ICICI Bank Coral
DowngradeIndia's default first credit card. On a travel board, that's the whole problem.
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 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 for itself at ₹10,000 a month
At ₹10,000 a month — ₹1,20,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹500 gross (earn ₹500) against its ₹500 fee = ₹0 net — the first rung at or above ₹0. 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 #165
Why #165 Ranked as what it is — India's default first card, priced at 0.5% and 3.5% forex, which is the bottom of a travel board.
Coral redeems ICICI Reward Points at ₹0.25 apiece — a quarter of the ₹1.00 house value the Emeralde Private earns on iShop travel. ICICI publishes no per-point value for Coral itself, but the identically-programmed Rubyx membership kit states it outright: "Each reward point is equivalent to ₹0.25 when redeemed for cash." The ₹1 rate is documented only for Emeralde Private Metal and Times Black. earn.base already bakes the haircut in.
The take
Coral is the card half of urban India was handed first, and on our terms it is thin: 2 Reward Points per ₹100 that redeem at ₹0.25, so 0.5% — the same rate as ICICI's ₹2,000 Rubyx, for a quarter of the fee. There is no welcome benefit at all, utilities and insurance earn half, fuel earns nothing, and 3.5% forex makes it the wrong card to take out of the country. The one thing that actually moves the needle is the milestone ladder ICICI barely advertises: 2,000 points at ₹2L, then 1,000 for every further ₹1L to a 10,000-point annual cap — ₹2,500 a year at Coral's ₹0.25, which is five times the fee and more than the base earn pays on the same spend. What it also owns is a genuinely useful floor for ₹500 (waived at ₹1.5L): one domestic lounge visit a quarter once you've spent ₹75,000 in the quarter before, a railway lounge visit every quarter with no spend gate at all, 25% off BookMyShow twice a month, and Reward Points that at least land in the same ICICI pot the Emeralde Private feeds. That pot has exactly one airline exit — Air India Maharaja Club — and Coral is not on the list. Keep it as a starter, but it is not a travel card. Downgrade.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
Here is the fee, the spend that clears it, and everything that has moved under this card since you last decided.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
₹500/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹500/yr
The waiver ₹1,50,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹12,500 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹10,000 a month — ₹1,20,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee.
At your spend
₹1,800 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹3,900 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹7,800 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹18,500 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹29,200 a year, net of the fee, at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
Everyday earn plus milestones, minus the fee — the same model as the value panel above, so the two cannot disagree. run your exact spend →
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 the numbers above are the whole of it.
What has changed under this card
- 23 Sep 2026 Axis EDGE brings Accor back, drops ITC, and adds Cathay, Miles & More and Hilton a program these points reach
- 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
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
- Milestone points to 10,000 RP/year (₹2,500) — 2,000 at ₹2L, then 1,000 per extra ₹1L
- ₹500 fee, waived at ₹1.5L annual spend — near-free to hold
- 1 railway lounge visit every quarter with NO spend gate
- 1 domestic airport lounge visit a quarter (₹75k prior-quarter spend)
- 25% off BookMyShow/INOX up to ₹100, twice a month
Watch out
- 0.5% reward rate — points redeem at just ₹0.25
- No welcome benefit whatsoever
- 3.5% forex — the wrong card abroad
- No airline transfer route: Air India Maharaja Club is Emeralde Private + Times Black only
- Utilities and insurance earn half; fuel earns nothing
What these points actually fly
ICICI Reward Points move to Air India Maharaja Points and iShop (ICICI travel portal) — and those price every award dynamically. There is no published chart to quote, so we quote nothing: an estimate is not a seat.
what the cards that DO reach a chart can fly — 2,196 corridors priced →
What earns, what doesn't
11 sourced rules · 4 pay zero
ICICI's consolidated MITC (last updated 2 Aug 2026) is the only document that prints the caps, and it prints them as SPEND ceilings per statement cycle, not point ceilings. Coral sits in the middle tier alongside Expressions, CSK, HPCL Platinum/Coral, Manchester United and Platinum Chip. Points are priced at ₹0.25 inside earn.base, so every rate below is quoted in raw ICICI Reward Points per ₹100 and must not be read as rupees.
- Fuel · excluded Zero reward points — the MITC's blanket "No reward points will be provided for transactions falling under the Fuel category", and Coral is not on the four-card exception list. A 1% surcharge waiver on ₹400–₹4,000 at HPCL pumps is the only relief.
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero on every ICICI card — "No reward point will be extended for the transaction routed from 6513 MCC for all credit cards" — and rent carries a 1% transaction fee on top
- Wallet loads · excluded Zero — "No reward points will be provided for transactions falling under the E-Wallet Reload category" (MCC 6540); only Amazon Pay ICICI is exempted. A 1% fee applies to wallet loads of ₹5,000 or more w.e.f. 15 Jan 2026.
