HDFC Regalia Gold Credit Card Detailed Review – 2023

By | March 23, 2024
90. HDFC Regalia Gold

HDFC Regalia Gold credit card is the new card by HDFC Bank. Regalia credit cards have been in the market for over a decade now. There have been many variants of this credit card, namely Regalia, Regalia First (discontinued) and now the Regalia Gold. So, how does the Regalia Gold credit card fare in comparison to the original Regalia and whether it’s worth applying, read to find out

HDFC Regalia Gold Credit Card

HDFC Regalia Gold Credit Card

Apply Regalia Gold Now!

Fees and Eligibility:

  • Annual fees INR2,500 + GST. Waived on annual spending of INR400,000.
  • Salary of INR1 lakh/month or ITR of 12lakh/annum.

Rewards and Benefits:

  • Welcome-Benefit:
    • Club Vistara Silver Tier and MMT Black membership for a year on spending INR100,000 in the first 90 days.
  • Milestone Benefits:
    • 5k vouchers every quarter on spending 1.5lk in a calendar quarter
    • 5k flight voucher on spending 5lk in a year. Another 5k flight voucher on spending 7.5lk in a year.
  • Reward Points:
    • Standard Reward Rate: 4 reward points for every INR150 spent. 1 Reward point = 0.50 paisa (1.33% reward rate).
    • Accelerated Reward Rate: 5x reward rate (~6.7% reward rate) on specific brands i.e. M&S, Myntra, Nykaa and Reliance Digital. A monthly cap of 5k points.
    • No reward points on fuel transactions, wallet loads, rent payments and tax payments.
    • Fuel surcharge waiver
  • Lounge Access:
    • Domestic: 12 complimentary domestic lounge access every year.
    • International: 6 international lounge access via PP.
    • International lounge access is also shared between primary and add-on cardholders. However, no restrictions apply to simultaneous accesses.

Positives about Regalia Gold credit card

Base reward rate of 1.33% i.e. 4 RPs on every 150 spent

The base reward rate of Regalia Gold is the same as the old Regalia. That is the reward rate is 1.33%. The reason it’s positive is that given the times we are in, where every benefit is taken away the bank has kept it as is.😃

Decent welcome benefits

As part of welcome benefits, HDFC Regalia Gold offers Club Vistara Silver Tier and MMT Black Membership. However, to avail of the welcome benefits you need to spend 1lk within 90 days of the card issuance.

Not sure how worthy MMT Black is, but Silver Tier on Vistara offers priority check-in thru the Premium Economy counter and a 5kg increased baggage allowance. Do note that nothing is mentioned for the second year. Thus safe to assume that Vistara Silver and MMT Black won’t be available in the second year.

Further, do not forget that you get 2500 gift vouchers as part of the welcome kit if you are paying the fee for the first year.

Good quarterly milestone benefits

HDFC Regalia Gold offers 1500 vouchers for spending 1.5lk every calendar quarter. The calendar quarter is defined as Jan-Mar; Apr-Jun; Jul-Sep; Oct-Dec. Thus, it is ideal to apply for Regalia Gold at the start of a quarter, so that you can double dip for welcome benefits and quarterly benefits.

Under quarterly milestones, you can opt for vouchers from MMT Hotels, Marriott Experience, Myntra, M&S and Reliance Digital. Among the brands listed, I think only Myntra is useful where the daily needs stuff are available. Others are something that you won’t probably need every quarter.

However, the good thing is T&Cs here mention that you can use multiple vouchers in the same order. However, the grey area is validity is not mentioned. It will be mentioned on the voucher itself. Thus if the validity of the vouchers is a year then you may be able to club multiple quarterly milestone vouchers. Let’s hope the validity is a year and not just a few months.

Apply Regalia Gold Now!

Flight vouchers a good topup

Another milestone benefits that the HDFC Regalia Gold credit card offers are complimentary flight tickets worth 5k on spending 5lk and 7.5lk in an anniversary year, i.e. a total of 10k on spending 7.5lk. Not many details are available about the flight ticket, as in, is it a voucher from MMT/Cleartrip etc or a specific airline and its validity.  Here again, I hope that the cardholder should be allowed to combine the 2 vouchers/tickets to have a decent redemption value.

Accelerated RPs on selected brands

HDFC Regalia Gold credit card also offers 5x reward points on spending at select merchants. They are Myntra, Nykaa, Reliance Digital and M&S. Effectively you get a 6.7% reward rate on these merchants. Monthly capping is 5000 bonus reward points across all merchants combined i.e a maximum shopping of ~77k per month. Not bad. The good thing about this offer is this works for both e-com and POS transactions. I expect this list of merchants will be dynamic, i.e. may expand or reduce with time.

SmartBuy benefits

HDFC Regalia Gold credit card will offer the same benefits that HDFC Regalia offers on the SmartBuy platform. The brief table is below for ready reference.

