HSBC Central Travel Card
KeepLodged with your travel agent, embossed with your name — and 52 days to settle the fares.
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 HSBC publishes terms we can cite.
Why we decline to value some cards, and what it takes to change that →
3 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants · why it ranks #570
Why #570 Carried, not ranked. HSBC's lodged travel account, and the only Indian one whose governing terms put a named cardholder on it in writing — with up to 52 interest-free days, the longest published on this shelf.
The take
HSBC's Central Travel Card is the lodged account for a company's air travel, and it is sold as a companion rather than a replacement: "a complete travel payment solution to complement your HSBC Corporate Card". The company lodges the card details and its air travel policy with its preferred travel management company, and bookings run through that channel from then on. Two things make it worth a page rather than a shrug. The first is the interest-free window: "up to 52 interest-free days", the longest published by any Indian bank on this shelf, against 51 at Amex, 50 at HDFC and ICICI, and a range starting at 20 days at SBI. On a company's whole air spend that is real working capital. The second is that HSBC actually names a cardholder — its Company Terms designate an individual who signs an application form, and the card is "embossed with the name of the Company and the Cardholder" unless the company agrees otherwise. The control set is ordinary but stated: spending limits and restrictions applied to the cards and to the approved travel agents, compliance with the company's own HR and travel policies, fraud detection software with a dispute process, and reporting through HSBC's MiVision platform and Mastercard Smart Data. HSBC also attaches three benefits to this card on its programme page that it does not attach to the Virtual Card beside it: a waiver on fuel spends, travel insurance benefits, and a tie-up with the fintech Nuclei. None of the three is quantified anywhere, so none is priced here. The price is ₹2,000 a year, and ₹2,000 again to join — the Schedule of charges appended to HSBC's own Company Terms prices every card on this programme at one flat figure per card, the same ₹2,000 its Corporate Card and Purchasing Card carry. There is no spend-based waiver. What that Schedule does not contain is a reward rate: no accrual, no currency, nothing. You are buying the control and the float, not points. Two more terms worth knowing, both from that Schedule. Foreign currency converts at Mastercard's wholesale rate on the day HSBC receives the transaction and then takes a 3.5% conversion charge — India's plain-vanilla norm, so this card saves a travelling company nothing on the spread. And it is not valid for foreign-exchange payments at merchants in Nepal and Bhutan, where charges fall back to rupees.
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
HSBC 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
- 15 Aug 2026 HSBC zeroes the forex mark-up on every card it sells — for 32 days 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
- Up to 52 interest-free days — the longest published on India's central-travel shelf
- The Company Terms designate a named cardholder who signs an application form, and emboss the card with the company's name and theirs
- Spending limits and restrictions apply to the cards and to the approved travel agents
- Enforces the company's own HR and travel policies through the booking channel
- Fraud detection software with a formal dispute process
- Reporting through HSBC's MiVision platform and Mastercard Smart Data
- HSBC attaches a fuel-spend waiver, travel insurance benefits and a Nuclei tie-up to this card, none of which it attaches to its Virtual Card
- Mastercard Easy Savings Specials, open to all HSBC Mastercard commercial cards, covers productivity software, cloud services and travel privileges
Watch out
- ₹2,000 to join and ₹2,000 a year, per card, with no spend-based waiver — a lodged travel account that charges like a plastic one
- No reward rate, currency or accrual is published for it anywhere — the fee buys control and float, never points
- The fuel waiver, travel insurance and Nuclei benefits are named but never quantified — get the limits in writing
- Sole company liability: HSBC's terms make the company liable for every charge on every card regardless of who incurred it
- 3.5% currency conversion charge on foreign transactions — India's plain-vanilla norm, and no better than a retail card
- Late payment ₹500, cash advances 2.5% (minimum ₹300) at 3.3% per month, and the whole balance is due in full every cycle — there is no revolving option
- Not valid for foreign-exchange payments at merchants in Nepal and Bhutan; those are charged in rupees
- No lounge access is published for it, and it opens no door on our map
What these points actually fly
HSBC 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 →
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.
Corporate only, and relationship-led: HSBC's product pages carry a "Contact Us" rather than an application form, and the programme comes with a dedicated relationship manager, client service managers and a 24x7 corporate cards contact centre reachable by phone and email. The company signs the World Corporate MasterCard Company Terms; each cardholder signs an application form for their own card. HSBC publishes no turnover, headcount or spend bar.
HSBC 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 2026HSBC Live+ switches on its international lounge visit, and adds a 1GB global eSIM2 complimentary domestic lounge visits a year (one every 6 calendar months) and nothing international — HSBC's own footnote read "1 international visit per year will be available from 1 September 2026" → The same 2 domestic visits plus 1 international visit per CALENDAR year, claimed through a separate HSBC platform powered by Thriwe, and 1 complimentary 1GB global eSIM a calendar year (7 days, 98 countries) with 20% off every top-up
A dated benefit arriving on time is not news; what HSBC did around it is. The w.e.f. date was published in advance in the Live+ Service Guide — this desk read it there on 16 August — and as it landed HSBC rewrote the product page's own footnote, the `airport-lounge-live-plus` anchor in its dpws-footnotes.json, to drop the future tense and, for the first time, say HOW you get the visit: "To access your benefits, visit the dedicated platform powered by Thriwe." That matters more than the wording suggests. This is not a lounge network and not a card tap; it is a claim you make on hsbcliveplus.thriwe.com, and a benefit you have to go and fetch is a benefit a fair share of cardholders will never fetch. HSBC still names no network for either quota, domestic or international, which is why our lounge map carries the counts and no scheme. Riding in on the same rewrite, undated by HSBC and therefore logged here rather than on a date of its own: "1 Complimentary 1GB valid Global eSIM per calendar year, plus a 20% discount on every top-up. The 1GB pack will be valid for 7 days across 98 countries." Read the numbers before you rate it — one gigabyte, seven days, once a year. That is a long-weekend's maps and messages, not a roaming plan, and the honest framing is a taster that sells top-ups at a discount. On a ₹999 card HSBC reverses at ₹2,00,000 of spend it is still free money; it is just much less money than "complimentary global eSIM" sounds. Nothing in this changes what the card earns: the 10% capped at ₹1,200 a month, the 1.5% uncapped, the zero on international spend since 26 July 2026 and the 1.99% markup are all untouched.
- 1 Sept 2026HSBC's RuPay Platinum welcome suite lapses — ₹500 cashback, EazyDiner and the UPI ₹250 all end together
- 1 Sept 2026HSBC's RuPay Cashback welcome suite lapses — ₹500 cashback, EazyDiner and the UPI ₹250 all end together
- 31 Aug 2026HSBC's 0% forex window on the RuPay Cashback card closes
- 15 Aug 2026HSBC zeroes the forex mark-up on every card it sells — for 32 days
- 1 Jul 2026HSBC TravelOne guts its welcome offer for new applicants
- 1 Dec 2024HSBC TravelOne arrives — a 20-partner airmiles card
- 28 Nov 2023HSBC Premier Credit Card returns as a metal card
Every HSBC change we've dated → 9 events since 1987, 6 of them nerfs — worst year 2026.
Verified against HSBC'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 HSBC Central Travel Card page — the lodged-account model, the 52 interest-free days, the spending controls and the reporting platforms
- official HSBC World Corporate MasterCard Company Terms — the ₹2,000 joining and annual fees in its appended Schedule of charges, the clause naming this product a Card, and the 3.5% conversion charge
- official HSBC Commercial Cards Programme — the shelf this card sits on, and the benefit list HSBC attaches to it but not to its Virtual Card