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · reduced Earns 1 RP per ₹100 vs 2 RP per ₹100 on ordinary retail, and only on the first ₹40,000 of utility spend a statement cycle (MITC cap table, w.e.f. 15 Nov 2024). Utility spend above ₹50,000 in a cycle also draws a 1% fee.
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹1,50,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹500 fee. A different question from the one above — earning points and counting toward a threshold are separate rules, and issuers write them separately.
Not published. ICICI Bank states what the ICICI Bank Coral earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver and the milestones — the ₹1,50,000 bar. We won't guess it from the earn table or from a sibling card: Axis published three cards' rules on one day and all three lists differed. If you hold this card and have it in writing from the issuer, send us the document and we'll source it.
Lounge access
90 of 793 tracked doors
Gate: ₹75k prior-quarter spend (airport visits only; railway visits have no gate)
Opens 90 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 40 airports and 19 railway stations , via DreamFolks Railway — see the full map →
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.
Direct application — no invite list, no banking relationship required.
ICICI Bank publishes no income or age cutoffs for this card. Blank means blank — we don't invent numbers to fill a grid.
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.
Joining ₹500; renewal ₹500 waived at ₹1.5L annual spend (official product page). Offered on Visa, Mastercard, RuPay and Amex rails. 1% fuel-surcharge waiver on ₹400–₹4,000 at HPCL. ICICI publishes no income/age criteria in the MITC — not published. Issuer-wide fee lines (late/cash-advance/add-on/redemption/over-limit) from the consolidated ICICI MITC.
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.
- 23 Sept 2026Axis EDGE brings Accor back, drops ITC, and adds Cathay, Miles & More and HiltonAccor and Marriott off the grid since 2 April 2026; Club ITC live; no Cathay, Miles & More or Hilton → Accor live at the punished rates; ITC removed; Cathay, Hilton and Miles & More live; Marriott still gone
Axis's own Travel EDGE terms, re-read 25 September 2026, already show the grid that went live on 23 September. Accor ALL is back, and not at the old Atlas 1:2: EDGE Miles convert at 2:1 (Olympus 1:2) and EDGE Rewards at 5:1, with Magnus for Burgundy at 5:2 and only Burgundy Private still at 5:4. Club ITC is off the table. Three partners are new. Cathay Asia Miles sits on that same punished grid. Hilton Honors is the ordinary one: EDGE Miles 1:2, EDGE Rewards 5:2, Burgundy 5:4. Lufthansa Miles & More is the exception on Atlas, which converts 1:1 there while every other standard airline on that card is 1:2; the EDGE Rewards side of Miles & More is the ordinary 5:2. Marriott stays removed. Qatar Privilege Club was already back. Flying Blue, Air India and Qantas moved into Group A, which is the capped group. The Axis Rewards credit card's Amex network is advertised as joining-fee and annual-fee nil for a limited period; there is no separate Amex variant on this board, so that offer is not modelled as a fee change.
- 10 Sept 2026ICICI's September lounge list drops four doors and adds Bhogapuram
- 29 Aug 2026ICICI un-reserves Mumbai's Adani Silver lounge — the whole Annexure-1 board gets in
- 25 Aug 2026Vietnam Airlines Lotusmiles opens a broad SkyTeam status match — up to Elite Plus
- 20 Aug 2026IHG Hotels & Resorts becomes a Maharaja Club earning and conversion partner
- 6 Aug 2026MaxCoins' full transfer catalogue surfaces — Accor at 2:1 re-prices the coin to ₹1.08
- 3 Aug 2026SBI drops Etihad Guest from the MILES transfer table — the last SBI door into the programme
- 2 Aug 2026Flipkart SuperCoins into Maharaja Club improve to 2:1
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 — 6 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product page — ₹500 joining + ₹500 annual (waived at ₹1.5L), 2 RP/₹100 retail and 1 on utility/insurance, 3.5% forex, quarterly lounge at ₹75k, 4 railway lounges
- official Coral membership guide — 2 RP per ₹100 on all purchases except fuel
- official MITC (last updated 2 Aug 2026) — one Coral fee row for every network variant: ₹500 joining + ₹500 annual, reversed at ₹1,50,000
- official Rubyx membership kit — the ICICI Bank Rewards Programme rate Coral shares, stated verbatim: "Each reward point is equivalent to ₹0.25 when redeemed for cash"
- official ICICI RuPay lineup (lists Coral RuPay — a network variant, not a second card)
- community CardInsider — 1 RP = ₹0.25 redemption value; Visa/RuPay/Mastercard/Amex variants; no welcome benefit