DOC Compass — Offers, decoded

Reader vil asked us to put together a post on ‘things everybody should know about HSBC credit cards‘. We’ve done similar posts on other card issuers before:

So I thought why not. I thought we’d put together a full list of the cards they offer, the best cards and also the things people should know.

Full List Of HSBC Credit Cards

Best Credit Cards

Premier World Elite

Read our full review

Sign up bonus of 50,000 points, points are worth 1.5¢ each for travel or can be transferred to travel partners. Annual fee of $395 although partially offset by $100 in Lyft/Uber credit and $100 air travel credit. Unfortunately requires a $100,000 combined balance with HSBC to be eligible. Still very weak compared to other high annual fee cards from other card issuers.

HSBC Cash Rewards

Read our full review

Most people are interested in this because it’s a Mastercard with no foreign transaction fee and earns 1.5% cash back. Mastercard usually gives the best foreign currency rates and 1.5% back with no foreign transaction fee is good as well.

Things You Should Know

You can transfer HSBC points to airline & travel partners for Premium & Premier cardholders. The rate is 1:1 but they sometimes offer bonuses when transferring to British Airways. The last bonus was 35% and ran through January 4th. Transfer partners take around 3 days and there is no minimum transfer requirement. Travel partners:
- AeroMexico
- British Airways
- Jet Airways
- Singapore Airlines
- ~~Cathay Pacific~~. No longer a partner as of January 2018.
They often have checking sign up bonuses of $200-$750. Having a relationship with HSBC is necessary/makes it easier to get approved for their credit cards so you might as well get a bonus for setting up this relationship.
They will usually pull your Equifax credit report. If that’s frozen they will usually pull a different report.
There is no way to check for pre-approved offers.
Cards are not available to residents of Wisconsin.
Mixed reports on soft/hard pull for credit limit increases.
HSBC gives you an instant credit card number. They do not give you the expiry date or CVV2 number though so this is largely useless.
They do not give you any annual fee refund or prorate the annual fee if the card is cancelled.
You can have a maximum of two HSBC credit cards.
HSBC does not combine inquiries if you apply for two cards on the same day.
You cannot reallocate credit limits between cards with HSBC.
You cannot combine points across multiple HSBC cards.

What We Don’t Know

There are a lot of things we don’t know about HSBC credit cards that we’ve love to learn. If you know the answers to any of the following then please help us out in the comments below.