HDFC Diners Club Privilege Credit Card Review

HDFC Bank recently added more benefits & privileges to the already most popular Diners Black and along with it raised the annual fee to Rs.10,000. That may not work out for all and still some cardholders might need better benefits compared to Diners Club Miles at an attractive fee, so I believe that’s how HDFC Diners Privilege came to the picture.

Diners Privilege is positioned a bit above Club Miles and below Diners Black. Its basically a trimmed down version of Diners Black and comes with 1/4th of its fee. Let’s see the benefits in detail.

Joining Fees

• Joining/Annual Fee: 2,500 INR+GST (First Year Free usually)
• Welcome Benefits: Complimentary memberships with Zomato Gold, Amazon Prime, Times Prime, Big Basket Star, MakeMyTrip Double Black (if fee is levied)
• Renewal Fee waiver: Spend Rs. 3L in 12 Months

Its indeed interesting to see that HDFC is moving the welcome benefit from reward points to memberships.

While Amazon Prime & Zomato gold is a good one among, rest brands aren’t attractive enough. But anyway you can get it as FYF and get renewal fee waiver based on spend.

Reward Points

Regular Rewards

• Earn 4 Reward Points for every Rs. 150/- spent
• 1 RP = Rs.0.50 for Hotels/Flights (1.3% Reward Rate)
• 2 RP = 1 Airmile (~1.3% Reward Rate)
• Accelerated Rewards: 10X Rewards – Smartbuy + Diners Partners (13% Reward Rate)

Its surprising to note that Diners Privilege – a superior card compared to Diners Club Miles has lower conversion ratio for Airmiles. Maybe HDFC decided to keep Club Miles exclusive for that reason.

Note: Max. Cap for 10X Diners Partners is 10,000 compared to 5000 for Club Miles.

Milestone Rewards

• Monthly Milestone: Complimentary choice of any 1 voucher can be availed amongst Ola Select membership or BookMyShow or TataCLiQ worth Rs. 500 every month on spends of Rs. 40,000 in a calendar month
• Yearly Milestone: Complimentary annual memberships can be availed from below partners upon achieving annual spend milestone of Rs 5 Lakhs at the time of card anniversary. Zomato Gold, Amazon Prime, MakeMyTrip Double Privilege, Times Prime, BigBasket Star.

So if you’re hitting the monthly milestone regularly, you get a net reward rate of ~2.3% which is pretty decent.

And its tough to put a % on Yearly milestone as some may or may-not use the membership benefits. So just consider it as an added advantage.

Airport Lounge Access

• Domestic & International: 12 Complimentary access / Calendar year
• Above limits are shared with add-on cards as well.

Remember that the credit card itself gives you access to lounges both within India & in foreign countries, so you don’t need to deal with another set of plastic.

Also, as Delhi & Bangalore got separate section for Diners Cardholders recently, it makes sense to hold a Diners Credit Card.

Golf Privileges

• 2 Complimentary Golf Games per Quarter

This is an unbelievable benefit to see on a credit card of this range as Golf games costs a lot for Banks that even  CITI Prestige  which is priced at Rs.20K annual fee had to revoke that benefit .

And given the usual restrictions in golf bookings, 2/qtr is more than enough for most people. But of-course this will stay only as long as not many uses it.

Other Benefits

• Foreign Exchange Markup fee: 1.99% + GST (get additional 1% cashback by enabling Global value programme )
• Credit Shield: 9 Lakhs

How to Apply?

• New Application Eligibility: >6 Lakh Annual Income
• Upgrade: Limits above 2.5 Lakhs on existing HDFC card with good spends would help.

The new upgrade forms with Diners Privilege option is out, so if you need to apply for this new card, you may do so easily via branch.

Speaking about design, the card looks pretty good outdoors and bit dull indoors