The Best Credit Cards in India by HSBC

The Bottom Line

The Cashback Credit Card is the best credit card from HSBC India, if you spend more than ₹10,000 on your card each month. You can earn a net reward yield of 0.9-1.2% on all your spend with this credit card.

It offers 1.5% cashback on all online spends and 1% cashback on all offline spends. It has an annual fee of ₹750, which gets waived if you spend more than ₹1 lacs on the card, in a year.

The cashback is automatically credited to your account every month. This means you do not have to deal with the hassle of redeeming / converting vouchers or reward points.

If you spend less than ₹10,000 a month on your card, we recommend the Smart Value Credit Card. This card has a net reward yield of about 0.4% on all spend up to ₹10,000.

The Smart Value card gives 0.6% effective rewards for all online, dining and telecom payments and 0.2% for all other spends.

If you have the option, consider getting your credit card from another provider like Axis Bank or SBI Card. The best cards and card combos from these providers offer much higher reward yields (2.3-3.0%) than anything from HSBC India. That difference can add up to thousands of rupees in a year.

Table 1: All our recommendations

Table 2: Recommended Reward Redemption Options

Everything we recommend

Who this is for

If you are a HSBC Bank customer and you want to get a credit card this guide is for you. We recommend the best credit cards, no matter what your spending level is.

We have friends who have raised maximizing credit card rewards to an art form. However not everyone wants put so much effort tracking deals, discounts, reward caps and spending categories.

Most of us simply want a solution that is easy to manage – good enough, not perfect. If that’s you, you are in the right place.

In our guides for other credit card providers (HDFC Bank, SBI Card etc.) we have also recommended card combos that help you supercharge your rewards without a lot of micromanaging.

However, HSBC offers only 4 credit cards in India and juggling more than one of those will not meaningfully increase your rewards. So we do not recommend any card combos for HSBC customers.

As we suggested earlier, if you have the option, consider getting your credit card from another bank or credit card company. The best cards and card combos in India offfer much higher reward yields than anything from HSBC India.

How we picked

Banks and credit card companies in India offer hundreds of credit cards. Each credit card has a different set of rewards and other terms and conditions, which makes it difficult for most of us to figure out which card is best for us.

We cut through this complexity by ranking each card on its Net Reward Yield, which measures the total effective discount you receive in form of rewards, when you charge your expenses to the card.

To calculate the net reward yield of a credit card, we create 5 standardized spending profiles of a typical customer with different income levels. We then simulated the total rewards a customer with each spending profile would get on that card, based on the reward schedule for that card.

Table 3: Standardized Spending Profiles

Our reward calculations attempts to account for different types of rewards (cashback, points, miles etc.), reward caps by spending category, bonuses, fees and differences in realizable value of the rewards depending on how you redeem them (e.g. on Bank website as statement credit vs. for flight bookings).

We prefer cards with higher rewards yields, lower income thresholds and lower fees.

We apply this standardized methodology to every HSBC credit card, allowing you to zoom in to the best credit cards for you.

If you’re willing to manage multiple cards, you can supercharge your total rewards compared to using a single card.

However, managing multiple credit cards requires some effort.

At a minimum, you need to:

• Sign up for the card
• Set up the monthly credit card bill payments (monthly effort or one-time depending on the banks involved)
• Review your statement periodically
• Remember to claim the reward (in some cases)
• Remember to get the annual fee waived (in many cases)

More work is also required to figure out which card to use where and possibly change the setup on various sites and apps to use a different card.

So while adding more and more cards to the mix can keep increasing the potential benefits (at least for high spenders), we think most people would want to manage another card only if the additional benefit is meaningful and the additional mental load low.

With that in mind we decided to identify sets of 2 credit cards that will work well together for most people i.e. so that you can easily remember which card to use where, meet the minimum spend & other conditions and not lose track of all the admin stuff like paying the bill and getting annual fee waived.

To find the best card combinations, we considered all card pairs for to figure out the combos that work best with each other to maximize rewards.

In testing a pair of cards, we assumed that only one card will be used for each spending category and it would be the one with the higher rewards in that category.

We think this is reasonable as you only need to know which card to use in which situation and don’t need to keep track of your spending on each card through the month.

We think most people do not want to obsessively track their spend by card and category on a daily basis. So we have tried to avoid a situation where you need to switch from one card to other based on how much you have spent on it during the month, in total or for a specific category. That’s too much work for most people.

As mentioned above, we found that combining multiple cards strategically did not give better rewards with HSBC Bank’s cards. We found that most people would do just fine by selecting our top pick in their spending category and using it for all spending.

You can read more about our credit card recommendation methodology here.

The Best Card for Spends up to ₹10,000

The Smart Value Credit Card is the best entry level credit card from HSBC India. It has no joining or annual fees and gives you a net reward yield of about 0.4% on all your spend.

Table 4: Feature Summary – Smart Value Credit Card by HSBC India

The Smart Value Card gives 3 reward points for every ₹100 spent online and on dining & telecom bills. All other retail spending earns 1 reward point.

Since each reward point is worth about ₹0.20 on the HSBC Rewards Platform , you get about a 0.6% reward for spending online, and for dining & telecom bills, while the remaining spend earns 0.2%.

The 3X enhanced rewards for spending on online, dining and telecom categories is capped at 1000 rewards points a month or about ₹200. The basic reward of 0.2% on all other retail spending has no caps.

The Best Card for Monthly Spend of ₹10,000+

The Cashback Credit Card by HSBC Bank is our recommendation if your monthly card spend is more than ₹10,000 each month. We estimate that you earn a net reward yield of 0.9-1.2% on all your monthly spend above ₹10,000 with this card.

Table 5: Feature Summary – Cashback Credit Card by HSBC India

The Cashback card offers 1.5% cashback on all online spends (except wallets) and 1% cashback on all offline spends.

There is a ₹250 per month cap on the 5% cashback earned on Amazon India. Other than that, there is no cap on the cashback you can earn with this card. That makes this is the best card from HSBC India, whether you spend ₹10,000 a month or ₹2 lacs a month.

This card has an annual fee of ₹750, which is waived if you spend more than ₹1 lacs in a year.

The Cashback Credit Card is, as the name says, a cashback card. This means you don’t need to worry about redeeming gifts vouchers, converting points or having the rewards expire. The reward is automatically credited into your account and offset against bills due.

Table 6: All HSBC India Credit Cards Ranked by Rewards Yield

Table 7: Key Terms for HSBC India Credit Cards