% stops entirely at ₹1,00,000 of monthly spend, where its ₹500 ceiling bites
- Cashback accrues as CashPoints, and HDFC caps overall CashBack redemption at 3,000 points a calendar month
- Holders onboarded before 1 April 2023 are still on the old monthly pricing — ₹29 a month plus GST, waived on ₹5,000 of retail spend
- Fuel, EMI, rent, government spends and wallet loads earn nothing
- An FAQ block on HDFC's own page offers Club Marriott, MMT Black, Swiggy One and Amazon Prime on ₹1.5 lakh in 90 days — that is premium-card boilerplate, absent from this card's benefits section, and we do not carry it
- No lounge access, no transfer partner, no airline or hotel programme
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes HDFC Bank CashPoints into a programme that publishes an award chart. These points buy catalogue and portal redemptions, not award seats — so this page has no flight to show you, and will not invent one.
what the cards that DO reach a chart can fly — 2,196 corridors priced →
What earns, what doesn't
6 sourced rules · 5 pay zero
The weakest base in HDFC's Paytm range — 0.5% where the siblings pay 1% — with the two accelerated legs confined to Paytm's own properties. All three legs are separately capped: ₹250 a month on the 2%, ₹250 on the 1% Paytm leg, ₹500 on the 0.5% base.
- Fuel · excluded Fuel spends earn nothing
- Wallet loads · excluded Wallet loads earn nothing
- Rent & property management · excluded Rental spends earn nothing
- Government / tax · excluded Government spends 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 ₹149 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 Paytm HDFC Bank Mobile earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver — 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.
Direct application — no invite list, no banking relationship required.
Issued by HDFC Bank in partnership with Paytm, and applied for through Paytm rather than the bank's own flow. HDFC publishes no income floor. The fee has two vintages and the bank says so on its own fees page: the current product is a ₹149 annual membership fee waived on ₹1,000 of non-EMI spend within the first 30 days and on ₹25,000 within each 12-month period thereafter; but "for customers onboarded before April 01, 2023, the below charges shall continue to be applicable till the time they are moved into annual pricing", which is a ₹29 monthly membership fee plus GST, waived on ₹5,000 of non-EMI retail spend in the month. If you have held this card for years, check which pricing you are on before comparing it with anything.
HDFC Bank publishes no income or age cutoffs for this card. Blank means blank — we don't invent numbers to fill a grid.
per the official HDFC Bank MITC — figures marked (community) aren't in the PDF; the issuer won't say · filter the board by what you can get →
The fine print
0 of 7 MITC rows published
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
TWO FEE VINTAGES, and HDFC prints both. Current: "Annual membership fee: ₹149 plus applicable taxes", waived in year one on ₹1,000 of non-EMI spend within the first 30 days and thereafter on ₹25,000 of non-EMI spend within 12 months. Legacy: "For customers onboarded before April 01, 2023, the below charges shall continue to be applicable till the time they are moved into annual pricing" — ₹29 a month plus GST, waived on ₹5,000 of non-EMI retail spend in the month. HDFC's KFS has one combined "Joining / Annual membership Fee" column, so no joining charge is published separately. EARN, and it is the weakest of the Paytm family: 2% on Paytm Mall, Movies and Mini App (capped ₹250 a calendar month), 1% on other select Paytm spends (capped ₹250), and 0.5% on all other retail transactions (capped ₹500) — HALF the 1% base its Paytm Digital and Paytm Business siblings pay. The 0.5% leg stops at ₹1,00,000 of monthly spend. Earn accrues as CashPoints redeemable against the statement, with overall redemption capped at 3,000 points a month. Wallet loads, fuel, EMI, rent and government spends earn nothing. TRAP: an SEO FAQ accordion on the product page offers Club Marriott, MMT Black, Swiggy One, Amazon Prime and Times Prime Smart "by spending over ₹1.5 lakh within the first 90 days" — that is HDFC's premium-card welcome-club boilerplate reused in a CMS block; the card's own Features & Benefits section lists three cashback lines and no welcome at all, and a ₹1.5-lakh gate on a ₹149 card is implausible. Not carried. NO LOUNGE.
per the official HDFC Bank MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
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.
- 1 Sept 2026SmartBuy moves Amazon Pay gift cards to 1X under Insta DealsAmazon Pay Gift Voucher sat in SmartBuy's accelerated tier — 'up to 5X Reward Points or 5% cashback' → 'Insta Deals: 1 % Instant Discount + 1X Reward Points' — this brand is out of the accelerated tier
The most-farmed HDFC voucher route stopped being a points play. SmartBuy's own voucher storefront now shows the Amazon Pay Gift Voucher under a new "Insta Deals" tile reading "1 % Instant Discount + 1X Reward Points", and the page's own description flipped from "up to 5X Reward Points or 5% cashback" to "up to 1X". The comparison that settles it sits on the same storefront: the Amazon Fresh voucher still carries an "Accelerated Rewards — Upto 5X Reward Points RPs / 5% Cashback" block that the Amazon Pay page no longer has, so this is one brand leaving the accelerated tier, not the tier closing. The date, honestly: the Insta Deals offer ("Flat 1% OFF", ₹10,000 monthly limit) was already live in the page's own data on 31 August 2026, the reward line still read 5X in the 1 September 16:26 UTC archive capture, and read 1X when this desk fetched the page on 2 September — so 1 September is the community's effective date sitting inside a window we can bracket from primary captures, not a figure HDFC published. The bank has announced nothing and no SmartBuy page carries a notice. Two pieces of context for the size of it: brand vouchers were already sub-capped at 3,000 accelerated points a month from 1 July 2026, and Amazon Pay vouchers disappeared from the portal entirely for stretches of July and August before returning in this shape. Flipkart and Amazon Fresh vouchers still pay the accelerated rate; the ₹10,000-a-month Amazon Pay lane now pays base earn plus the 1% instant discount.
- 18 Aug 2026The Harley-Davidson Diners Club drops out of HDFC's bank-wide MITC
- 6 Aug 2026HDFC caps Regalia Gold miles transfers at 50,000 points a month
- 25 Jul 2026HDFC switches on 22 transfer partners for BizPower
- 16 Jul 2026Regalia Gold's cash-out rate quietly drops to ₹0.15
- 1 Jul 2026HDFC caps SmartBuy brand-voucher rewards
- 1 Jul 2026Regalia Gold's domestic lounge access goes spend-gated
- 1 Jul 2026Diners Club Privilege ties its lounge vouchers to prior-quarter spend
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 Paytm HDFC Bank Mobile product page — the 2%/1%/0.5% grid with its per-leg monthly caps
- official Fees and charges — a single ₹149 annual membership fee, its two waiver arms, and the pre-April-2023 monthly pricing
- official HDFC Bank Key Fact Statement cum MITC, Version 4.6 dated August-2026 — the single combined fee column that governs every HDFC card