HDFC Bank tightens retention criteria for Infinia credit card
HDFC Bank has sent an email to some (or all?) Infinia credit card holders, announcing changes to their retention criteria for the card.
For now, the changes only pertain to retention, and not to any fees/charges. Going forward:
Spend Rs. 18 lakh in a financial year (Primary + Add-on card/s)
OR
Maintain a Relationship Value (RLV) of Rs. 50 lakh with the bank (where RLV = combined average monthly balances in Savings, Current, Fixed and Recurring Deposit accounts).
Wow, that’s quite the change.
Till last month, the question on everyone’s mind would’ve been, “How do I maximise the potential of this Infinia card?”
Now, it is, “How much effort and money am I willing to spend/block to keep this Infinia card?”
What this means now
From the bank’s point of view, it is probably justified. HDFC Infinia is an invite-only premium credit card, and one of the top credit cards in India. The bank wants to ensure it retains that exclusivity among its cardholder base.
During COVID, they upgraded several cardholders (like me) from Regalia to Infinia, and I’ve been mostly happy with the card, barring a few quirks. For me, the HDFC Bank credit card has always been lifetime free across variants right from the Classic Visa in 2002, then Platinum, followed by Regalia, and in 2021, Infinia.
For a regular Infinia cardholder paying annual fees, there are now two questions:
1. Can you justify the annual fee of Rs. 12,500 + GST annual fee?
2. Can you satisfy HDFC Bank’s Rs. 18 lakh spend/year or Rs. 50 lakh RLV retention criteria?
I hold the lifetime free PVC variant, so the first question doesn’t apply. I also don’t spend too much on this card, so I’m clearly not the bank’s core/desired base.
I think that’s a totally fair call – the bank decides who gets the card, and how it should be ideally used.
Does the retention criteria work?
For me, it doesn’t.
All credit cards issuers now uniformly disallow accumulation of reward points on a plethora of categories. These exclusions keep increasing with time, limiting opportunities to get points.
On top of that, some merchants and payment gateways have begun levying a processing/platform fee for payments via credit card. Reminds me of offline shopkeepers from early 2000s charging 2-3% for credit card payments.
Distorting my spending pattern by forcing me to spend Rs. 18 lakh per year just on Infinia is too much. If I get better deals/discounts or points conversion on other credit cards, I will obviously use those.
Lastly, keeping Rs. 50 lakh parked with HDFC Bank Savings/Current A/c or Fixed Deposit (and then paying income tax on all that interest) seems excessive. Their FD rates aren’t competitive either. There are better ways to utilise that money.
If they’d included Demat Account value as part of the RLV, this proposition would have been somewhat feasible.
While some cardholders need to meet the criteria ASAP, others (like me), have been generously given the upcoming financial year to “align my spends/RLV” with the retention criteria. According to the bank,
Your Infinia in FY’26:
As one of our valued clients, the above requirement has been waived off for Financial Year 2026 and your card access remains uninterrupted till March 2027. The first review of these new criteria will take place in April 2027.
What next?
Well, the Infinia credit card is still a fantastic card and some of its benefits are still among the best.
But “fantastic credit card” and “fantastic credit card for me” are two different things.
For me, a credit card is just a convenience, so I neither use it excessively for manufactured spends, nor to just stack up points and vouchers/gift cards each month to squeeze every last worth of benefit.
As my Infinia card is lifetime free, I’ll keep using it as I usually do. The bank may either cancel the card or issue a downgrade, so wait and watch till April 2027.
P.S: W.e.f July 2026, HDFC Bank has tweaked their Infinia credit card benefits further, and this time it’s the SmartBuy accelerated reward points. While retaining the overall monthly accelerated rewards cap of 15,000 points, they have introduced a sub-cap on purchase of brand vouchers, limiting it to 3,000 points only. This translates to Rs. 22,500 of voucher purchases per month.
So basically, it means you can still continue to get 15,000 points every month. However, instead of using only the brand voucher route, you now need to spend on hotel/flight bookings or via other merchants to get the other 12,000 reward points.
Your thoughts?
