HSBC Premier credit card - too good to be true?

[NM]

12 August 2026 – Annual fee
No annual fee will be charged from 12 August 2026.
We’ll refund any annual fees already charged to your account in the last year (from 13 August 2025) on a pro-rata basis.
The refunds will be processed by 12 October 2026, provided your account is still open at the time.

This came a good news for me. I have the HSBC Qantas Visa Platinum card and the same "No annual fee" condition apples. My first year fee was waiver ($0) and that initial free year was to expire Mid September so I was planning to close the card before then. But with other previously noting that HSBC does not pay rewards points for the final month when you close the account, I was to not spend on the card for the last statement period, forgoing the opportunity to continue earning 1.5 points/$ spend for the final month of my annual term. But now with no renewing of annual fee, I can continue using the card and will likely earn 6K+ points on it and just let it self-close in November and pay the final amount due when the final statement arrived. No more concern about missing out on the points from the last statement period when closing the account myself.

 

[aaa99]

The HSBC rewards website seems to only allow transfers to airline programs in multiples of 5000 points.

Is there any way around this? I am going to end up with some points orphaned.

The chat suggested spending more money to get the balance up . Wasn't going to do that

 

[asterix]

I've just spent some more to get myself to 40,000 at the end of the current statement period.

 

[BJReplay]

The HSBC rewards website seems to only allow transfers to airline programs in multiples of 5000 points.

Is there any way around this? I am going to end up with some points orphaned.

The chat suggested spending more money to get the balance up . Wasn't going to do that

I'm aiming for near enough for a multiple of 5,000 points, because it's a reasonably high point earning card, compared to alternatives.

But yeah, that's a coughty move not to allow the transfer of all points on a card they're forcibly closing on you.

 

[NM]

My HSBC card earns 1.5 QFF points/$ (direct sweep, so no minimum thresholds) for first 12 months, which ends in 7 days. So, I have been spending quite heavily on the card recently. Then it drops back to 1 QFF point/$ but with the annual fee waiver I plan to just let it fall into the abyss when it does its own natural death in a few months.

 

[Supersonic Swinger]

The HSBC rewards website seems to only allow transfers to airline programs in multiples of 5000 points.

Is there any way around this? I am going to end up with some points orphaned.

The chat suggested spending more money to get the balance up . Wasn't going to do that

That has always been the case, no? I wouldn't expect them to change anything with them shutting the card down...

 

[BJReplay]

That has always been the case, no? I wouldn't expect them to change anything with them shutting the card down...

Well, there is a difference between you not being able to redeem residual points because you choose to close an account, and you wanting to redeem points, but being unable to redeem them because you can't earn more to meet artificial redemption buckets and not being able to do anything else because they are removing access to the card and program.

A program that you may have paid annual fees for.

 

[Supersonic Swinger]

Well, there is a difference between you not being able to redeem residual points because you choose to close an account, and you wanting to redeem points, but being unable to redeem them because you can't earn more to meet artificial redemption buckets and not being able to do anything else because they are removing access to the card and program.

A program that you may have paid annual fees for.

I see your point, but I think HSBC aren't looking to salvage any customer goodwill (by saying you can redeem whatever your balance is for half the number of Velocity / KrisFlyer / Asia Miles) given that they are effectively writing off any goodwill by shutting the card business down.

 

[BJReplay]

I see your point, but I think HSBC aren't looking to salvage any customer goodwill (by saying you can redeem whatever your balance is for half the number of Velocity / KrisFlyer / Asia Miles) given that they are effectively writing off any goodwill by shutting the card business down.

No, indeed.

However, for the measly cost, of, on average, 2,500 points, they will alienate customers who have products in other geographies.

What they used to have was a globally unique product. Global banking.

It has been overtaken and beaten on price, features and lower fees in many cases by products from competitors like Wise, Revolut, and others.

Pissing off customers may prompt them to take all of their business elsewhere, from overseas jurisdictions, too.

 

[Supersonic Swinger]

No, indeed.

However, for the measly cost, of, on average, 2,500 points, they will alienate customers who have products in other geographies.

What they used to have was a globally unique product. Global banking.

It has been overtaken and beaten on price, features and lower fees in many cases by products from competitors like Wise, Revolut, and others.

Pissing off customers may prompt them to take all of their business elsewhere, from overseas jurisdictions, too.

Yes, but sadly they have been pulling back from "the world's local bank" for 15 years or more.

If you look at their corporate website (HSBC at a glance | HSBC Holdings plc), they now have 4 divisions:
1. HK
2. UK
3. Corporate & Institutional
4. International Wealth & Private Banking

If you're not in the UK or Chinese Asia, unless you are a corporate or with their Private Bank, they aren't really worried about us, certainly over some credit card rewards points.

