When is the HSBC TravelOne annual fee waived?

The HSBC TravelOne charges ₹4,999 as a joining fee and the same ₹4,999 as an annual fee. HSBC reverses the annual fee when the card’s eligible spend in an anniversary year goes past ₹8,00,000, and the reversal takes back the GST billed on the fee too. Spend on add-on cards counts toward the same total.

How the waiver works

HSBC’s Key Fact Statement lists the TravelOne fee as ₹4,999, waived for annual spends of ₹800,000 or more. The product page puts it more plainly: the annual fee is ₹4,999, or free if you spend more than ₹8,00,000 a year.

The service guide has the exact wording. The annual fee, including applicable GST, is fully reversed if total eligible spend across the primary and add-on cards during the relevant anniversary year exceeds ₹8,00,000. The year in that sentence is the card’s anniversary year, counted from the date the card was issued. It is not the calendar year or the financial year. A card issued in March counts spend from March to the next March, and the fee decision follows that date.

The fee is reversed after the fact. The ₹4,999 and its GST can post to the statement first and come back as a credit once the spend condition is met. A fee line on the statement does not by itself mean the waiver failed.

Add-on cards pool with the primary card: a household that splits spend across a primary and an add-on card reaches the threshold together. The service guide also lines up the add-on card’s annual fee date with the primary card’s, so there is one anniversary to track.

Spread evenly, ₹8,00,000 comes to about ₹66,667 a month. The waiver reads one annual total, so a large month counts as much as several small ones.

What the fine print leaves open

The documents differ slightly at the edge. The Key Fact Statement says ₹800,000 or more. The product page and the service guide say more than ₹8,00,000. Spend that lands exactly on the threshold may not be read the same way everywhere, and a margin above it removes the question.

None of the three documents says what “eligible spend” includes. The card’s own rules exclude fuel and rent from earning reward points, and HSBC treats instant EMI transactions as loans that earn no points. Whether those transactions also drop out of the waiver total is not stated. Earning points and counting toward a fee waiver are separate questions, and the published terms answer only the first.

The terms are also silent on refunds. A purchase refunded inside the anniversary year probably comes off the total, though HSBC does not say how. The careful reading is that only spend that stays on the card counts.

The service guide adds one more rule: no annual fee is refunded if the card is closed. Close the card after the fee posts and before the reversal arrives, and the ₹4,999 stays charged.

The joining fee is a separate charge. The product page lists it at ₹4,999 for a new card. The tariff sheet in the service guide repeats the reversal wording against the first-year fee as well, but the product page does not, so it is worth asking HSBC how a new card’s first-year fee is treated before counting on it.

What the spend earns along the way

The TravelOne earns 2 reward points per ₹100 as its base rate, and 4 per ₹100 on flights, travel aggregators and foreign-currency spends. On HSBC’s Travel with Points portal it pays 8 per ₹100 on flights and 12 per ₹100 on hotels, and those portal rates share a cap of 18,000 points a month.

At the base rate alone, ₹8,00,000 earns 16,000 points. What that is worth depends on where the points go. Moved 1:1 to Accor ALL, valued at ₹2.19 a point in the card record, it comes to ₹35,040. Moved 1:1 to Marriott Bonvoy at ₹0.45 a point, it comes to ₹7,200. Both are more than the ₹4,999 fee, so in a year the waiver is missed the points can still cover it.

A second threshold sits above the waiver. At ₹12L of annual spend the card pays 10,000 bonus reward points. The gap between the two is ₹4,00,000. A cardholder already past ₹8L has a separate reason to keep spending on the card; one well short of ₹8L is unlikely to reach the bonus.

The first-year welcome benefit is a smaller target with a short window: ₹1,000 cashback and a ₹3,000 Postcard voucher, worth ₹4,000 together, on ₹25,000 of spend within 30 days of opening the account. That spend sits inside the first anniversary year as well.

A worked example

Take a cardholder who puts ₹50,000 a month on the TravelOne. Over an anniversary year that is ₹6,00,000, which leaves them ₹2,00,000 short of the waiver, and the ₹4,999 fee stays on the statement. Closing the gap would take about ₹16,667 more each month, or the same total moved onto the card in a few large months before the anniversary date.

If an add-on card in the same household carries ₹2,00,000 of spend over the year, the pooled total reaches the threshold. Given the wording gap above, the pooled total needs to clear ₹8,00,000 with some room.

What to check on your own statement

Find the card’s issue date first. The anniversary year starts there, and the fee posts after it. Add up the spend on the primary and any add-on cards since that date, leaving out refunds, EMI conversions, fuel and rent, since HSBC does not say whether those count. Compare the figure with ₹8,00,000 and leave some room above it.

If the fee has already posted, look at the next statement or two for a reversal credit before treating it as lost, and keep the card open while that is pending.

The figures here come from the card’s catalog record and HSBC’s published terms as of the date shown. Krediit’s fee-waiver reminder counts the spend you log on the TravelOne against ₹8,00,000 and shows the shortfall before the anniversary date.