HDFC Bank Times Platinum
KeepHalf-price cinema and a Times Prime membership — the points are decoration.
no published earn rate to price
Skip the arithmetic — the board, ranked → · nothing to sign up for
What it's worth to you, after the fee
Not valued. We can't value this card until the issuer publishes how it earns — every net-value number here would be a fee subtracted from rewards nobody has described. Everything we can source — the fee, the charges, the migration that put this card in your hand — is above and stands on its own; this card is simply not on the board, not in the calculator, and cannot win a best-of call until HDFC Bank publishes terms we can cite.
Why we decline to value some cards, and what it takes to change that →
2 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · why it ranks #761
Why #761 Carried, not priced. An entertainment card whose case rests entirely on the BookMyShow discount and a Times Prime membership — HDFC states the accrual and never states what a point is worth, so no reward rate is printed. NAME TRAP: the URL says "platinum-times".
The take
Times Platinum is the upper tier of HDFC's co-brand with the Times group, and its case has nothing to do with the reward table. Fifty per cent off movie tickets through BookMyShow, up to four discounted tickets a month with a maximum discount of ₹600 a transaction, is worth around ₹2,400 a month at full stretch on a card that costs ₹1,000 a year — that is the product. Beside it: an annual Times Prime membership unlocked by a single transaction in a calendar quarter, which bundles Gaana Plus, SonyLIV, TOI+, Myntra, Chaayos and Uber; a ₹1,500 discount and six free months of EazyDiner, with up to 15% off bills paid through PayEazy; up to 20% off shopping, wellness and hotels with city-specific partners; and up to 5% cashback on utility bills through SmartPay, 5% on SmartBuy shopping and up to 10% on SmartBuy flights, hotels and gift vouchers. The Reward Points are real — there is a weekday dining uplift on 'Restaurant' merchant codes — but HDFC never says what one is worth on this card, so no reward rate appears here. Its entry-tier sibling Titanium Times prints ten paise; that number is not this card's and we have not borrowed it. Watch the caps HDFC added on 1 September 2024: utility, telecom and cable accrual is limited to 2,000 points a month, and education paid through CRED, Cheq or MobiKwik earns nothing at all. Sourcing has stopped, and the ₹1,000 needs ₹2.5 lakh of annual spend to waive.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
There is no renewal arithmetic to run on this card yet — and a break-even we cannot source is not one we will print.
the whole desk — what changed, the downgrade, and what we cannot price →
Keep, downgrade or cancel
what we can and cannot price
Not valued. We can't value this card until the issuer publishes how it earns — every net-value number here would be a fee subtracted from rewards nobody has described. A break-even is the spend at which value crosses a fee, and we are short one side of that sentence — so this desk prints no ladder, no crossing and no ₹0 standing in for either. What we can source about this card is under Sources.
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 we cannot price either side 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
- 50% off movie tickets via BookMyShow — up to 4 discounted tickets a month, maximum ₹600 a transaction
- Complimentary annual Times Prime membership — Gaana Plus, SonyLIV, TOI+, Myntra, Chaayos and Uber
- ₹1,500 off EazyDiner plus six free months, and up to 15% off bills paid via PayEazy
- Up to 5% cashback on utility bills via SmartPay and up to 10% on SmartBuy flights, hotels and vouchers
- Extra Reward Points on weekday dining at 'Restaurant' merchant codes
- Up to 20% off shopping, wellness and hotels with city-specific partners
Watch out
- Withdrawn — HDFC says "We currently are not accepting new applications for Times Platinum Credit Card"
- HDFC publishes no redemption rate for this card, so we will not print an effective rate — its sibling Titanium Times prints ten paise, but that rate is not this card's
- Utility, telecom and cable accrual has been capped at 2,000 Reward Points a month since 1 September 2024
- Education paid through CRED, Cheq, MobiKwik and similar apps earns nothing since 1 September 2024
- Grocery accrual is capped at 1,000 Reward Points a month and total accrual at 25,000 a statement cycle
- ₹2.5 lakh of annual spend is needed to waive the ₹1,000 — a high bar for an entertainment card
- NAME AND URL TRAP: HDFC serves this card at /platinum-times-credit-card while titling the page "Times Platinum", and there is a separate, cheaper Titanium Times card
- HDFC reserves the right to revoke the card if it goes six consecutive months without a transaction
What these points actually fly
HDFC Bank has not published what this card earns, so there are no points here to fly with — not zero points, and not points that go nowhere: nothing stated either way. The moment a benefit sheet exists we will price whatever it names.
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
₹2,50,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹1,000 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 Times Platinum earns, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver — the ₹2,50,000 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?
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's wording differs from its standard marker: "We currently are not accepting new applications for Times Platinum Credit Card. However, existing Times Platinum Credit Card holders will continue to enjoy the features/benefits on the card." One thing an existing holder should know: since 1 November 2020 HDFC has reserved the right to revoke the card if it goes six consecutive months without a transaction, with prior written notice to the registered address. The Times Prime membership needs only one transaction a calendar quarter to stay active, which conveniently also keeps the card alive.
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.
- 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
Not published , and we will not invent it: the earn rate and the currency it earns.
Every document behind this page — 3 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Times Platinum product page — the no-new-applications notice, the BookMyShow and Times Prime benefits, the SmartBuy cashback legs and the three reward caps added in 2023 and 2024
- official Fees and charges — ₹1,000 joining and renewal membership fee
- official HDFC's 15 May 2026 rewards, fees and charges update — it revises this card's accrual divisor and, like every other HDFC document, never prices a point