ICICI Bank NRI Coral
DowngradeThe same Coral, priced ₹500 higher to join, because your address is abroad.
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.
2 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · why it ranks #269
Why #269 The resident Coral's programme at twice the joining price, sold only against an NRE/NRO account. Ranked below its own resident twin for exactly that reason.
ICICI Reward Points earned on Coral redeem at ₹0.25 apiece — a quarter of the ₹1.00 house value the Emeralde Private earns on iShop travel. ICICI publishes no per-point figure for the NRI edition; the identically-programmed Rubyx membership kit states it verbatim: "Each reward point is equivalent to ₹0.25 when redeemed for cash." earn.base bakes the haircut in.
The take
ICICI sells Coral twice: once to residents at ₹500 to join, and once to NRIs at ₹1,000. The MITC prints both rows and they are not the same row — which is the single most useful thing to know about this card, because everything else about it IS the same. ICICI's NRI card hub advertises one complimentary lounge visit a quarter, 25% off two movie tickets a month, and "Reward Points on Retail & Utilities", and its own Details link sends you to the resident Coral privileges page for the rest. So you are buying the resident card's 2 Reward Points per ₹100 — 0.5% at ICICI's ₹0.25 redemption — with a ₹500 surcharge on the way in and an NRE or NRO account as the price of admission. The renewal reverses at ₹1.5 lakh, the same bar the resident card clears, so from year two the two cards cost identically. The lounge door is not the four free visits ICICI's NRI tile implies, either: the Coral privileges page it links to gates them at ₹75,000 of spend in the PRECEDING calendar quarter, which is ₹3 lakh a year to unlock four visits on a card that pays 0.5%. Hold it if the NRI relationship is already there and you clear that bar. Nothing here is a points proposition.
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 ₹1,000 joining, then ₹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
₹1,300 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹2,700 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹5,300 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹16,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹26,700 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
- 1 complimentary domestic airport lounge visit per calendar quarter — earned by spending ₹75,000 in the quarter before
- 25% off on movie tickets, up to ₹100, twice a month (ICICI's NRI card hub)
- Reward Points on retail and utility spends, and a 1% fuel-surcharge waiver on ₹400–₹4,000
- Annual fee reversed at ₹1,50,000 of spend in the preceding anniversary year — the same bar as resident Coral
Watch out
- The lounge visit is SPEND-GATED: "you must spend ₹75,000 or more on your Coral Credit Card in a calendar quarter" to earn it for the following one. ICICI's NRI hub advertises the quarterly visit flat and restates no gate
- ₹1,000 to join against resident Coral's ₹500 — ICICI's MITC prices the NRI edition higher for an otherwise identical card
- Reward Points redeem at ₹0.25 apiece and reach NO airline or hotel programme
- 0.5% on retail, 0.25% on utilities and insurance, nothing on fuel
- ICICI publishes NO separate NRI rate card — the earn modelled here is the resident Coral programme its own NRI hub links to, so re-read your welcome kit before routing spend
- Requires a live NRE or NRO account with ICICI plus overseas address proof, passport and visa; there is no online application path
- An NRO-linked card is limited to rupee spending in India — only the NRE form is designed for global use
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
9 sourced rules · 5 pay zero
ICICI publishes NO card-specific reward schedule for the NRI editions — the dedicated CMS path 404s — so every rule below is the BANK-WIDE §4 "Reward Points Capping and Related Information" block of the consolidated MITC, which applies to all ICICI credit cards unless the document names an exception. NRI Coral is named in no exception list. Rates are quoted in raw ICICI Reward Points per ₹100 (the ₹0.25 redemption is baked into earn.base) and must not be read as rupees.
- Fuel · excluded Zero reward points — "No reward points will be provided for transactions falling under the Fuel category", whose only exceptions are Parakram, Parakram Select, MakeMyTrip and HPCL Coral (Amex variant). A 1% fee also applies to fuel transactions above ₹10,000 (w.e.f. 15 Nov 2024). The card's own 1% surcharge waiver on ₹400–₹4,000 is the only relief.
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero on every ICICI card — "No reward points will be provided for transactions falling under the Cash and Rent categories" (MCC 6513) — plus a 1% transaction fee, and rent is struck out of the ₹1,50,000 fee-reversal count.
- 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 exempt. A 1% fee applies to wallet loads of ₹5,000 or more w.e.f. 15 Jan 2026.
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · reduced 1 RP per ₹100 vs 2 RP per ₹100 on ordinary retail, per the earn structure ICICI's NRI hub advertises as "Reward Points on Retail & Utilities". Utility transactions above ₹50,000 also draw a 1% fee (w.e.f. 15 Nov 2024).
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 NRI Coral earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver — 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
69 of 793 tracked doors
Gate: ₹75k prior-quarter spend per the resident Coral T&C; ICICI's NRI hub advertises the visit flat and restates no gate
Opens 69 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 40 airports — 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.
NRI-only and branch-sold. ICICI's NRI credit-card page states the gate plainly: "Non-Resident Indians (NRE / NRO Account holders) with valid proof of overseas address, passport, visa and a satisfactory credit score are eligible", and the card tile's call to action is "Visit branch", not Apply. No income figure is published for the NRI editions. If you are resident in India, this is not your card — apply for plain Coral at half the joining fee.
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
5 of 7 MITC rows published
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
NRI-only edition, priced DIFFERENTLY from resident Coral — MITC row "1,000 | Nil | 500 | 199 | 1,50,000", against resident Coral's "500 | Nil | 500 | 199 | 1,50,000". ICICI's MITC has THREE fee columns (Joining 1st year / Annual 1st year / Annual 2nd year onwards) and the middle is Nil for every card, so no RBI-KFS inversion applies here. The reversal threshold excludes rent, government, education and wallet-load spends. Eligibility is a live NRE or NRO account plus overseas address proof, passport and visa; branch-sold, no online application.
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 — 4 of them, each with the day we read it
- official ICICI Bank credit-card MITC — "ICICI Bank NRI Coral Credit Card" priced ₹1,000 joining, Nil first-year annual, ₹500 from year two, reversed at ₹1,50,000 of spend
- official ICICI Bank NRI Credit Cards — the NRI Coral tile: 1 complimentary lounge access per quarter, 25% off movie tickets (up to ₹100, twice a month), Reward Points on retail and utilities
- official Coral Key Privileges — the programme ICICI's own NRI card tile links to: 2 Reward Points per ₹100 on retail, 1 per ₹100 on utilities, 1 domestic lounge visit a quarter
- official Domestic airport lounge list (July 2026) — its eligible-card annexure names "ICICI Bank NRI Coral Credit Card" at 1 complimentary access a quarter