HDFC Regalia Credit Card Review

HDFC Regalia

HDFC Regalia is one of the oldest and one of the most popular Premium Credit Cards in India. The normal reward rate of this card is decent but with SmartBuy benefits (see rewards section below), this card can give returns up to 5%. Let us look into the details of this Credit card.

Fees

Joining Fee

Rs 2500 + GST (18%). You get 2500 reward points on paying the joining fee and free 1 year Zomato Gold membership on spending Rs 75,000 using the card within 3 months of card issuance.

Annual Fee

Rs 2,500 + GST (18%), Waived off on spending Rs 3L in an year. On paying the renewal fee, you get 2500 reward points which is equal to Rs 1,250 when redeemed for rewards.

Note: You can get the card lifetime free if you have an existing relationship with HDFC Bank

Eligibility for HDFC Regalia Credit Card

Net Salary: Above Rs 1L per month. However, you can get this card even if you don’t meet the income criteria and have a good relationship with HDFC bank.

Benefits

Reward points

4 Reward points every Rs 150 spent, which translates to 1.33% (1 reward point = Rs 0.50).

You can redeem these reward points for Hotel and flight bookings (up to 70% of the ticket value) or convert the points to various Airline Miles. You can also redeem your points for items from HDFC Bank rewards catalogue, but the conversion rate is too less.

Smartbuy accelerated rewards

Here comes the best part of HDFC Credit Cards. On selected merchants, you can get up to 5% cashback if you purchase via SmartBuy. This includes websites such as Flipkart, Amazon and many more. The upper limit of this cashback is Rs 2,000 points per month for Regalia.

Milestone benefits

10,000 reward points on spending Rs 5L in an anniversary year.
5,000 extra reward points on spending Rs 8L in anniversary year.

Airport Lounge Access

12 domestic lounge access per year through VISA/MasterCard Credit Card lounge program. 6 international lounge access to over 1000 airport lounges all over the world using the complementary Priority Pass membership you get with this Card. Out of these 6 international lounge access, 3 can be availed by the primary card holder and 3 can be availed by the add-on card holder (if add-on card is issued).

Low Foreign Currency Markup Fees

2% + GST (18%), one of the lowest in India. However, using the HDFC Global Value program, you earn 1% extra rewards (apart from the normal 1.3%) on Foreign transactions, which makes the effective foreign currency markup fee to only 1.36%.

Drawbacks

One major drawback of this Credit Card is that even if you have enough points, you can redeem only 70% of the booking amount using points and the rest 30% should be paid using the card.

Should you get it?

Combining the regular rewards and the milestone benefits, you can get returns of 2.3% with this card if you spend more than 5L in a year. Also, the cashback on SmartBuy takes the reward rate on selected merchants to up to 5%. Not bad, huh?

If you are looking for a Premium Credit card with decent rewards, the HDFC Regalia Credit Card is a good option to consider. However, there are other credit cards in the market like American Express Membership Rewards Credit Card which can give better rewards as compared to HDFC Regalia, if used strategically. I used HDFC Regalia for 4 months before I upgraded to the Diners Club Black Credit Card, a super premium Credit Card from HDFC.

Let me know your thoughts or queries on the Regalia credit card in comments below. Want me to review any other cards? Let me know in the comments below or using the Contact Me section of this website.

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