Amazon Pay ICICI Bank
Keep1.99% abroad — and not a single point to show for it.
a year at ₹40,000 a month, after the fee
Skip the arithmetic — the board, ranked → · nothing to sign up for
What it's worth to you, after the fee
Priced on the everyday mix — 30% groceries · 10% utilities · 20% travel · 6% fuel · 34% everything else — with this card's published category rules applied: it earns nothing on utilities and fuel here, so that spend is dropped, not paid at the headline, and stops pacing milestones and the waiver. Plus milestones, minus the fee. No accelerator credit — the ranking model on /compare adds ~20% of spend at the card's best accelerator, so its ₹ for this card reads higher.
How these numbers are computed — and why the rankings show a bigger one →
Spend tiers, milestones and fee waivers included, at our house ₹/point. Portal and category multipliers can push higher — run your exact number →
Pays from the first rupee
At ₹1,000 a month — ₹12,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹100 gross (earn ₹100) against its ₹0 fee = ₹100 net — at or above ₹0 from the first rung we price. The ladder runs in ₹1,000 steps to ₹1,00,000 a month and ₹10,000 steps to ₹5,00,000; figures are rounded to the hundred, and the accelerator is never credited.
3 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants · why it ranks #71
Why #71 India's most-held credit card, ranked on what it does for a traveller rather than how many people carry it — one gate admits it, and that gate is the 1.99% markup.
The take
Half of India carries this card, so let us be precise about what it is worth to someone boarding a plane. It has no lounge. Its rewards are Amazon Pay balance, which reaches no airline, no hotel and no bank programme, and its own terms cut flight and hotel bookings out of the 5% Amazon rate. Four of our five scope gates say no. What gets it onto this board is the fifth and it is a real one: a 1.99% foreign-currency markup on a card that costs nothing to own, ever. India's norm is 3.50%. Of the ICICI cards that beat it, the cheapest charges ₹999 a year and the dearest ₹20,000 — this one charges zero, which makes it the cheapest way most readers will ever stop paying 3.5% abroad. Now the part ICICI does not print on the product page: since 11 October 2025 international transactions earn no rewards at all. So the honest arithmetic on a foreign swipe is 1.99% out and 0% back, not the 1% you would assume from the marketing. That is still 1.5 points better than a Coral, and it is the whole travel case. Keep it — for the markup, in a wallet where something else holds the lounge card.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
This card is lifetime free. There is no fee due, no renewal to weigh, and nothing to cancel to save.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
nothing due at the anniversary · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹0 — lifetime free
At your spend
₹2,500 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹5,000 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹10,100 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹30,200 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹50,400 a year at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend
Everyday earn plus milestones, with no fee to subtract — the same model as the value panel above, so the two cannot disagree. run your exact spend →
The downgrade
ICICI Bank publishes no document naming a card you can step down to, so we name none — an invented product change is a phone call you would waste. That leaves keep or cancel, and the numbers above are the whole of it.
What has changed under this card
- 10 Sep 2026 ICICI's September lounge list drops four doors and adds Bhogapuram issuer-wide
- 29 Aug 2026 ICICI un-reserves Mumbai's Adani Silver lounge — the whole Annexure-1 board gets in issuer-wide
- 1 Jul 2026 ICICI's lounge-gate exemption expires for Adani One and MakeMyTrip issuer-wide
We price what is in force today — a change that has not happened yet is not in these numbers. the full archive for this card →
If you call to cancel
What the bank offers to keep you is the one fact this desk cannot compute. We are collecting those reports — dated, and only in aggregate — before publishing any: an offer one reader was made is not one you are owed. Called about this card? Tell us what they offered →
The desk publishes subscribable .ics feeds for the dates it knows — offer deadlines, devaluations, expiry audits. Your renewal date is not one of them: only your statement knows it.
