Swiggy Ornge HDFC Bank Credit Card
Keep5% on Swiggy and half the internet, ₹1,500 a month cap — and the free Swiggy One year needs activation within 37 days of issuance.
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 12 months, released on card activation (activate within 37 days of issuance and claim it in the Swiggy app)
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.
3 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants · why it ranks #272
Why #272 Real rupees, not points: HDFC credits this card as statement credit, and the 5% legs are worth ₹18,000 a year at absolute maximum because Swiggy and every eligible online merchant share ONE ₹1,500-a-billing-cycle ceiling. A food card with a shopping bonus attached.
The unit is the rupee. HDFC's own FAQ: "CashBack is credited directly to your card account as statement credit", and the T&C adds "Cashback earned for current billing cycle will be auto redeemed against outstanding amount" — no points, no catalogue, no redemption fee (HDFC's MITC exempts the Swiggy cards from its ₹50 cashback-redemption charge). What actually governs this card is the pair of billing-cycle ceilings: ₹1,500 across the two 5% legs together, ₹1,000 on the 1% leg.
The take
HDFC replaced the original Swiggy card with two, and this is the cheaper one. ₹500 gets you 5% on the Swiggy app — food delivery, Instamart and Dineout — 5% across a wide named list of online merchants, and 1% on everything else, all of it paid as rupees straight onto the card statement rather than as CashPoints you later have to spend in a catalogue. That last part is the reason to take this card seriously: HDFC's own FAQ says "CashBack is credited directly to your card account as statement credit", the T&C auto-redeems it against the outstanding balance, and the bank's MITC specifically exempts the Swiggy cards from its ₹50 cashback-redemption fee. A rupee here is a rupee. Now read the ceiling, because the ceiling is the product. Table 1.1 of the card's terms puts ONE cap of ₹1,500 a billing cycle across the Swiggy leg and the online leg TOGETHER — not ₹1,500 each. The 5% therefore dies at ₹30,000 of combined qualifying spend a month, and the whole accelerated stack is worth ₹18,000 a year at full stretch. The 1% leg has its own ₹1,000 ceiling on top. HDFC's own value chart is refreshingly honest about where that lands: ₹18,000 a month of spend returns ₹6,912 a year, which the bank prints as "3.20%". Two things a traveller should notice. First, this is not really a travel card, but HDFC's eligible-MCC table quietly includes the online travel agents — Paytm Travel, EaseMyTrip, Ixigo, Yatra, Ibibo and Cleartrip — at 5%, inside the same shared cap. Second, there is no lounge access of any kind; the only lifestyle benefit is a Mastercard golf programme with four complimentary green fees a year, and 3.5% forex on top. The exclusion wall is the usual Indian one and it is wide: fuel, rent, government, gaming, education, jewellery, gift cards, wallets, SmartBuy, SmartPay and every EMI conversion earn nothing on either leg. Buy dinner and buy things on the internet. Do not fly on it.
