ICICI Bank Carbon
CancelA credit card with a keypad and an LCD screen. India got it first, and then it went away.
no published earn rate to price
Skip the arithmetic — the board, ranked → · nothing to sign up for
What it's worth to you, after the fee
Not valued. We can't value this card until the issuer publishes how it earns — every net-value number here would be a fee subtracted from rewards nobody has described. Everything we can source — the fee, the charges, the migration that put this card in your hand — is above and stands on its own; this card is simply not on the board, not in the calculator, and cannot win a best-of call until ICICI Bank publishes terms we can cite.
Why we decline to value some cards, and what it takes to change that →
3 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants · why it ranks #851
Why #851 A pilot, not a product — ICICI ran it between September 2013 and February 2014 and said in writing that extending or revoking it was entirely its own call. It is carried because the plastic existed and a few thousand people were invited onto it.
The take
This is the strangest piece of plastic any Indian bank has issued. ICICI Bank Carbon carried an alphanumeric LCD screen, a twelve-button touch keypad and a battery rated for three years, and it generated its own one-time passcodes on the card face — Visa's CodeSure form factor, launched in Asia here first. You set a four-digit CodeSure PIN once, and thereafter the card itself produced the code an online transaction asked for, with no phone and no SMS in the loop. Underneath the theatre it was a Visa Infinite: up to four complimentary domestic airport lounge visits a calendar quarter, buy-one-get-one at BookMyShow on any day of the week for up to two tickets a month worth ₹400 each, a Visa Blockbuster Weekends BOGO on top for a third ticket at ₹300, a minimum 15% off through ICICI's Culinary Treats dining programme, and a 2.5% fuel surcharge waiver on transactions to ₹4,000. It was by invitation only and it cost ₹1,000 once, with no annual fee after. And it was never really a product: ICICI's own fees page says the card "has been launched under a pilot project between September 2013 and February 2014" and that extending or revoking it was at the bank's sole discretion. It chose revoke. What this card earned is not stated here even though the page states it, and that is deliberate — it paid in PAYBACK, the coalition scheme ICICI ran before ICICI Reward Points, which this desk does not model and will not fake by borrowing the successor currency's house value. Cancel is the only verdict available for a card nobody can hold.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
There is no renewal arithmetic to run on this card yet — and a break-even we cannot source is not one we will print.
the whole desk — what changed, the downgrade, and what we cannot price →
Keep, downgrade or cancel
what we can and cannot price
Not valued. We can't value this card until the issuer publishes how it earns — every net-value number here would be a fee subtracted from rewards nobody has described. A break-even is the spend at which value crosses a fee, and we are short one side of that sentence — so this desk prints no ladder, no crossing and no ₹0 standing in for either. What we can source about this card is under Sources.
Your copy of this card
You hold this card.
Kept on this device, in your browser. It is never sent to us, never synced, and nothing else on the site reads it yet.
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 we cannot price either side 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
- Visa CodeSure: an LCD screen and a touch keypad on the card itself, generating one-time passcodes with no phone in the loop
- Up to 4 complimentary domestic airport lounge visits per calendar quarter (Visa Airport Lounge Access)
- BookMyShow buy-one-get-one any day of the week — up to 2 free tickets a month at ₹400 each
- Visa Blockbuster Weekends added a Friday–Sunday BOGO worth up to ₹300 a month on top
- Minimum 15% off dining through ICICI's Culinary Treats programme
- 2.5% fuel surcharge waiver on fuel transactions up to ₹4,000, at any pump
- ₹1,000 once and nothing thereafter — no annual fee was ever published
Watch out
- CLOSED — ICICI ran this as a PILOT between September 2013 and February 2014 and reserved the right to revoke it, which it did
- Invitation only even while it lived; there was never an open application route
- This desk states no accrual for the card: it paid in PAYBACK, a scheme we do not model, and the successor currency's value is not evidence about it
- The battery had a three-year life, so surviving plastic no longer generates passcodes
- The lounge, movie and dining programmes it rode on were Visa's and ICICI's of 2013–14 and none of them exist in that form today
What these points actually fly
ICICI Bank has not published what this card earns, so there are no points here to fly with — not zero points, and not points that go nowhere: nothing stated either way. The moment a benefit sheet exists we will price whatever it names.
what the cards that DO reach a chart can fly — 2,196 corridors priced →
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?
the route in — no cutoffs published
The cutoffs and the actual route in — not the "apply now" button, the door that opens.
Closed to new applications — existing cardholders keep the card; there is no way in.
You cannot, and you could not then either — the card's own page ends with "By Invitation Only". ICICI ran it as a pilot between September 2013 and February 2014 and said on the fees page that the decision to extend or revoke it was at its sole discretion. The product path /personal-banking/cards/credit-card/carbon-card no longer serves a page on the bank's migrated host. If the CodeSure trick is what you want, nothing in the Indian market replaces it: the form factor never shipped again here.
ICICI Bank publishes no income or age cutoffs for this card. Blank means blank — we don't invent numbers to fill a grid.
no MITC row researched for this card yet · filter the board by what you can get →
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
Not published , and we will not invent it: the earn rate and the currency it earns.
Every document behind this page — 5 of them, each with the day we read it
- official ICICI's own product page (archived 20 Mar 2023) — the CodeSure form factor, the LCD screen and keypad, the three-year battery, and "By Invitation Only"
- official ICICI's own fees page (archived 24 Mar 2023) — a one-time fee of ₹1,000 and nothing else, and the statement that the card was a pilot run from September 2013 to February 2014
- official ICICI's own privileges page (archived 1 Jun 2023) — the BookMyShow buy-one-get-one, Culinary Treats dining, and the 2.5% fuel surcharge waiver to ₹4,000
- official ICICI's own Visa Infinite page (archived 1 Jun 2023) — up to 4 complimentary domestic lounge visits a calendar quarter, plus the Visa Blockbuster Weekends BOGO
- official ICICI Bank's live credit-card Most Important Terms and Conditions — its fee table names every variant the bank sells today, and this card is not among them