What's good
- 1.99% forex on a lifetime-free card — India's norm is 3.50%
- No joining fee, no annual fee, no spend condition — genuinely free forever
- 5% back on Amazon.in for Prime members, 3% for everyone else, uncapped
- Rewards never expire and land as Amazon Pay balance within 2 working days
- 1% fuel surcharge waiver even though fuel earns no rewards
Watch out
- International spends have earned ZERO rewards since 11 Oct 2025 — the T&C says so, the product page does not
- No lounge access of any kind, domestic or international
- Amazon Pay balance is a closed wallet: no transfers, no airline, no cash-out
- Flight and hotel bookings made through Amazon Pay are cut out of the 5%/3% rate
- Fuel, rent, education, tax payments, gold and silver, and non-Amazon utilities all earn nothing
- ICICI's own page contradicts itself on the door: it carries an APPLY button and, four screens down, the line "It is an Invite Only Program". We record it as invite-only because that is the issuer's specific statement about who gets the card, and the button is the site template every ICICI card page carries.
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes Amazon Pay balance into a programme that publishes an award chart. These points buy catalogue and portal redemptions, not award seats — so this page has no flight to show you, and will not invent one.
what the cards that DO reach a chart can fly — 2,196 corridors priced →
What earns, what doesn't
13 sourced rules · 9 pay zero
The 13 Jan 2026 T&C is where this card's exclusions actually live — the product page prints none of them. Two ICICI-wide rules are switched OFF for this card in the MITC: e-wallet loads still earn, and the Feb-2024 rule folding government into utility does not apply. Rates below are percentages of the transaction amount, credited as Amazon Pay balance.
- Fuel · excluded Zero rewards; the T&C keeps the 1% surcharge waiver — "fuel transactions will be eligible for 1% surcharge waiver"
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero w.e.f. 18 Jun 2024, plus the ICICI-wide 1% rent-pay fee on MCC 6513
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · excluded Zero w.e.f. 11 Oct 2025 — "utility transactions outside the Amazon platform will not be eligible for any Reward Points"
- Government / tax · excluded "Any Tax-related payments will not be eligible for Reward Points." Note this card is expressly carved OUT of ICICI's Feb-2024 rule that folds government spend into utility.
Lounge access
0 of 793 tracked doors
No lounge access. This card opens exactly 0 of 793 tracked lounge doors — board with the crowd, or find a card that doesn't →
Can you get it?
income, age and the route in
The cutoffs and the actual route in — not the "apply now" button, the door that opens.
Invite-only — there is no public application form. The bank calls you.
Through Amazon, in practice. ICICI's eligibility panel states "It is an Invite Only Program" and sets the bar low where it sets one at all — 21 years old, ₹20,000 a month salaried or ₹30,000 self-employed — so the gate is an offer appearing on your Amazon.in account rather than an income wall. There is no fee to weigh up and no waiver to chase: if the offer is there, the only question is whether you want a second card whose points go nowhere.
per the official ICICI Bank MITC — figures marked (community) aren't in the PDF; the issuer won't say · filter the board by what you can get →
The fine print
7 of 7 MITC rows published
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
Lifetime free: the MITC fee table prints Nil across joining, annual, add-on and spend threshold — the only such row on ICICI's card list. The 1.99% mark-up is the reason the card is on this board at all. Two programme-wide reward rules carry an explicit Amazon Pay carve-out (government spend folded into utilities from 5-Feb-2024, and the E-Wallet Reload zero-earn rule) — both to this card's benefit. Fuel earns nothing and keeps the 1% surcharge waiver. The card's own T&C, not the MITC, holds the fact that matters abroad: international transactions have earned zero rewards since 11-Oct-2025.
per the official ICICI Bank MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
What's changed for this card
8 dated changes
Devaluations and buffs that touch this card directly, its issuer, or the points and programs it earns and transfers to. Every one is dated here; the tracker carries each one's before → after and the write-up.
