I would only recommend this for existing HDFC Bank customers - many companies with salary accounts allow no annual fees cards for their employees.
The regular annual fees (over Rs. 1, 000 for gold) while in line with other Indian cards seems excessive compared to US cards that mostly have no joining/annual fees at all.
https://hdfcbank.com/creditcard/cc_home.asp
To help put the fees in perspective, AmEx charges about US$50-75 annually for most of their cards in North America and are usually the most expensive.
Assuming the per-capita is over US$25, 000 in the US, that works out to less than 1 day’s income for the average person.
India has a per-capita of under US$400 so the annual fees should be $1-2 or about Rs. 50-95 for GOLD cards!
Even if we assume the avg card holder in India has 5-10x higher income ($3, 000-4, 000), the MAX fees should be around Rs. 750 for Gold cards (inclusive of all joining fees/taxes).
The AVG fees should be around Rs. 500/year for all Gold cards which should be discounted/waived at a 1% rebate (i.e., spend 100x the fees annually or about Rs. 50 K/year = Rs. 4, 170/month).
People with cars in Mumbai can spend over Rs. 900-1, 000/week on petrol alone so its not an unreasonable amount.
The reward points (Rs. 100 = 2 points) is good but could be a lot better by having frequent flyer miles, liters of petrol, or cash back as payout options.
You can offset your annual fees if you are paying any with the points also.
The merchandise available is quite limited and mostly undesirable but that’s totally a question of taste:
https://hdfcbank.com/rewcat/rphome.asp
Please read the FAQ first:
https://hdfcbank.com/rewcat/rpfaq.htm
there are a lot of catches/fees in claiming the points.
They’ve tried to make it as hard as possible!
All banks should be forced to disclose their APR (annual % rate) like US banks so its easy to compare across products and realise that the LOW 2.5% monthly compounded advertised on the web site is over 34.5% annually!
Foreign Currency Transactions
I had to make a couple of purchase from various web sites using my card and everything went fine except for the high markup they seem to charge. It was about Rs. 1.50/US$ (or about 3%) above the prevailing exchange rate for USD.
It seemed a little excessive to me (1-2% is the norm internationally).
Billing Cycles
Unlike US card issuers which allow the customer to change their billing cycles to dates that might better suit the individuals, HDFC Gold refuses to do so in my case citing ’system constraints’ which I KNOW is a bold-faced lie!
If US cards have been offering such services over the phone for over 5 years, and the HDFC system is about 1 year old, it must be possible.
My cycle ends on the 23rd of the month but the stmt only arrives almost 2 weeks later.
So all my reimbursable expenses get delayed for another month (the submission deadline is the 1st of the month).
I wanted to move my cycle earlier in the month (say 15-20th) so that my stmt can arrive before the 1st.
Card Site
They badly need a site where we can login and check our current balances & recent transactions like Citibank.
I had issues with the bill payment process from HDFC Bank to its credit card.
Now I’m on the automatic payment option where the full balance is deducted on the due date monthly.
That’s a little risky if you work in a small company without a corporate card (which HDFC now offers also but was not the case a year ago).
I need to change this to automatically deducting the minimum payment and paying the balance at my discretion from the bank site.
I had sent these suggestions and got the following response from the concerned person @ HDFC Bank:
- Its OK for a customer to enter their HDFC card # for the first payment but after that the system should remember that # for all future payments.
The option for the customer to pay another card # will always remain.
The page should have 2 options, pay an existing card or a new card #.
The existing cards would be on a drop down list to allow multiple cards to be paid.
Ans : THAT COULD BE A WORKABLE SOLUTION IN THE PRESENT SCENARIO WHERE NO OTHER FEATURE EXCEPT PAYMENT OF CC BILL IS POSSIBLE. HAVE RAISED IT TO OUR TECH GUYS AND SHALL UPDATE YOU ON THEIR RESPONSE.
- Once the card has been captured and verified, you can now even link to your card db and pull out the current balance making it more like paying other bills (electricity, phone, etc).
The security is handled by the fact that only payments can be made from the bank account to the card account and the user has to know the 16 digit #.
As an additional measures, the names could be compared on both accounts but actually you want to allow a banking customer to pay off any HDFC card for maximum flexibility.
If the names match, you could optionally display the balance due. This way the privacy of the card holder is preserved.
Ans: THE MECHANISM SUGGESTED BY YOU ONLY OFFERS THE CUSTOMER THE CONVENIENCE OF NOT HAVING TO KEY IN THE CARD NO EACH TIME HE HAS TO MAKE A PAYMENT. LINKING THIS TO THE CARD DB IS STILL SOMETHING THAT WILL TAKE TIME SINCE THAT DB IS ON A DIFF SYSTEM. EVEN ONCE THAT LINKING HAPPENS, FEATURES SUCH AS SHOWING THE PERSON HIS TRANSACTION DETAILS , PAYMENTS DUE, PAYMENTS MADE ETC WILL REQUIRE THAT THE PERSON GIVE A SIGNED REQUEST FOR LINKING OF HIS CARD TO A PARTICULAR CUST ID. AS FAR PAYING OF CC BILLS IS CONCERNED EVEN TODAY HE CAN PAY ANY CARD BILL WITH NO VERIFICATION.