travelwith.cc

The issuer board

Every HSBC credit card.

20 cards on the desk, ranked #7 to #974 against every other card in India — not against each other. Fees run ₹0 to ₹2,75,000, and 6 of them are genuinely free for life. 9 of the 20 we carry without ranking, because HSBC publishes no fee or no earn table for them — they are listed at the bottom, with what we do know.

how this board is ordered fold that back up

Ordered by our board, best first. The rank is the card's position among all Indian cards we price, so a gap between two rows is other issuers' cards sitting between them.

RBI, July 2026: 9,87,898 cards in force — 0.8% of every credit card in India · ₹2,014 cr spent on them that month, 70% of it online.

The one worth having

#7 in India Keep

HSBC Premier (Metal)

3% on nearly everything, if you're rich enough for HSBC to say yes.

₹88,000 ranking value a year at ₹3L/month
₹12,000 joining + ₹20,000/yr what it costs
3.0% headline earn rate
Read the verdict →

Narrow 20 HSBC cards

network, lounges, the fine print and what you can be approved for fold that back up

The first seven narrow the board — a card that isn't what you asked for is hidden, not greyed, because six hundred dimmed rows are a hazard rather than a filter. Income is different: it greys the cards you can't be approved for and prints the reason, since "you can't get this" is worth knowing. Spend categories come from each card's own MITC/T&C exclusions; a card that publishes no rule for a category stays, because silence isn't a claim. Abroad and late fee read the issuer's own MITC line: 3.5% is India's norm, so "under" means cheaper than standard, and a card whose document states neither is filed under "not published" rather than assumed cheap. Your picks live in the URL, so the link you copy is the board you're looking at.

The board

All 11 priced cards, best to worst.

rank · card · fee (what you pay to get it) · headline earn rate, per ₹100 of ordinary spend · verdict

  1. #7 HSBC Premier (Metal) ₹12,000 joining + ₹20,000/yr 3.0% Keep
  2. #19 HSBC TravelOne ₹4,999 fee 2.0% Keep
  3. #44 HSBC Privé ₹2,75,000 fee 3.3% Keep
  4. #46 HSBC Taj ₹1,10,000 fee 0.8% Downgrade
  5. #61 HSBC Live+ ₹999 fee 1.5% Keep
  6. #62 HSBC RuPay Cashback ₹499 fee 1.0% Keep
  7. #75 HSBC Platinum ₹0 fee 0.7% Keep
  8. #76 HSBC RuPay Platinum ₹0 fee 0.7% Keep
  9. #837 HSBC Smart Value ₹0 fee 1.0% Keep
  10. #925 HSBC Advance Platinum ₹0 fee 1.3% Cancel
  11. #951 HSBC Spencer's Retail Classic ₹0 joining + ₹250/yr 0.8% Cancel

Carried, not ranked

9 cards HSBC won't put a number on.

Each of these is missing the fee, the earn table, or both, in every document HSBC publishes. We keep the card — its page, its lounge row, its sources — and we refuse to rank it, because a net-value number computed against a fee nobody published would be wrong by exactly that fee. Each promotes itself onto the board above the day the document lands.

  1. HSBC Corporate Travel and Entertainment ₹2,000 fee earn n/p
  2. HSBC Corporate Purchasing Card ₹2,000 fee earn n/p
  3. HSBC Central Travel Card ₹2,000 fee earn n/p
  4. HSBC Virtual Card for Business ₹2,000 fee earn n/p
  5. HSBC MakeMyTrip Signature ₹3,499 fee earn n/p
4 more we carry without a number
  1. HSBC MakeMyTrip Platinum ₹499 fee earn n/p
  2. HSBC Westside Fee not published earn n/p
  3. HSBC Gold ₹0 fee earn n/p
  4. HSBC Classic ₹0 fee earn n/p

Our standing verdicts

14 keep · 1 downgrade · 5 cancel

What these cards pay in

HSBC Reward Points · HSBC Cashback · Taj Reward Points · HSBC Spencer's Retail Reward Points