Regalia Smart Buy Rewards

Gold Catalogue- increases reward rate to 1.7%

HDFC Bank mentions that the Regalia Gold credit card has a gold catalogue where the redemption value for every point is 65p. This means if reward points are redeemed for the gold catalogue your reward rate will be 1.7% instead of 1.33%. 😊

However, again we don’t know what is included in the gold catalogue. I hope it has some good brand voucher and not stuff such as a duffle bag, pen drive, mixer grinder etc.

Negatives of Regalia Gold credit card

There is a capping on grocery purchase

HDFC Regalia Gold credit card will not give reward points for spending on fuel, wallet load, EasyEMI transactions, and rent & government payments i.e. tax payments.

While the above is all okay, what is baffling is HDFC Bank has put a cap on grocery purchases. You can earn only 2000 reward points in a month for grocery purchases.

Not clear flight voucher is for a specific airline or a website voucher

As such, a complimentary flight ticket is a good addition to milestone benefits. However, as mentioned earlier it’s not clear whether the 5k reward is in form of a travel website voucher or a specific airline voucher. I would prefer a travel website voucher, as it gives flexibility and more options.

Further, not sure if we can club multiple vouchers together and what is the validity of those vouchers.

Gold catalogue what in it?

As already discussed above, hope the gold catalogue that gives 65p redemption value has some good vouchers and not a pen drive, duffle bag etc

Rewards are in form of vouchers

The cumulative reward rate on the Regalia Gold credit card for 7.5lk spent is 3.5%, however, most of the value comes in form of brand vouchers. Though we have a few good options among brands it is sort of restrictive. I would have preferred, 3k points for every 1.5lk spent in a quarter rather than 1500 brand vouchers.

Comparison with Regalia and other cards

Below is the dynamic excel to compare how the Regalia Gold credit card fares against the Regalia credit card. I have also added, Axis Ace(Apply Now), SBI Cashback(Apply Now) and Amex MRCC(Apply Now) in the comparison.

HDFC Regalia Gold credit card gives a peak reward rate of 3.5% at 7.5lk annual spending vs a 2.3% peak reward rate for HDFC Regalia at 8lk spending. Thus, overall, the Regalia Gold credit card gives around a 1% higher reward rate.

Further, below is a table that shows how the reward moves at different levels of spend. The interesting thing here is for annual spending of up to 5lk, HDFC Regalia offers a better reward rate than Regalia Gold. It is only for annual spending of above 5lk that HDFC Regalia Gold will make sense over the old Regalia.

Regalia Gold Reward Chart

Conclusion

Mixed feelings about the HDFC Regalia Gold credit card. On paper, the reward rate is definitely higher than the HDFC Regalia. However, since most of the rewards are in form of brand vouchers, which are restrictive in nature, I am not sure if we can extract maximum value. My experience with vouchers is if not used they are wasted or I tend to give a discount to friends or family. Thus, the value of 16k brand vouchers may be lower than that.

I am again somewhat confused as to if HDFC Regalia is a cashback credit card or a reward point credit card or an airmiles credit card. Simply because the rewards are spread across multiple formats and we may not be able to maximize the value from them. Further, within every segment (cashback, reward and airmiles) many other credit cards give higher reward rates in a much cleaner format than the Regalia Gold credit card. For example, for someone looking for a cashback credit card Axis Ace(Apply Now) and SBI Cashback(Apply Now) credit cards will do the work. Someone looking for reward points credit card, Amex MRCC(Apply Now), Amex Platinum Travel(Apply Now) and StanC Ultimate (Apply Now) do a much better job. For airmiles, Axis Magnus(Apply Now), Axis Atlas(Apply Now), HDFC Infinia, HDFC Diners Black and in fact HDFC Regalia also does a much better job.

Apply Regalia Gold Now!

In conclusion, I don’t suggest taking HDFC Regalia Gold over HDFC Regalia. Obviously, I am not applying for this credit card. I suggest you too should evaluate it carefully before applying.

Photo by Lubo Minar on Unsplash

Disclaimer

In the interest of full disclosure, Credit Cardz may earn a referral bonus for anyone that’s approved through some of the links in this post. However, opinions and views expressed here are of the author's alone and not those of the bank, credit card issuer, or anyone else and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.

Author: CreditCardz

Hi, I am an avid credit card user who loves minting reward points on credit cards. I try to put every possible expense on credit card to earn maximum reward points and want realize my dream to travel the world using just rewards points.

9 thoughts on “HDFC Regalia Gold Credit Card Detailed Review – 2023

    1. Nikhil

      The reward point rate you mentioned in monetary terms.. in regalia you have calculated it wrong.
      26000*0.5 give about 13k.

      Reply
      1. CreditCardz Post author

        26000 reward pts will give 13k monetary benefits.
        Plus the qtrly milestones and annual milestones are worth 16k. Thats how you get 29k benefits on the card
        Hope this explains

        Reply
  1. P Harish Kumar

    Assuming I have a millenia card, shall I take regalia or regalia gold?

    Reply
  2. australiajewellerystore

    You cannot make EMIs on the purchase of gold or any kind of jewelry. The Dineout Passport Membership card covers only a select few cities. I myself have been using it since last 8 years and they have upgraded it from silver.

    Reply

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