 

[THR]

Well, there is a difference between you not being able to redeem residual points because you choose to close an account, and you wanting to redeem points, but being unable to redeem them because you can't earn more to meet artificial redemption buckets and not being able to do anything else because they are removing access to the card and program.

A program that you may have paid annual fees for.

Well they are refunding pro-rata annual fees - and I suspect, despite your claims, you don’t have business in other jurisdictions, most customers don’t, and they simply don’t care when they elect to shut the business down.

 

[BJReplay]

despite your claims

I never claimed that I did. I suggested that if people did, they'd be pissed off: However, for the measly cost, of, on average, 2,500 points, they will alienate customers who have products in other geographies.

 

[THR]

I never claimed that I did. I suggested that if people did, they'd be pissed off: However, for the measly cost, of, on average, 2,500 points, they will alienate customers who have products in other geographies.

They’re obviously capable of making informed business decisions.

 

[BJReplay]

They’re obviously capable of making informed business decisions.

That is a bold assumption.

Informed? Possibly. Rational? Less likely.

Compliant with corporate financial goals that may or may not properly risk assess future NPAT impacts? Who knows.

 

[serfty]

Well, there is a difference between you not being able to redeem residual points because you choose to close an account, and you wanting to redeem points, but being unable to redeem them because you can't earn more to meet artificial redemption buckets and not being able to do anything else because they are removing access to the card and program.

A program that you may have paid annual fees for.

My plan is to see how many points I need after my last statement before the 18th and make spend before that date to reach the next award threshold then clear the reward account out.

 

[VPS]

I just got my statement and I've spent $48585 so will pay that off and won't use it again.

 

[Supersonic Swinger]

That is a bold assumption.

Informed? Possibly. Rational? Less likely.

Compliant with corporate financial goals that may or may not properly risk assess future NPAT impacts? Who knows.

HSBC Group's profit before tax in 2025 was $30 billion.

Accounting materiality starts at 5% of that ($1.5 billion), but use only 10% of that ($150 million) as a noticeable impact on their group profit.

Assuming HSBC needs to have $100 of assets for every dollar of profit (a quick search I did suggested range was between $75 and $125), that would mean disaffected Australian HSBC retail customers would need to pull $15 billion of assets from remaining HSBC jurisdictions. Because they have a few stranded rewards points on the Australian credit cards HSBC is shutting down? I doubt it.

 

[BJReplay]

I doubt it.

Look, since this is a frequent Flyer forum, back in the day when I was in IT, I was working on the Y2K remediation project for Ansett.

The three word mantra for the project was "repair, remediate, replace" - repair a system (if you could), remediate any impacts (if you couldn't repair it), replace it if necessary.

One of the systems that I reviewed was the frequent flyer preferences system, and it had to be replaced. Source code had been lost, the vendor had gone out of business, it was going to break, and the issues couldn't be remediated.

I set out the reasons why it needed to be replaced, why it couldn't be repaired or remediated, what the impacts were likely to be, and moved on.

My contract finished. I actually got a call while I was in the delivery suite while Mrs BJReplay was giving birth to our first child from someone wanting to ask me a question about the system. I pretty quickly hung up on them, but a couple of days later called back, and referred them to my report. It pointed out that the system was going to totally fail, and the impacts would hit frequent flyer preferences - which would hit the frequent flyers who used the preference system the most (prefer forward aisle, vegetarian meal) who were most likely to be the most loyal frequent fliers.

When Y2K rolled around, Ansett's most loyal, highest status frequent flyers who never really bothered with choosing where they were seated, because their expectation was that:

• they would walk into the Golden Wing lounge
• they would be greeted by name
• they would be quietly handed a boarding pass for their flight just before the door was about to be closed
• they would be seated in 1A or 1D

discovered that, because the frequent flyer preferences system broke, there was chaos.

Their preferences weren't being applied to bookings because their bookings weren't showing up, because they were sorting into the wrong century - yes, Y2K was real; most systems were fixed.

They'd walk onto the plane having not looked at their boarding pass (and the lounge staff were too sht-scared to tell them about the problem) to discover that they were in 23E, and someone else was in 1A and 1D, and DYKWIA?

Ansett failed for lots of reasons (not least of which was their mixed lolly bag of aircraft types), but one contributing factor was that some of those frequent flyers were CEOs or chairmen of boards, and they pulled their entire companies travel from Ansett and sent it to Qantas.

That's the sort of consequence that shutting down an Australian division of HSBC doesn't seem to have - a company pulling its banking from HSBC, but if the CEO has just had to refinance their home loan because they don't like Pepper, and, having just got through that, discover that the bank is shortchanging them on frequent flyer points, and the CFO says "we're due for our five-year review of banking facilities" the CEO might just say "anyone but HSBC".

 

[SeatBackForward]

That's the sort of consequence

The value that isn't itemised in a ledger for the CFO to decide upon!