HDFC Bank Purchase Premium
KeepA free commercial card at 2.5% forex — and a point worth twenty paise.
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 →
Pays from the first rupee
At ₹1,000 a month — ₹12,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹100 gross (earn ₹100) against its ₹0 fee = ₹100 net — at or above ₹0 from the first rung we price. 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 #438
Why #438 Carried, not ranked. A free commercial purchasing card that actually pays: half a per cent on regular spend, 5% back on the business essentials up to ₹1,500 a cycle, and a 2.5% forex markup. It has no lounge and no frills; it has the cheapest currency conversion on this shelf.
HDFC prices this card's point in its own FAQ and the answer is one line: "Each reward point will have a value of 20 paisa." That is a fifth of the ₹1.00 house value and below even the ₹0.30 corporate SmartBuy rate the Business Corporate cards get, which is why 4 points per ₹150 lands at half a per cent. Points on this family also die faster than on HDFC's retail book: the Schedule of Charges says "Reward Points are valid only for 1 year from the date of accumulation", against two years everywhere else.
The take
Purchase Premium is HDFC's free commercial purchasing card and it is a better-built product than the shelf around it. Start with what it costs, because that part is published and most of this shelf's is not: the Schedule of Charges says "Joining/Renewal Fees / Nil", flatly, for the whole family. Then the forex, which is the real reason a business would carry this one — 2.5% against the 3.5% the same document charges every other commercial card, a full point cheaper on every international invoice. The rewards are honest but small: four Reward Points per ₹150, and HDFC's own FAQ prices the point at twenty paise, so the effective rate is 0.53%. Read the exclusion list before you assume that applies to your spend, because it is enormous — taxes, government services, telecom, groceries, fuel, utilities, insurance, education, railway, restaurants, taxis, tolls, department stores and supermarkets are all "Special MCC" and earn nothing at all. What those categories get instead is the cashback leg: 5% on business essential spends, capped at ₹1,500 a statement cycle and gated on ₹1 lakh of monthly spend, and a transaction that takes the cashback does not also take points. The travel case is the SmartBuy Business portal — 4% off flights and hotels through MMT MyBiz, and up to 40% off business travel bookings. Revolving credit runs at 1.99% a month, a third of what HDFC's retail cards charge, and a company can pay just 30% of the bill. There is no lounge access on this card, and points expire in one year rather than two.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
This card is lifetime free. There is no fee due, no renewal to weigh, and nothing to cancel to save.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
nothing due at the anniversary · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹0 — lifetime free
₹1,600 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹3,200 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹6,400 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹19,100 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹31,800 a year at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend
Everyday earn plus milestones, with no fee to subtract — the same model as the value panel above, so the two cannot disagree. run your exact spend →
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
- No joining fee and no renewal fee — HDFC's commercial Schedule of Charges prints "Nil" for both
- 2.5% forex markup, against 3.5% on every other commercial card in the same document
- 5% CashBack on business essential spends, up to ₹1,500 a statement cycle
- 4% off flights and hotels through MMT MyBiz, and up to 40% off business travel on SmartBuy Business
- Revolving credit at 1.99% a month, with a 30% minimum repayment
- Up to 50 days of interest-free credit, and up to ten cards per company
- Merchant-category restrictions can be set per card, so spend can be fenced by vendor type
Watch out
- A point is twenty paise on this card — HDFC's FAQ says so outright — so 4 per ₹150 is 0.53%, not more
- The "Special MCC" exclusion list is enormous and earns NOTHING: taxes, government, telecom, groceries, fuel, utilities, insurance, education, railway, restaurants, taxis, tolls, department stores and supermarkets among them
- A transaction that earns the 5% cashback does not also earn Reward Points
- Points expire after ONE year on this family, against two years on HDFC's retail cards
- No lounge access — HDFC's page names none, and the card opens no door on our map
- Accrual stops at 15,000 Reward Points a statement cycle — about ₹5.6 lakh of qualifying spend
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 →
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.
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 — 2 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Purchase Premium product page — the 4-per-₹150 accrual, the 20-paise point value, the 5% cashback leg and its caps, the 2.5% forex markup and the MCC exclusion list
- official HDFC's Commercial Credit Cards Schedule of Charges, Version 2.6 dated 6 January 2025 — the nil joining and renewal fee, the 2.5% forex band and the one-year point expiry