ICICI Times Black
KeepICICI's experiences flagship — a lifestyle card wearing a miles costume.
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
Read the ₹0.4L figure carefully: ₹10,000 of its ₹19,000 gross is a voucher or a hotel night, not points — worth that only if you would have bought it anyway.
Welcome: ₹12,000 Lohono / ₹10,000 EaseMyTrip stay voucher + ₹10,000 visa-services wallet (Atlys/OneVasco) + Toni&Guy ₹3,000 + Interflora ₹1,000 + Zomato Gold — application windows via timesblack.com
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 ₹45,000 a month
At ₹45,000 a month — ₹5,40,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹30,200 gross (earn ₹10,200 + milestones ₹20,000) against its ₹20,000 fee = ₹10,200 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 · the network variants
Denied or downgraded? The head-to-heads: HDFC Infinia Metal, ICICI Emeralde Private Metal, Axis Magnus, IDFC FIRST Mayura, Axis Bank Reserve, YES Private, YES Private Prime, Axis Bank PRIMUS, HSBC Taj, ICICI Sapphiro, ICICI Bank Emeralde, ICICI Bank NRI Sapphiro.
Best real exit: iShop (ICICI travel portal) at ₹1.00/pt (1:1 transfer).
The take
Times Black is ICICI's invite-led answer to the super-premium metal club: 2% domestic, 2.5% international, a 1.49% forex markup that undercuts most of the segment, unlimited Priority Pass, and a ₹50,000 milestone ladder — Klook at ₹2L, a helicopter-transfer (Thumby Aviation), chauffeured-sedan or WeWork wallet at ₹5L, Tata CLiQ Luxury at ₹10L, an Ayatana or Lohono night at ₹20L (yes, the helicopter is real). What it is not is a transfer engine — Air India Maharaja at 1:1 is the only loyalty route, so your points mostly live and die at iShop's ₹1. The Emeralde Private earns harder for ₹7,500 less; you take Times Black for the doors it opens, not the maths.
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
₹20,000/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹20,000/yr
The waiver ₹25,00,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹2,08,333 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹45,000 a month — ₹5,40,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee.
At your spend
−₹4,400 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹11,300 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹32,600 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹1,17,700 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹1,62,800 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
- 2% domestic / 2.5% international at ₹1/point on iShop
- 1.49% forex — among the lowest non-zero markups
- Unlimited Priority Pass lounges
- Air India Maharaja 1:1 with no minimum-points gate
Watch out
- ₹20,000 + GST fee needs ₹25L spend to waive
- One transfer partner — this is not a miles card
- Emeralde Private out-earns it at a third of the fee
- Redeeming against the statement pays just ₹0.40/point — ICICI's own T&C; iShop and vouchers are the ~₹1 routes
- Fuel and rent earn nothing; utilities, insurance, education and government share one 5,000-RP cap per cycle
- The ₹50,000 milestone ladder is use-it-or-lose-it: ICICI's own page says milestone benefits "can be accessed through the Times Black app for a period of six months, starting from the date the eligible cardholder is notified". Hit ₹20 lakh, ignore the notification, and the ₹20,000 stay is gone
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 · 4 pay zero
Official page + timesblack.com FAQ publish category treatment but no MCC codes. The 5,000 RP/statement-cycle cap wording ('monthly cap of 5000 reward points on following categories') is ambiguous between per-category and combined — TechnoFino reads it as combined ≈ ₹2.5L/month of capped-category spend; treat the combined reading as the planning number.
- Fuel · excluded Zero RP (official page); 1% fuel surcharge waiver up to ₹1,000/statement cycle — CardInsider/CardExpert
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero RP (official page); points earned on rent are reversed
- Wallet loads · excluded ICICI-wide e-wallet-load exclusion (5-Feb-2024) + 1% fee on loads ≥₹5k (15-Jan-2026); Times Black docs don't restate it — community mapping, flag
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · capped 2% up to the 5,000 RP/cycle cap bucket (official page + FAQ) shared with insurance, education and government; ICICI publishes no split of that ceiling, so none of it belongs to utilities alone
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹25,00,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹20,000 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 Times Black earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver and the milestones — the ₹25,00,000 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
1 included · ₹300/yr
- Zomato Gold ₹999 ₹300welcome part of the Times Black welcome bundle (alongside the Lohono / EaseMyTrip stay voucher, the visa-services wallet, Toni&Guy and Interflora); redeemed through application windows on timesblack.com
Not counted in our net-value math above — worth ₹300 a year only if you'd actually use it. 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-led" is the branding, but ICICI now publishes the bar on the product page itself — over 21, salaried at ₹2,00,000 a month or self-employed with a ₹24,00,000 annual income — and the page carries an open Apply button with a video-KYC flow (the Times Black site opens application windows too). TechnoFino application logs show existing ICICI customers sailing through — some report approval in under a minute with no fresh document asked — and a live ICICI banking relationship is the commonly reported grease.
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 ₹20,000 joining and annual, reversed at ₹25L spend (rent/govt/education excluded). Shares Emeralde Private Metal's fee-exemption club — no cash-advance or redemption fees — but card replacement costs ₹3,500 and each add-on ₹3,500. DCC 1.49% (matches forex). Fuel surcharge waiver at all pumps up to ₹4,000/txn, ₹1L/cycle. Invite-only; income/age not in MITC — community. MITC last updated 05-Mar-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 — 6 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product page — ₹20,000 joining + ₹20,000 annual (waived at ₹25L), 2% domestic / 2.5% international, 1.49% forex
- official Additional T&C PDF — 2% domestic / 2.5% international RP; 5,000 RP/cycle cap on utilities+insurance+education+government; "Value of 1 ICICI Bank reward point is up to ₹ 1"
- official MITC (last updated 2 Aug 2026) — ₹20,000 joining + ₹20,000 annual, fee reversal at ₹25,00,000; 1.49% forex mark-up (named exception to ICICI's 3.50%)
- community CardExpert review — corroborates the ₹0.40/point statement-credit rate vs ~₹1/point on vouchers/iShop
- official Launch announcement (with Times Internet and Visa)
- community TechnoFino — application-window + video-KYC experience; fast approvals for ICICI customers