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 ₹1,50,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹12,500 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
₹11,300 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹12,000 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
- 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
- 5% on the Swiggy app — food delivery, Instamart and Dineout — paid as statement credit, not points
- 5% across a wide named online list: Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Nykaa, Ajio, Meesho, BookMyShow, Netflix, Hotstar and Cleartrip, plus apparel, pharmacy, electronics and cab MCCs
- Online travel agents — Paytm Travel, EaseMyTrip, Ixigo, Yatra, Ibibo — sit inside the 5% list
- Complimentary Swiggy One membership for 12 months on activation, extended by 12 months for existing members
- 1% on everything else, and no ₹50 redemption fee: HDFC's MITC exempts the Swiggy cards from it
- ₹500 renewal fee waived on ₹1,50,000 of spend in the year before the renewal date
- Mastercard golf: 4 complimentary green-fee rounds a calendar year and 12 free lessons
Watch out
- The two 5% legs SHARE one ceiling of ₹1,500 a billing cycle — not ₹1,500 each — so the whole 5% stack is worth ₹18,000 a year at absolute maximum and runs out at ₹30,000 of qualifying spend a month
- The 1% leg has its own separate ceiling of ₹1,000 a billing cycle
- HDFC's own value chart prices this card at 3.20%, on ₹18,000 a month of spend — the 5% headline is not the rate you get
- A 5% transaction must be ₹249 or more, and a 1% transaction ₹100 or more; below those, nothing
- Fuel, rent, government, gaming, education, jewellery, gift cards, wallet loads, SmartBuy, SmartPay and every EMI conversion earn zero on both legs
- No lounge access at all, domestic or international, and forex is 3.5% plus a 1.75% dynamic-currency markup from 15 May 2026
- Only select merchants mapped under the listed MCCs qualify, and HDFC states outright that it takes no responsibility if a merchant codes a transaction wrongly
- Cashback is reversed if a transaction is later converted to EMI, whether or not you had already breached the cap that cycle
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
11 sourced rules · 7 pay zero
- Fuel · excluded Zero cashback (MCC 5172, 5541, 5542, 5983), and HDFC's MITC confirms no fuel surcharge waiver accrues on the Swiggy cards either
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero cashback (MCC 6513), plus HDFC's 1% rent transaction fee
- Wallet loads · excluded Zero cashback (MCC 6540), plus a 1% fee on wallet loads above ₹10,000 a calendar month, capped at ₹4,999
- Government / tax · excluded Zero cashback (MCC 9211, 9222, 9223, 9311, 9399, 9402, 9405, 9950)
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹1,50,000 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 Ornge HDFC Bank Credit Card earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver — the ₹1,50,000 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?
income, age and the route in
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.
Open, with a direct public application. HDFC publishes the income floor on the card page itself: salaried applicants aged 21 to 60 need net monthly income above ₹20,000; self-employed applicants aged 21 to 65 need an annual ITR above ₹6 lakh. Both must be Indian nationals. The card only starts earning once it is activated — by making a transaction, authenticating over OTP or IVR, setting the PIN, or enabling card controls — and the Swiggy One welcome benefit requires activation within 37 days of issuance, after which it is claimed inside the Swiggy app rather than granted automatically. Existing holders of the original Swiggy HDFC Bank Credit Card are being migrated to this card and the BLCK variant; HDFC's own page for the old card says the bank will be reaching out.
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.
MITC v4.5 (August 2026) fee row: "Swiggy Ornge HDFC Bank Credit Card | ₹500 | Annual Fee starting second Year waived off on spending ₹1.5 lakh / Annum". HDFC prints ONE combined "Joining Fee / Renewal Membership Fee" of ₹500, so joining and renewal are the same figure. Cashback is STATEMENT CREDIT: "for statements generated post 21st June'24, cashback earned using … Swiggy Ornge HDFC Bank Credit Card will be credited against outstanding balance in card statement" — Swiggy Money applies only to pre-21-Jun-2024 statements on the original Swiggy card. Dynamic-currency markup 1.75% from 15-May-2026, on top of the 3.5% FCC. 1% fees on rent, on wallet loads above ₹10,000, on online skill-gaming above ₹10,000 and on utilities, each capped at ₹4,999 a month. No lounge benefit at any price. The 3.5% forex is read off a MERGED column band in the MITC fee table (printed once at "Regalia First … 3.50%" and again at the PhonePe rows) — HDFC publishes no per-card Key Fact Statement for this card to cross-check.
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 Ornge product page — the ₹500 combined joining/renewal fee, the ₹1,50,000 waiver, the 5%/5%/1% grid, and HDFC's own value chart pricing the card at 3.20%
- official Terms and Conditions — Swiggy Ornge HDFC Bank Credit Card, published 17 July 2026: the shared ₹1,500-a-billing-cycle cap on the 5% legs and the ₹1,000 cap on the 1% leg
- official HDFC Bank Most Important Terms and Conditions, version 4.6 dated August 2026 — the ₹500 fee row, the ₹1.5 lakh renewal waiver, and the statement-credit rule