ICICI drops Times Black from its bigger fuel-surcharge waiver

ICICI's credit-card MITC, last updated 9 October 2026, takes Times Black out of the fuel-surcharge exception it shared with Emeralde Private Metal — 1% waived at every pump on fills up to ₹4,000 and ₹1,00,000 of fuel a statement cycle. The exception now names Emeralde Private Metal alone, so Times Black falls back to ICICI's general clause, which caps the waiver at ₹50,000 of fuel spend a cycle. The same edition rewords the card's 5,000-point cap on utilities, insurance, education and government as one combined ceiling covering domestic and international spend. ICICI prints no effective date; the product page still promises 1% at all fuel stations without a ceiling.

9 Oct 2026

What changed

Worse for you 9 Oct 2026

Devaluation · ICICI Bank

Before

1% fuel-surcharge waiver on fills up to ₹4,000 and ₹1,00,000 of fuel a cycle, the exception shared with Emeralde Private Metal

After

Exception names Emeralde Private Metal only; Times Black takes ICICI's general clause — waiver on up to ₹50,000 of fuel a cycle

See it with every other change

The card this affects

ICICI Times Black

ICICI Bank

₹16,900 a year at ₹75,000 a month

Keep

A ₹20,000 card just lost half of a perk most holders never think about. Until this autumn, ICICI’s credit-card terms gave Times Black the same fuel deal as Emeralde Private Metal: “1% fuel surcharge waiver will be given at all petrol pumps for the maximum transaction size of Rs.4000”, on up to ₹1,00,000 of fuel a statement cycle. The edition last updated on 9 October 2026 keeps that sentence word for word and deletes Times Black from the front of it. Emeralde Private Metal is now the only card named.

That leaves Times Black under ICICI’s general clause, which waives the surcharge on “select cards” for fuel spends up to ₹50,000 a statement cycle. The most the waiver can save you falls from about ₹1,000 a cycle to about ₹500. ICICI’s Times Black product page still says “Get 1% waiver on fuel transactions at all fuel stations” and names no ceiling, so the two documents now disagree. When they do, the MITC is the regulatory one, and we follow it.

The same edition also clears up an old ambiguity. The card’s points cap on utilities, insurance, education and government used to read “capped upto 5000 rewards per statement cycle on MCCs given below”, which left open whether each category had its own 5,000. It now reads “capped upto 5000 (includes both domestic & international spend) per statement cycle cumulatively on all categories listed below”: one ceiling for all four categories together, at home and abroad. That is the reading this site already priced, so no number on the card moves.

Neither change carries an effective date. Fuel is a footnote on a card whose case rests on 2% everywhere, unlimited lounges and Air India at 1:1, so the card’s position does not change. But a ₹20,000 card should not be losing perks quietly, and this one did.

Source: ICICI Bank’s credit-card MITC.