ICICI Bank Rubyx against FD
DowngradeThe only ₹3,000 card in India you can get with a fixed deposit and no payslip — and it is the same dated Rubyx.
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 →
Breaks even only by erasing its fee at ₹27,000 a month
At ₹27,000 a month — ₹3,24,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹2,200 gross (earn ₹1,400 + milestones ₹800) against a fee of ₹0 — the ₹2,000 is waived, the spend having cleared ₹3,00,000 a year = ₹2,200 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 #261
Why #261 The Rubyx with a fixed deposit standing behind it — same 0.5% points, same ₹2,000 renewal, and the same verdict, because the collateral changes who can get it and nothing about what it pays.
Rubyx is the card that settles ICICI's redemption question in writing, secured or not: its membership kit says "Each reward point is equivalent to ₹0.25 when redeemed for cash" — a quarter of the ₹1.00 house value ICICI documents only for Emeralde Private Metal and Times Black. earn.base bakes the haircut in.
The take
This is the one card in ICICI's secured line the bank does not advertise. Its FD-card page offers exactly two variants — Instant Platinum and Coral — and yet the MITC's fee table carries a third row, "ICICI Bank Rubyx Credit Card against Fixed Deposit", priced exactly like the unsecured Rubyx: ₹3,000 to join, ₹2,000 a year, reversed at ₹3 lakh of spend. If you can put down the deposit, it is a premium-segment card without an income test, which is genuinely rare. What it pays is the problem, and it is the same problem the unsecured Rubyx has: 2 Reward Points per ₹100 that redeem at ₹0.25, so about 0.5%, doubling to roughly 1% only on international spends the card charges 3.5% to make. The milestone ladder — 3,000 points at ₹3 lakh, then 1,500 per further ₹1 lakh to a 15,000-point cap — is ₹3,750 a year and is where most of the value actually sits. Eight railway lounge visits a year is the one genuinely distinctive perk. The secured row's fee reversal is a year slower than the unsecured one's. Ranked as what it is: a door, not a deal.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
This card reaches break-even by ERASING its fee, not by out-earning it: the waiver is the decision.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
₹2,000/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹3,000 joining, then ₹2,000/yr
The waiver ₹3,00,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹25,000 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹27,000 a month — ₹3,24,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee, and it gets there by erasing the fee at the waiver rather than out-earning it.
At your spend
−₹700 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹4,200 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹9,100 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹19,800 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹30,500 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
- A premium-segment card with no income test — the fixed deposit is the underwriting
- Milestone points up to 15,000 RP a year (₹3,750) — the real value here
- 8 railway lounge visits a year — a genuinely rare perk
- 4 RP per ₹100 (~1%) on international spends
- ₹2,000 renewal fee reversed at ₹3 lakh of annual spend
Watch out
- ICICI does not market this card at all — its own FD-card page offers only Instant Platinum and Coral
- 0.5% base reward rate; the points redeem at just ₹0.25
- The fee reversal is a year slower than the unsecured Rubyx's — this row reverses the SUBSEQUENT year's fee
- 3.50% foreign-currency mark-up undoes most of the 4 RP/₹100 international rate
- Fuel earns nothing; utilities and insurance earn a quarter
- ICICI publishes no benefit sheet for the secured issue — outside the fee table and the lounge list, every fact here comes from the Rubyx documents ICICI applies to it
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 publishes no separate reward table for the secured Rubyx — the card exists only as an MITC fee row — so the Rubyx rules apply. The consolidated MITC (2 Aug 2026) prints the caps as SPEND ceilings per statement cycle. Rates are raw ICICI Reward Points per ₹100; earn.base already prices them at ₹0.25.
- Fuel · excluded Zero — the Rubyx membership kit says "No reward points will accrue on fuel transactions", and the MITC's blanket fuel exclusion does not exempt Rubyx
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero on every ICICI card (MCC 6513), plus a 1% rent-pay fee
- Wallet loads · excluded Zero under the MITC's E-Wallet Reload exclusion (MCC 6540)
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · reduced 1 RP per ₹100 vs 2 RP per ₹100 on ordinary retail, and only on the first ₹80,000 of utility spend a statement cycle (MITC cap table, w.e.f. 15 Nov 2024)
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹3,00,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹2,000 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 Bank Rubyx against FD earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver and the milestones — the ₹3,00,000 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
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.
There is no published application path. ICICI's fixed-deposit credit-card page offers only the Instant Platinum and the Coral; this variant appears only as a fee row in the MITC and a benefit row in ICICI's lounge list, in neither case with an application path attached. Expect a branch or relationship-manager conversation against an existing ICICI fixed deposit rather than an online form.
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 ₹3,000, renewal ₹2,000 — the MITC's three-column fee table (read 2 Aug 2026) reads 3,000 / Nil / 2,000 for "ICICI Bank Rubyx Credit Card against Fixed Deposit". Reversal at ₹3,00,000, single-asterisk (credits the SUBSEQUENT year's fee) where the unsecured Rubyx carries triple asterisks. THE MITC IS THIS CARD'S ONLY EVIDENCE OF EXISTENCE — ICICI's own fixed-deposit credit-card page offers just two variants, Instant Platinum and Coral, and does not name this one, so there is no published application path and no income or age criteria. 2 RP per ₹100 domestic, 4 on international, 1 on utility and insurance, nothing on fuel. Per-cycle spend caps: utility ₹80,000, insurance ₹80,000, grocery and departmental ₹40,000, transportation ₹20,000.
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 MITC (last updated 2 Aug 2026) — the row "ICICI Bank Rubyx Credit Card against Fixed Deposit" reads ₹3,000 joining / Nil / ₹2,000 annual, reversal at ₹3,00,000; 3.50% forex
- official FD-card hub — minimum ₹50,000 deposit, 180-day tenure, auto-renewal, limit up to 90% of the deposit; it offers only two variants and this is NOT one of them
- official Rubyx membership kit — 2 RP per ₹100 domestic, 4 international, none on fuel, and the rate: "Each reward point is equivalent to ₹0.25 when redeemed for cash"
- official Domestic airport lounge list (July 2026) — its eligible-card annexure names "ICICI Bank Secured Rubyx Credit Card" at 2 complimentary accesses a quarter
- official Railway lounge programme (May 2026) — 21 station lounges, primary cardholders only, and an eligible list naming "ICICI Bank Rubyx Credit Card"