ICICI Emeralde Private
KeepThe Emeralde Private without the metal — ₹499 cheaper, free add-on cards, and no page of its own.
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 →
1 notes on the card itself: how it is issued
The take
ICICI's fee table prices three Emeralde variants on three consecutive lines, and this is the one with no shop window. At ₹12,000 to join and ₹12,000 a year it undercuts the Emeralde Private Metal by ₹499, and it is cheaper again on add-ons: supplementary cards are free here where the Metal charges ₹3,500 one-time per card since 15 January 2026. Two of the Metal's best structural benefits apply to this variant by name. The forex markup is 2%, not ICICI's standard 3.5% — the MITC lists exactly three cards in that exception and this is one of them — and it sits in the small group carved out of ICICI's new spend-gated lounge rule, so lounge access here does not have to be re-earned with ₹75,000 every quarter the way most of the shelf now does. The annual fee reverses at ₹10,00,000 of anniversary-year spend. What is missing is the reward engine: this variant has no product page anywhere in ICICI's own sitemap index — the Metal has seven, this row has none — and the MITC states no earn rate for it, so we publish none. One dated caveat from the same document: sourcing of Emeralde and Emeralde Private "with monthly membership plan" stopped on 24 July 2025, and holders on that plan need ₹1,00,000 of spend in the preceding month for the monthly charge to reverse. If you are being offered a card called simply "Emeralde Private", check which of the two rows you are being priced on — the difference is ₹499 a year and ₹3,500 an add-on card.
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
- 2% foreign-currency markup, not ICICI's standard 3.5% — the MITC's exception list names only this card, the Emeralde Private Metal and the Emeralde
- Exempt from ICICI's spend-gated lounge rule: the ₹75,000-a-quarter bar that now applies to most of the shelf does not apply here
- Supplementary cards are free — the Metal charges ₹3,500 one-time per add-on card since 15 January 2026
- ₹499 a year cheaper than the Emeralde Private Metal on the same reversal bar
- Annual fee reversed on ₹10,00,000 of anniversary-year spend
- Generous statement-cycle caps: ₹80,000 each on utility and insurance and ₹40,000 on grocery and departmental spend, double the Coral tier's
Watch out
- ICICI publishes NO product page for this variant — the Emeralde Private METAL has seven pages in the bank's own sitemap index and this row has none — so its earn rate, its points value and its lounge quota are unstated and we decline to invent them
- Do NOT read the Emeralde Private Metal's published earn table as this card's: they are separate MITC rows at different prices with different add-on fees
- Sourcing of the Emeralde and Emeralde Private with a monthly membership plan stopped on 24 July 2025; holders on that plan need ₹1,00,000 of spend in the preceding month for the monthly charge to reverse
- Reward points are capped per statement cycle — ₹80,000 utility, ₹80,000 insurance, ₹40,000 grocery and departmental, and ₹20,000 transportation
- The ₹10,00,000 reversal bar excludes rent, government and education payments, and EMI spends do not count toward it
- Finance charges 3.75% a month (45% a year), and a 3.5% dynamic-currency-conversion fee from 15 January 2026
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 →
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 ₹12,000 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 earns, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver — 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.
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.
Invite-only — there is no public application form. The bank calls you.
There is no public application funnel for this variant. ICICI's shop window carries the Emeralde Private Metal, which the bank describes as "issued as a relationship-based product and … subject to the Cardholder maintaining a minimum relationship value with ICICI Bank"; this row has no page at all and is priced ₹499 below it. That shape is an invitation through a relationship manager rather than a withdrawal — the card is named in four separate live MITC clauses, including the current lounge policy, so it is being actively administered. If you are offered "Emeralde Private", ask in writing which fee line applies, what the card earns, and what the lounge quota is: the bank's public documents answer only the first.
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 — 3 of them, each with the day we read it
- official ICICI's own sitemap index — the enumeration behind this file's claim that the bank publishes a page for the Emeralde Private METAL and none for this variant
- official ICICI's current credit-card MITC — the ₹12,000 fee line that is distinct from the Metal's ₹12,499, the 2% forex exception, the lounge carve-out and the statement-cycle caps
- official ICICI's live credit-card listing — it carries the Emeralde and the Emeralde Private Metal, and no third Emeralde Private