Last Updated on December 15, 2020 at 9:48 am
This is a review of HDFC Infinia Credit card one of the best super-premium cards available in the country. It’s the top of the line among the cards offered by HDFC Bank in terms of the benefits offered.
About the author: Arjun is a financial services professional, keen about all things personal finance and with a special enthusiasm about Credit Cards and the points and rewards associated with the instrument.
The card, pretty much exclusive for existing bank customers is generally obtained by requesting the Relationship Manager. As per unofficial sources, one has to check a couple of boxes here – an existing credit card line of >8 Lakh and an annual gross income > 40 Lakh. In other words, the individual in question has to be of High Networth.
Once you have managed to get through the door, let’s see the benefits the card has in store. The card is usually free for the first year and comes with an annual fee of INR 10,000 +GST. The renewal fee is waived for spends above INR 8 Lakh, but even if you don’t make it, on payment of the renewal fees, reward points worth the same amount is credited to the card account.
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There are two main benefits of this card –
- A Default Reward Rate of 3.3% (Rs 3.30 for Every Rs 100 spent)
Unlike other popular rewards card of the American Express and Diners variants, this card is available on the Visa Infinite or World Mastercard platform. This means that the acceptability of this card is un-parallel. The cardholder gets 5 reward points for every INR 150 spent anywhere except only for wallet reloads & fuel purchase. Each reward point is valued at Re 1, when redeemed at the Infinia portal, and comes especially handy in booking travel itineraries (hotels and flights)
The icing on this reward point cake is HDFC Bank’s 2X and 10X programs. 2X points for dining at a standalone restaurant and up to 10X points for travel and shopping spends on HDFC Bank Smartbuy portal. Most gift vouchers bought from the portal qualify for the 10X rewards, with some trendy ones like Amazon and Flipkart having a 5k purchase limit every calendar month. But with 10X points, the card effectively becomes a 33% cashback card.
- Unlimited lounge access at International Airports for Self and add-on Cardholder
The card comes with a Priority Pass membership for the primary cardholder as well as the add-on cardholder, and the Priority Pass membership cards are included in the welcome kit. This membership comes with unlimited lounge access at all priority pass lounges in airports across the world. In domestic airports, lounge access is taken care of by swiping the credit cards themselves via the tie-ups Mastercard and Visa have with the domestic lounges. For a business traveller or someone on a personal multi-country tour, this is an amazing perk.
Other benefits of the card include low Forex markup fee of 2% (which when combined with a 3.3% cashback means a reward of about 1% on foreign currency spends). For the golf aficionado, there is unlimited complimentary golf games at leading courses across India and select courses across the world along with unlimited complimentary Golf coaching at select golf courses across India. Insurance coverage is at par with other super-premium cards covering emergency overseas hospitalization, air accident and fraud protection.
In terms of ease of use, the Visa/ Mastercard platform makes the card easily acceptable. The card has a dedicated helpline where one does not have to navigate through IVR. They also have 24X7 Global Personal Concierge services for travel and entertainment and other business experience requests across the world.
After looking at the card value proposition (even after some devaluations over the years), it becomes a tough ask to put the finger on what can be improved here. In my mind, there is only 1 aspect – the reward point earnings could be made more transparent akin to ICICI or American express, where the points earned against each transaction can be tracked online. Here, the only way to so that would be in a conversation with a phone banker.
Up until about recently, HDFC Bank’s Diners Club Black had a slight upper hand over Infinia, in-spite of having lower acceptance due to the ability of the points to be converted into air-miles across multiple airlines and similar points earnings potential. However, in June 2020, a points-earning ceiling of 7,500 points per month for Diners Black as against 15,000 for Infinia has cemented its status.
Not only in the HDFC line-up, but HDFC Infinia Credit Card is also currently the best super-premium credit card in the Indian market in terms of value derived from spends.