Diners Club Credit Cards in India and its Acceptance (2024)

I’ve a special respect for Diners Club International credit cards because they are the founders of credit cards and the first company to introduce credit cards and charge cards to the world which was later followed by American Express.

However, in the present scenario, the initiator is lagging behind the companies that emerged later. In India, its good to see that Diners Club does put enough efforts to capture HNI market through its partnership with HDFC Bank.

In-spite of their acceptance issues, with their frequent 10X promotions and unlimited lounge visits on all card variants, Diners club still stand on top of the line with their unmatched rewards and benefits.

By Partnering with HDFC bank – the credit card leader of the country, Diners Club International issues 3 Credit card Variants (as of Jan 2020) in Indian market to fit into customers of varied income slabs. We’ve reviewed most of them, here’s a quick recap..

Diners Club Credit Cards in India

1. HDFC Diners Club Black – (Reward Rate: 3.3%)
2. HDFC Diners Privilege – (Reward Rate: 1.3%)
3. HDFC Diners Club Miles – (Reward Rate: 1.3%)

Note: Diners Rewardz & Diners Premium are stopped. Diners Jet is out of topic.

HDFC Credit cards provides one of the best in class rewards and with Diners club credit cards, rewards goes unbelievably sky high with their 10X Rewards Promotions with which you can get upto whooping 33% reward rate on Diners Black Variant.

This means, all your Flight tickets, Flipkart/Snapdeal shopping are 33% cheaper than market price.

Impressive isn’t it? (Duration of this offer & participating merchants keeps changing from time to time)

Diners Club Unique Benefits

1. 10X Rewards (as mentioned above)
2. Unlimited International lounge Access to 600+ Lounges across the globe on Diners Jet/Black variants.
3. Unlimited Domestic lounge Access on Diners Black. Limited on other cards

No card in the Indian subcontinent can beat the above benefits if you’re smart enough to enjoy the said benefits.

Diners Club Acceptance – In India

Even though HDFC does have very good coverage of merchants in Metro/Urban cites, it still needs to expand its network for higher acceptance rate. I can fairly put it this way:

• Online Acceptance in Indian Websites: 90%
• Offline Acceptance in India: 80%

Swipe Machines that accept Diners Cards in India: HDFC, CITI, ICICI, AXIS, Bank of Baroda, Yesbank.

Note: Above acceptance rate info are from my personal experience and it doesn’t give you the real % in the industry.

I see quite a lot of Indian websites these days that started accepting Diners cards, compared to the situation in 2014. This is partly because payment gateways are competing with each other to provide payment solutions withmaximum acceptance to merchants to reduce the abandoned carts.

Major websites like Flipkart, Snapdeal, Paytm, Amazon, etc accepts Diners cards.

Diners Club Acceptance – In Foreign Countries

As Diners club does not exist in some countries, International acceptance is bit tricky. Diners club has partnered with couple of banks/card networks around the world to make sure International usage doesn’t get hit.

For example, if you’re visiting Japan, Diners cards are accepted in JCB machines, and Discover in USA and few other countries are there as well.

• International Online Acceptance: 75% (Look out for Discover Logo)
• International Offline Acceptance: 50% (Look out for Discover/Diners/JCB Logo)

From my personal experience, only Singapore has almost 90% acceptance, other countries are 50% or so when it comes to offline.

You can use Diners Club Credit Card issued in India on Paypal. It uses Discover network to process your payment.

Also, Discover/Diners card holders in other countries can swipe their cards in India on Rupay enabled Machines.

Note: Conversion rate of Diners is poor at times though, and may increase the overall spend by 1% or so.

Should i get Diners Club Credit Card?

I would say – it all depends on your usage. If you hold Diners cards, you need a backup Visa/Master card at any point of time. If you’re smart enough, you’ll get one Diners card to enjoy the frequent shopping/travel promotions, lounge access and have a backup Visa/master card from other bank.

Update March 2017: Now Diners Cards are accepted in Amazon India as well 🙂

Update Dec 2018: Diners Acceptance improved in Vietnam considerably.

Do you have Diners Club Credit card? Share your experience in comments below.