- 10 Sept 2026ICICI's September lounge list drops four doors and adds BhogapuramThe prior edition opened Bhubaneswar's landside Bird Lounge, Vadodara's Premium Lounge, Visakhapatnam's Airr Lounge and Bar, and Dehradun's landside Bird Lounge, and filed Ahmedabad T2 international as The Lounge opposite Gate 3 → Those four rooms are gone. Bhubaneswar keeps O'Vetra near Gate 8, Dehradun keeps Carnations in the security hold, Vadodara is off the list, and Visakhapatnam's rows are Encalm domestic and international at Bhogapuram. Ahmedabad T2 international is Adani Silver Lounge - International, Gate 08, and it is not asterisked
ICICI re-saved its consolidated domestic lounge list on 10 September 2026 and moved rooms, not quotas. Four doors an Annexure-1 card used to open are off the list: Bhubaneswar's landside Bird Lounge (O'Vetra, airside near Gate 8, stays), Vadodara entirely, Visakhapatnam's Airr Lounge and Bar, and Dehradun's landside Bird Lounge (Carnations, in the security hold, stays). Visakhapatnam's replacement is two Encalm rooms at Bhogapuram, which this map does not carry yet — the airport is not in our coordinate file, so those doors are recorded here and not drawn. Ahmedabad's T2 international row is no longer The Lounge opposite Gate 3. It is Adani Silver Lounge - International, first floor, Gate 08, and the row has no asterisk, so the whole Annexure-1 board gets it at each card's own quarterly quota rather than the three unlimited cards alone. Noida's three Jewar rows are still on the PDF and still unmapped.
- 29 Aug 2026ICICI un-reserves Mumbai's Adani Silver lounge — the whole Annexure-1 board gets in
- 29 Jul 2026Times Black publishes its eligibility bar and swaps BLADE for Thumby Aviation
- 1 Jul 2026ICICI's lounge-gate exemption expires for Adani One and MakeMyTripAdani One ICICI Signature, Adani One ICICI Platinum and the MakeMyTrip ICICI Bank Credit Card were exempt from the ₹75,000-per-quarter spend gate on complimentary domestic lounge access — "valid till Jun 30, 2026" → All three now "require spends of ₹ 75,000 to be made in a calendar quarter to unlock airport lounge access in the next calendar quarter, with effect from Jul 01, 2026"
ICICI's MITC, headed "Last updated on Aug 2nd, 2026", carries the expiry date inside the exemption list itself and then restates it as a dated instruction below. No lounge visit is removed — MakeMyTrip keeps 2 domestic a quarter plus 1 international, Adani One Signature 4 a quarter plus 2 Priority Pass, Adani One Platinum 2 a quarter — but all of them now cost ₹3 lakh of routed annual spend on top of the fee, which reprices the ₹750 Adani One Platinum hardest. The ₹75,000 excludes rent, government, education, EMI, fees, interest, DCC and reversals, and the qualifying quarter is offset (26th to 25th), so the spend that unlocks Oct-Dec was made between 26 June and 25 September. Worth flagging for the desk: ICICI's own "Upcoming changes to Credit Card features and charges" page, re-read 28 August 2026, still lists MakeMyTrip among the exempt cards with no expiry, and never names the Adani One pair at all. Two live ICICI documents, two different answers; the MITC is the regulated one and the more recently dated, so it is the one we follow.
- 1 Feb 2026ICICI gates its BookMyShow movie perk behind quarterly spend
- 15 Jan 2026ICICI caps transport rewards and excludes rent, tax, fuel spends
- 15 Nov 2024ICICI's November purge: rewards, lounges and 1% fees
- 5 Feb 2024ICICI stops rewards on rent and wallet loads
Every ICICI Bank change we've dated → 10 events since 2019, 7 of them nerfs — worst year 2026.
Verified against ICICI Bank's own documents on · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 3 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product page — no joining fee, no annual fee, 1.99% forex mark-up, and 5%/3%/2%/1% rewards credited as Amazon Pay balance
- official Card T&C (last updated 13 Jan 2026), cl. XXIV — rewards credit to Amazon Pay balance, and international transactions have earned nothing since 11 Oct 2025
- official MITC (last updated 2 Aug 2026) — Nil joining, Nil annual, Nil add-on; 1.99% forex named as exception 4 to the 3.50% standard