ICICI Bank Parakram
KeepA lifetime-free card that pays on fuel and opens a lounge door — issued only to people who wear the uniform.
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 utilities 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 ₹0 gross (earn ₹0) against its ₹0 fee = ₹0 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 · why it ranks #258
Why #258 Free forever, one lounge visit a quarter, and reward points on fuel that no other ICICI card earns — but only if you serve. International spends earn nothing at all, on a card that charges 3.5% to make them.
The take
Parakram is ICICI's card for Defence and paramilitary personnel, and it is free forever: the MITC prints Nil in all three fee columns. What that buys is modest but real — one domestic lounge visit a quarter, a Defence Services title embossed on the plastic, ₹2 lakh of personal accident and ₹20 lakh of air accident cover, and 5 Reward Points per ₹100 at grocery stores and department stores against 1 everywhere else. The genuinely unusual line is fuel: ICICI's MITC excludes fuel from reward earn on every card it issues and then names four exceptions, two of which are Parakram and Parakram Select. Fill the tank and you actually earn. The arithmetic is still thin — points redeem at ₹0.25, so the base rate is 0.25% and the accelerated rate 1.25%, and the 5x stops at 1,000 points a month. And the travel case has a hole in the middle of it: insurance, utility AND international spends earn zero, on a card that charges a 3.5% mark-up abroad. Take it for the lounge and the fuel, spend abroad on something else.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
This card is lifetime free. There is no fee due, no renewal to weigh, and nothing to cancel to save.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
nothing due at the anniversary · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹0 — lifetime free
At your spend
₹700 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹1,400 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹2,700 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹8,100 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹13,500 a year at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend
Everyday earn plus milestones, with no fee to subtract — the same model as the value panel above, so the two cannot disagree. run your exact spend →
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
- Lifetime free — Nil joining fee, Nil annual fee, in all three MITC columns
- 1 complimentary domestic lounge visit every quarter
- Reward points on FUEL — one of only four ICICI cards the MITC exempts from the fuel exclusion
- 5 RP per ₹100 (1.25%) at grocery and department stores, to 1,000 RP a month
- ₹2 lakh personal accident and ₹20 lakh air accident cover
Watch out
- International spends earn ZERO reward points — and carry a 3.50% mark-up
- Insurance and utility spends also earn nothing (w.e.f. 15 Apr 2024)
- Points redeem at ₹0.25, so the headline 1 RP per ₹100 is a 0.25% card
- The lounge visit is gated: ₹75,000 of spend in the PRECEDING calendar quarter unlocks it for the next one
- No welcome benefit — the MITC states outright that cards with no joining/annual fee carry no joining benefits
- ₹99 + GST redemption handling fee on every reward redemption
- Reward points lapse the moment the card is cancelled or the account goes delinquent
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
10 sourced rules · 6 pay zero
The card's own T&C (updated 25 May 2026) prints the earn table in four rows; ICICI's consolidated MITC (2 Aug 2026) supplies the per-cycle spend ceilings and the two bank-wide exclusions. Rates below are raw ICICI Reward Points per ₹100 — earn.base already prices them at ₹0.25.
- 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 under the MITC's E-Wallet Reload exclusion (MCC 6540); only Amazon Pay ICICI is exempted
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · excluded Zero reward points w.e.f. 15 Apr 2024, per the card's own T&C earn table
- Insurance · excluded Zero reward points w.e.f. 15 Apr 2024, per the card's own T&C earn table
Lounge access
69 of 793 tracked doors
Gate: ₹75k prior-quarter spend (operative since 1 Jan 2025)
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.
Restricted to serving Indian Defence and paramilitary personnel — ICICI's T&C defines the eligible population as "individuals who are a part of the defence services as identified by the Bank's product grid", and the grid is not published. There is no open application path for a civilian.
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.
Lifetime free — the MITC's three-column fee table (Joining 1st yr / Annual 1st yr / Annual 2nd yr onwards, read 2 Aug 2026) prints Nil, Nil, Nil with NA in the reversal column. Restricted to Indian Defence and paramilitary personnel; the eligible population is an unpublished internal product grid, so no income or age criteria are published. 1 RP per ₹100 base, 5 RP on grocery and department stores to 1,000 RP a month; ZERO on insurance, utility and international spends (w.e.f. 15 Apr 2024). One of only four ICICI cards exempted from the MITC's blanket fuel-earn exclusion. 1 domestic lounge visit a quarter, gated on ₹75,000 of preceding-calendar- quarter spend. Personal accident ₹2 lakh, air accident ₹20 lakh.
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 — 5 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product page — Nil joining fee, Nil annual fee, 3.5% forex mark-up, 1 airport lounge access a quarter, 1% fuel surcharge waiver, ₹2 lakh personal and ₹20 lakh air accident cover
- official Card T&C (updated 25 May 2026) — the earn table: 5 RP per ₹100 on grocery & department stores capped at 1,000 RP a month, 1 RP elsewhere, ZERO on insurance, utility and international spends
- official MITC (last updated 2 Aug 2026) — the fee row reads Nil / Nil / Nil with no spend reversal; 3.50% foreign-currency mark-up; fuel earns reward points on Parakram, unlike every other ICICI card
- official Rubyx membership kit — the ICICI Bank Rewards Programme rate this card shares, stated verbatim: "Each reward point is equivalent to ₹0.25 when redeemed for cash"
- official Domestic airport lounge list (July 2026) — 87 rooms, and an eligible-card annexure naming "ICICI Bank Parakram Credit Card" at 1 complimentary access a quarter