Now Get 10X Rewards on Trains & Bus Bookings on HDFC Smartbuy

By | December 14, 2019

As you might be aware Hotels & Airline bookings along with Amazon & Flipkart shopping are the major ways you could get 10X rewards under Smartbuy 10X cap, now you can also book Trains & Busses on smartbuy and grab 10X rewards on select HDFC Bank Credit Cards.

While the Bus Booking option was said to be added few months back, I never noticed it until recently. That’s not a big news anyway as not many prefer to travel in bus for long distance which means your booking amount will be low and so the spending capacity and so the rewards.

But now India’s most popular passenger transport medium Trains are available for booking on Smartbuy. This is a big news for many as hitting 10X rewards capping for smartbuy just got easier and now some may happily prefer to book First Class Ac over others as getting 33% back is a nice reason to book one.

Note: The terms & conditions are same as that of Smartbuy 10X as per Dec 2019 and it does come under the same capping and not separate one.

Bottomline

Smartbuy is indeed getting bigger and better over the time but its also a sign of bad news coming sometime in the near future. The renewal benefit removal (5K points on paid Diners black cards) and increasing fee to 10K from 5K should help the bank to keep running these offers “to an extent”.

Given how easy it is to earn the 10X rewards via smartbuy, and provided the # of Diners Black card holders at the moment, you may very well expect a bad news in 2020. Keep that in mind while enjoy the party πŸ™‚

Thanks to all the readers who reported about the train availability update.

52 thoughts on “Now Get 10X Rewards on Trains & Bus Bookings on HDFC Smartbuy

  1. Dr Patil

    Thats great Sid. But ur last statement makes me worry as i just recently got Diners Black.. lol.

    Reply
      1. Jugnoo

        For Flight and hotel bookings Regalia Credit card members can redeem up to maximum of 70% of booking value through Reward Points.Rest will have to be paid via Credit Card.

        Reply
    1. Siddharth Post author

      Not at all. Just making sure that you don’t get into a conclusion that this offer would last lifelong.

      Reply
      1. Neo

        Given how HDFC does things, it wouldnt be beyond them to run a demo 10x-less month/quarter & create chaos

        Reply
  2. Aakash Anand

    Wow! First class Rajdhani Train is in cards
    Bad news ah!!! ENA Brother ipdi oru gundu ah thooki podringa!!!

    Reply
  3. Amann

    Sid

    Do you see HDFC removing benefits like 10x from DCB or launching a new card above it?

    Reply
  4. Arsh

    Not sure if 10x us applicable on train bookings because I saw nowhere on smartbuy website saying so

    Reply
  5. Prashant Gupta

    But Sid i think with annual fee increase and no points in liu, the offers will keep in coming for a while as the fee will already weed out low spenders and will be a hindrance for many. We are already seeing nee things every other day.

    Reply
    1. Neo

      But they have issued so many LTFs ( me included :)) that some sort of devaluation is sort of inevitable.
      Fingers crossed.

      Reply
  6. Umesh

    I saw it last weekend while booking a flight ticket. Booked train tickets on Wednesday using smartbuy, will update once I get 10x points..

    Reply
  7. Keyur

    Hey Siddharth thanks for the good news πŸ™‚
    I’ve clubmiles and am offered DCB with 10k fees. Considering that.
    Btw, do we get surcharge waiver/reward points for using DCB/any other HDFC CC at petrol pumps?
    I know we don’t get rewards for wallet loading (eg: paytm etc) so..

    Reply
  8. Ajai Dev

    I have around 88k points left in my DCB linked account and since I am traveling way less now and everything is anyways taken care of by my company I looked into redemption against TANISHQ Gift Vouchers “For Gold Coins” and ordered 28k worth of Vouchers but they came with a big stamp on them which says “NOT VALID ON GOLD COINS”

    The kicker is their normal voucher’s are valid for gold coins. With gold coins I would have gotten 0.32 per point value and now with normal stuff it goes way down.

    This is quite the hustle run by HDFC…

    Reply
    1. Jatin chopra

      Why would you not just take the statement credit @ 50p per point? Its the best option if you’re not travelling in near future !β‚Ή

      Reply
    2. Ankur

      But why havent you redeemed cash. 0.5 value straight.

      You would have got 44000 amount

      Reply
      1. Ajai Dev

        There are tax benefits with TANISHQ Gift Vouchers which is not so with cashback because that comes under ITR. Since I am on an upper slab I would have to pay tax’s for this cashback among other cashbacks also. According to my CA any amount that gets deposited in bank is liable whereas those in wallets with less value “<10k" is in a grey area.

        Reply
        1. Mohan

          When you redeem for cash credit, the amount comes to your credit card card account and not to your bank account. I am not sure if credit card reward as statement credit has any tax implication – it’s still a grey area IMO. Any expert thoughts on this?

          Reply
    3. aka

      you should have got 44000 statement credit..spent it on gold coins and still get approx 1500 points worth Rs 750/- !! you missed a trick here.

      Reply
  9. Nihar

    The train ticket booking through Smartbuy tells you how comitted HDFC is to grow this portal. Banking, Payment & lifestyle are getting converged worldwide and only this bank is holding its place in the face of wallets , Paytms and UPIs.
    It is not going to be a flash in the pan offering , but a much prolonged offering i reckon. It will open up huge traffic, when the big bang spends on airtravel go down as it seems in this economy, these train travels are an alternative. Only a market leader can do this , think about which all competition cards would be knocked out now . Yes 10 K fees reinstatement for DCB will cover some cost , but there’s so much more to this.

