HSBC RuPay Cashback
KeepTen lounge visits for ₹499 — the best lounge-per-rupee ratio on this board.
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: A ₹250 Amazon eGift Voucher for a video-verified online application, offer period to 31 October 2026 — the ₹500 introductory cashback on ₹10,000 of spend, the 2-month EazyDiner membership and the ₹250 UPI cashback all ran out on 31 August 2026 and were not replaced
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 ₹499 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 #62
Why #62 Ten lounge visits for ₹499 — eight domestic on the RuPay platform and two international through LoungeKey — is the best lounge-per-rupee ratio on this board. The cashback stops dead at ₹40,000 of monthly spend and pays ₹4,800 a year whether you spend ₹1 lakh a month or ₹5, so an earn-only reading buries the card. The doors are the product.
The take
Buy this card for the doors, not the cashback. ₹499 buys two complimentary domestic lounge visits a quarter and two international visits a year — ten a year in total, on a fee HSBC hands back entirely once you spend ₹2,00,000. Only three other RuPay cards on this board open an international lounge door at all, and every one of them costs more. The earn is real but small and you should size it correctly: 10% on dining, food delivery and groceries, 1% on everything else, and HSBC's own service guide caps the two together at ₹400 a month. That is ₹4,800 a year at absolute best, and it is cashback — there is no rewards programme on this card, no points balance and no transfer, so nothing it earns will ever become an award seat. The forex line is now a trap: the product page still advertises a 0% markup, but that promotion ran only to 31 August 2026 and HSBC did not replace it, so foreign spend has cost the tariff sheet's standing 3.5% since 1 September. Buy this card for an Indian wallet, not a foreign one — a ₹1,00,000 month abroad now pays ₹3,500 in markup against a ₹400 cashback ceiling. What is genuinely useful beyond the lounges is the RuPay plumbing — this earns on credit-card-linked UPI, which most rivals do not, and JCB gets it accepted in over 160 countries. As a ₹499 second card that sits in the wallet for airport days and dinner, it is one of the better-value things HSBC sells.
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
₹499/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹499/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
₹2,400 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹3,700 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹3,500 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹3,300 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹3,300 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
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 the numbers above are the whole of it.
What has changed under this card
- 1 Sep 2026 HSBC's RuPay Cashback welcome suite lapses — ₹500 cashback, EazyDiner and the UPI ₹250 all end together
- 31 Aug 2026 HSBC's 0% forex window on the RuPay Cashback card closes
- 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
- 10 lounge visits a year — 2 domestic a quarter plus 2 international a year, on a ₹499 card
- ₹499 annual fee including GST fully reversed above ₹2,00,000 of eligible annual spend
- 10% cashback on dining, food delivery and groceries; 1% on other eligible spend
- Earns on credit-card-linked UPI, and JCB acceptance covers over 160 countries
Watch out
- Total cashback is capped at ₹400 a month ACROSS both rates — ₹4,800 a year is the ceiling, however you spend
- The 0% forex markup ENDED on 31 August 2026 and was not replaced — foreign spend costs the tariff sheet's standing 3.5%. The product page still shows the expired tile
- Cashback cannot become a flight — HSBC's service guide says there is no separate rewards programme on this card
- HSBC's 06/25 service guide still describes four lounge visits, one a quarter; the current product page says ten. We ship the newer number
- The card is offered only to residents of HSBC's 21 sourcing cities, with income from ₹6,00,000 salaried or ₹12,00,000 self-employed
- International 3DS e-commerce is not available on this card at all
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes HSBC 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
13 sourced rules · 8 pay zero
- Fuel · excluded Zero cashback — HSBC names 5541, 5983, 5172, 5542 and 5552, which is every code in this category
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero cashback on "payment of property management fees, rental commissions, rental payments or any such payments made through MCCs 6513, 7012, 7349" — and the tariff sheet charges a 1% processing fee on rental payments on top
- Wallet loads · excluded Zero cashback on e-wallets. HSBC names only 6540, not 6539 or 6541, so the exclusion as written is narrower than the category
- Insurance · excluded Zero cashback — HSBC names 6300 and 5960. It does not name 6380 or 6381, so the exclusion as written does not reach a merchant coded there
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 ₹499 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. HSBC states what the HSBC RuPay Cashback 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
17 of 793 tracked doors
Opens 17 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 10 airports , via RuPay — see the full map →
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.
per the official HSBC 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.
One MITC, stamped "Rupay (MITC) 7/26", covers both HSBC RuPay cards in side-by-side columns, and the file served at the Cashback and Platinum URLs is byte-identical — same md5 — so the two columns check each other. Cashback is ₹499 to join and ₹499 a year, "fully reversed" with GST if eligible spend across the primary and add-on cards in an anniversary year exceeds ₹2,00,000. Free credit period 45 days against Platinum's 48. Bounced cheque, dishonoured SI or failed NACH ₹500. Cash payment at an HSBC branch or drop box ₹100. Rental payments carry a 1% processing fee plus taxes. Balance transfer 10.99%–15.99% a year plus a 1.5% processing fee, min ₹200. Minimum payment due is the higher of ₹100 or the standard stack. Eligibility also requires residence in one of HSBC's 21 named sourcing cities, so the income floor is not the only gate. RuPay on this card cannot do international 3DS e-commerce, EMI at the OTP page, pre-authorisation holds including hotel blocks, or MOTO transactions.
per the official HSBC 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 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 · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 5 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product page — joining ₹499 and annual ₹499 waived above ₹2,00,000, up to 2 domestic lounge visits a quarter and 2 international a year, 10% on dining, food delivery and grocery and 1% elsewhere
- official Introductory-offer T&C — the ₹500 cashback applied only to cards applied for between 15 July 2025 and 31 August 2026
- official 0% forex offer T&C — the window ran 15 July 2025 to 31 August 2026 inclusive and has closed, so foreign spend now costs the MITC's standing 3.5%
- official Shared RuPay MITC tariff sheet — RuPay Cashback joining ₹499, annual ₹499 reversed with GST above ₹2,00,000 of eligible spend, and 3.5% on foreign currency
- official Service Guide — "Cashback across both categories is capped at ₹400" and "there is no separate Rewards programme" on this card