ICICI Emeralde Private Metal
KeepThe quiet over-achiever — if your spend dodges the exclusions.
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
Welcome: Taj Epicure Plus + EazyDiner Prime + 12,500 RP — recurs on every renewal
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 from the first rupee
At ₹1,000 a month — ₹12,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹12,800 gross (earn ₹300 + milestones ₹12,500) against its ₹12,499 fee = ₹300 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.
2 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants
Denied or downgraded? The head-to-heads: HDFC Infinia Metal, Axis Magnus for Burgundy, HDFC Diners Club Black Metal, IDFC FIRST Private, IDFC FIRST Gaj, RBL Nova, ICICI Times Black, ICICI Sapphiro, ICICI Bank Rubyx, ICICI Bank Emeralde, ICICI Bank Rubyx against FD, ICICI Bank NRI Sapphiro.
Best real exit: iShop (ICICI travel portal) at ₹1.00/pt (1:1 transfer).
Fee, justified: before you earn a single point, this card bundles ~₹9,500/yr of memberships + elite status you'd actually use — weigh that against the ₹12,499 annual fee. Rewards and milestones stack on top (run your spend → · every card's perks, ranked →).
The take
Emeralde Private earns hard (6 points per ₹200) and redeems near ₹1/point on the iShop travel portal, which means no transfer gymnastics for solid value. Add unlimited lounge access, a golf programme and a genuinely premium metal build, and it's one of the best-rounded super-premium cards going. The asterisk is ICICI's 2026 mood: rent, government, fuel, tax and wallet spends now earn nothing — education still earns, but capped at 1,000 points a cycle — so real-world earn depends heavily on your category mix.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
This card covers its own renewal fee at any spend we model — the question is what else you hold, not whether to keep it.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
₹12,499/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹12,499/yr
The waiver ₹10,00,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹83,333 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even It clears its own fee at every spend we model, from ₹1,000 a month up. The question here is whether you use it, not whether it pays.
At your spend
₹8,500 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹16,900 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹39,800 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹87,100 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹1,27,200 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 bank's own downgrade trigger
ICICI's MITC ties this card to a relationship value it does not publish: fall below it and the bank "reserves the right at its discretion and with prior notice, to downgrade, withdraw or discontinue the Card". It names no destination card.
ICICI Bank's own document · read 29 Aug 2026
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
- 6 reward points per ₹200 across most spends — 3% on travel redemptions
- ~₹1/point redemption on iShop flights/hotels without transfers
- Unlimited domestic + international lounge access
- Fee waiver at ₹10L annual spend
- 2% + GST forex markup — well under the 3.5% most ICICI cards charge abroad
Watch out
- Rent, government, fuel, tax, wallet and property-management spends earn zero; education capped at 1,000 RP/cycle
- Best value is locked inside the iShop portal
- Reward value outside iShop drops sharply
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
13 sourced rules · 5 pay zero
- Fuel · excluded Zero RP; 1% surcharge waiver on fuel spends up to ₹50k/month (Nov-2024 cap)
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero RP since 5-Feb-2024 (MCC 6513, 7349 per official notice); 1% rent fee applies
- Wallet loads · excluded Zero since 5-Feb-2024 (third-party wallet loads); folded into the wider 1-Feb-2026 exclusion bucket alongside rent/fuel/govt/tax
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · capped Confirmed 1,000 RP/category/statement-cycle cap (about ₹33,333 of utility spend) — verified directly on ICICI's product page 2026-07-14; the 2,000 RP alternative does not check out, flag resolved
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹10,00,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹12,499 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 Emeralde Private Metal earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver and the milestones — the ₹10,00,000 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.
Where the miles go
2 programs
Ratios read card points : partner miles — 2:1 means 2 points become 1 mile. Never the other way round.
every ICICI Bank route, side by side → · the ICICI Reward Points hub →
Lounge access
739 of 793 tracked doors
Opens 739 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 294 airports , via Priority Pass India, Priority Pass Global — see the full map →
Memberships included
2 included · ₹9,500/yr
- Taj Epicure (IHCL) ₹29,500 ₹7,500recurring 1-year Taj Epicure membership on joining AND on every renewal (fee payment), alongside 12,500 RP
- EazyDiner Prime ₹2,495 ₹2,000recurring 12-month EazyDiner Prime on joining and on every card renewal
Not counted in our net-value math above — worth ₹9,500 a year only if you'd actually use them. Sticker prices struck through; our number assumes you show up. The full matrix →
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.
Invite-only, and the invitation machine is your branch: approvals run case-by-case through the relationship manager, with an ICICI Wealth / Wealth Select / Private Banking relationship the commonly reported trigger. TechnoFino's eligibility threads cluster around ₹3–4L/month salary or a ₹40L+ ITR as the profile that gets a yes — but there is no published rulebook, and the discretion is the point. Walk in and ask; that is genuinely the process.
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.
Fee ₹12,499, waived at ₹10L spend. No late/overlimit/cash-advance/redemption fees — but card replacement costs ₹3,500 and each add-on now ₹3,500. DCC 2% (vs 3.5% standard, w.e.f. 15-Jan-2026).
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 — 8 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product page — ₹12,499 joining + ₹12,499 annual (waived at ₹10L), 6 RP/₹200 retail, grocery/utilities/education 1,000 RP and insurance 5,000 RP per cycle, 2% forex
- official Membership guide — verbatim "Each ICICI Bank Reward Point is equivalent to ₹1" (stated twice); 6 RP/₹200 on retail; 12,500 RP joining AND annual bonus; 2% forex mark-up
- official MITC (last updated 2 Aug 2026) — ₹12,499 joining + ₹12,499 annual, fee reversal at ₹10,00,000; 2% forex mark-up
- community CardExpert review
- community iShop 6X/12X multipliers + 18k monthly cap — the ONLY source we have for either
- community TechnoFino — invite via branch/RM; Wealth/Private relationship, ₹3–4L/mo or ₹40L ITR reports
- community BusinessToday — dates the fuel/government/rent/tax/wallet exclusion + ₹20k/mo transport cap to 1-Feb-2026
- community CardInsider forex table — corroborates the 2% mark-up now confirmed officially in the MITC