Swiggy HDFC Bank Credit Card
Keep10% on Swiggy, 5% on the internet, 1% on life — each behind its own monthly ceiling.
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 Swiggy One membership for 3 months, released on card activation and claimed inside the Swiggy app 2–3 days later
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 →
Pays for itself at ₹5,000 a month
At ₹5,000 a month — ₹60,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹600 gross (earn ₹600) against its ₹500 fee = ₹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 #311
Why #311 The original Swiggy card, and still the one most people mean. Real rupees on the statement rather than points, but every leg has its own billing-cycle ceiling — ₹1,500, ₹1,500 and ₹500 — so the whole card is worth ₹42,000 a year at absolute full stretch and about a third of that in a normal wallet. No lounge, no partner, nothing that flies.
Our joint #1 for Dining (3 cards level) and Groceries (2 cards level) — 2 of the 23 questions this desk ranks.
The unit is the rupee. HDFC: "Cashback earned on Swiggy HDFC Bank Credit Card will be in the form of Statement Credit post 21st Jun '24. Cashback for the previous month will be adjusted in the subsequent month's statement balance." No points, no catalogue, no redemption fee — the bank's own MITC exempts the Swiggy cards from its rewards-redemption charge. What governs the card is the three separate billing-cycle ceilings, not the rate.
The take
This is the card that made a food-delivery co-brand a mainstream Indian product, and the reason is that it pays in rupees. Since 21 June 2024 HDFC credits the earn straight to the statement rather than as CashPoints you later spend in a catalogue, and the bank's own MITC exempts the Swiggy cards from its rewards-redemption fee — so a rupee here really is a rupee. The headline rates are genuinely good: 10% back across the whole Swiggy app, food ordering plus Instamart plus Dineout plus Genie; 5% on a wide named list of online categories that covers apparel, electronics, department stores, personal care, pharmacies, local cabs and entertainment; 1% on everything else. Now read the ceilings, because on every Indian cashback card the ceiling is the product. The 10% leg stops at ₹1,500 of cashback a billing cycle — ₹15,000 of Swiggy spend, which a heavy orderer clears in three weeks. The 5% leg has its own separate ₹1,500, so ₹30,000 of qualifying online buying. The 1% leg caps at ₹500. Add them up and the card returns ₹42,000 a year at theoretical full stretch on ₹95,000 a month of perfectly-shaped spend, which is HDFC's own number and not ours. A realistic wallet takes maybe ₹12,000–15,000 of that. Against ₹500 waived at ₹2 lakh of annual spend, it is still one of the better-value entry cards in the market. What it is not is a travel card: no lounge access of any kind, no transfer partner, no points that reach an airline or a hotel, and 3.5% dynamic-currency-conversion mark-up abroad. The exclusion wall is the standard Indian one and it is wide — fuel, rent, EMI, wallet loads, jewellery and government payments earn nothing on any leg — and no transaction under ₹100 earns at all. One thing to know before applying: HDFC has launched Swiggy Ornge and Swiggy BLCK as its successors and says it will be contacting existing holders about next steps.
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
₹500/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹500/yr
The waiver ₹2,00,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹16,667 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹5,000 a month — ₹60,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee.
At your spend
₹2,800 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹5,600 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹6,000 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
- 10% back across the whole Swiggy app — food, Instamart, Dineout and Genie — up to ₹1,500 a billing cycle
- 5% on a wide list of online categories, on its own separate ₹1,500 ceiling
- Paid as statement credit in rupees, not as points in a catalogue
- ₹500 renewal fee waived on ₹2,00,000 of spend before the renewal date
- Three months of Swiggy One free on activation, worth about ₹1,199 by HDFC's own reckoning
- Up to 50 days of interest-free credit
Watch out
- Every leg has its own monthly ceiling: ₹1,500 on Swiggy, ₹1,500 online, ₹500 on everything else
- HDFC's Key Fact Statement adds a card-wide ceiling on top: ₹3,500 of cashback in a statement cycle, which is exactly the three legs summed
- The 10% dies at ₹15,000 of Swiggy spend a month — a heavy orderer clears that in three weeks
- Fuel, rent, EMI, wallet loads, jewellery and government spends earn nothing on any leg
- Swiggy Money Wallet, Swiggy Liquor and Swiggy Minis are excluded from the 10%
- No transaction below ₹100 earns cashback at all
- No lounge access, no transfer partner, no airline or hotel programme
- 3.5% dynamic-currency-conversion mark-up on foreign transactions
- HDFC has introduced Swiggy Ornge and Swiggy BLCK as successors and says it will contact existing holders about next steps
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes Statement cashback (₹) 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
12 sourced rules · 7 pay zero
10% on the Swiggy app, 5% on a named online-MCC list, 1% on the rest — each with its own billing-cycle ceiling, and none of it paying on anything under ₹100. HDFC's exclusion list is short and unusual in one place: JEWELLERY is on it, which almost no other Indian card bothers to exclude. Live desk note from the same page: "The Bank has started a phased transition of existing Swiggy HDFC Bank Credit Card holders to either Swiggy Ornge or Swiggy BLCK variants", so this grid is on a card being wound down onto successors.
- Fuel · excluded Zero cashback — fuel is on HDFC's exclusion list for this card, stated twice on the page ("1% CashBack on other category spends, except for fuel, rent, EMI, wallet, jewellery and Government related transactions")
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero cashback — rent is on the exclusion list. HDFC also charges 1% on rent paid through a third-party merchant from the second rental transaction of a calendar month, bank-wide
- Wallet loads · excluded Zero cashback — wallet loads are on the exclusion list, and Swiggy Money Wallet is separately excluded even inside the 10% Swiggy rung
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · capped Not on HDFC's exclusion list for this card — 1% inside the ₹500-a-cycle other-categories ceiling, and no transaction under ₹100 earns (inferred from absence, flag)
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹2,00,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹500 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 Swiggy HDFC Bank Credit Card earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver — the ₹2,00,000 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
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.
A straightforward public application — website, NetBanking or a branch. Salaried applicants need to be 21–60 with monthly income of ₹15,000 or more; the self-employed need to be 21–65 with an annual ITR above ₹6,00,000. The welcome benefit is activation-gated under the RBI rules: make a transaction, or set the PIN and enable card controls, then claim Swiggy One inside the Swiggy app, where it appears 2–3 days later.
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
7 of 7 MITC rows published
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
Membership fee ₹500 to take and ₹500 to renew, with the renewal waived at ₹2,00,000 of spend in the year — the highest waiver bar the MITC sets on any ₹500 card, four times what BizFirst or GIGA Business ask for the same money. Two card-specific carve-outs sit in the fine print: the cashback this card earns is Swiggy Money and is redeemed inside the Swiggy app rather than against the statement, which is why the bank points the reader at swiggy.com instead of at its own redemption desk; and education spends through third-party platforms earn nothing at all. Shelf-wide charges from the same document: cash processing ₹100 for any payment made over a branch counter or at an ATM, payment return 2% of the payment amount, 1% on online skill-based gaming above ₹10,000 in a calendar month and 1% on wallet loading above ₹10,000 (both from 1-Jul-2025, each capped ₹4,999 a month), and reward points on insurance capped at 2,000 a month.
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 Swiggy HDFC Bank Credit Card product page — the three cashback legs, their separate billing-cycle ceilings, the exclusion list and the statement-credit rule
- official Fees and charges — joining ₹500 and renewal ₹500, waived on ₹2 lakh of annual spend, with 3.5% forex mark-up
- official HDFC Bank Key Fact Statement cum MITC, Version 4.6 dated August-2026 — the ₹500 fee row and the ₹2 lakh waiver