    Reply
  10. Awanish

    I am unable to book train ticket. it always throws the error on the step of entering IRCTC user Id that “user not verified, please re-enter”. even-though i am perfectly able to use the same credential at IRCTC portal. does someone else face the same issue ? what is the solution ? Please help! thanks

    Reply
      1. Anshul

        I did not face this issue. Was able to successfully book train ticket through Smartbuy.

        Reply
    1. Piyush

      facing same issue . called customer care they told clear cache and book again, but it didnt helped .
      Were you able to resolve the issue ?

      Reply
  11. Stalin

    Hi Guys, couple of queries regarding 10x n smartbuy…
    Whether 10x is applicable on ola wallet loading?
    What is the easiest way to checkon the 10x points credited in a statement cycle ?
    Smartbuy app is available for faster booking or we have to only rely on website ?
    Whether reward points r applicable for education spends in IIM website ? Also which one is recommended for education spends – Amex travel or DCB? TIA

    Reply
    1. Ankur

      Wallet loading does not give any points. 10x is issued mostly in T+4 or a weeks time but 90 days for amazon. Smartbuy is basically acting as a aggregator of sorts. Check t&c of Amex if it gives points on education.

      Reply
  12. Shashank

    Please be informed that you can’t book full seat for kids as smartbuy doesn’t have option to choose full berth for kids less than 12 years of age.. learned this after the ticket was booked..

    Reply
  13. KMS Rao

    There seems to be a problem in interface of smart buy with IRCTC Yesterday i have booked a ticket for a 11 year old child along with a elder and have selected berth preference also. There is no option for “Opt child berth” as in IRCTC. After making payment i have noticed that child was not alloted birth . I had to cancel the ticket and again rebook from IRCTC website. Have any one faced this problem.

    Reply
    1. Varun

      Did you checked the advanced option which allows you to provide additional details. I booked a tatkal ticket for me, my wife and infant baby and everything went fine. I also have IRCTC SBI card but still decided to pay via infinia. Hoping to get 10x rewards.

      Reply
  14. Arun

    Can we use reward points to buy redbus tickets? Or is 1:1 only for hotel and flight tickets?

    Reply
  15. Pranab

    @KMS Rao,
    I’ve faced the same issue, but it was on my favor.
    On 16th, while booking the tickets I didn’t found any option of not taking ‘Child berth’ but went on to complete the booking and to my surprise, berth wasn’t allotted by default (same as you). But on 18th, while booking CC seats, found option for ‘Child berth’. Maybe it took smartbuy few days to get every details on their platform.

    Reply
  16. Amit

    Will the increase in renewal cost apply to existing members as well or just for new members?

    Reply
  17. Shitesh Chaurasia

    Hi sid,
    I own sbi elite credit card but i dont like its renewal fess of 5k, with no complimentary rewards, similar to while joining.
    Now looking to shift to hdfc credit card.
    Im a frequent traveller both domestic and abroad and my yearly spends goes around 8 lakhs.
    Pls advice good combination of sbi and hdfc card to suit me better. I like sbi club vistara premier card but reward rate isnt that good
    Thanks

    Reply
  18. Anshul

    Good to book train tickets through Smartbuy. But god help you if you need to file a TDR.
    I had a harrowing experience with them on filing TDR. As it’s an agent tickets, this can’t be done online by the customer but needs to be done by the agent (Smartbuy in this case). However, to my surprise, they do not even know what TDR is, nor they know how to raise it nor have any process for the same. They couldn’t even figure out anything and the time by which the TDR was to be raised passed without any action/response from them. They just have a half-baked product. So risk it at your own while booking through them. Poor service/zero knowledge as usual for typical HDFC!

    Reply
    1. Dev

      You can cancel it through the smartbuy website. Its pretty easy to do the same.

      Reply
  19. Jambui

    They have removed himachal state bus from redbus-smartbuy but are available directly from redbus site.
    Plus prices are increased too.
    Hdfc is on dodgy ways.

    Reply
  20. Nihar

    Nit able to book tickets since 3rd Feb . CC charges Deducted but site don’t take you to IRCTC portal !

    Reply
    1. Praveen Katiyar

      @Nihar
      Please check have you breached 10 tickets per month per IRCTC account limit of tickets.
      It was case with me once.
      Hope it helps.

      Reply
      1. Nihar

        Thanks Praveen for the input . But it was cache problem I guess since I could use another Laptop to use my Smartbuy + IRCTC & book tickets.

        Reply
  21. Devraj Viswanathan

    I dont see the option on smartbuy anymore to book train tickets. Has it been removed?

    Reply
  22. Praveen Katiyar

    Recently thot of booking tickets from Delhi to Bagdogra using Smartbuy. Then i noticed its only major cities to and from for which we can book tickets. Can anybody tell the reason ? Not even many tier2 cities available.

    Reply
  23. Nihar

    Guys any idea for the cancelled train ticket will we get 10X points on the amount deducted. Couple of my group bookings were cancelled at last moment.

    Reply

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