ICICI Bank joins the PM SVANidhi credit-card scheme with a lifetime-free card

A private bank has joined the government’s street-vendor credit card; the four issuers of it this board already carried are all state-owned. ICICI Bank re-issued its credit-card terms on 16 October 2026 — the edition still headed “Last updated on Oct 9th, 2026” — and the new version adds one line to the fee table and a paragraph under it: “ICICI Bank PM SVANidhi Credit Card will be available from <Oct 20th, 2026> for small vendors/ hawkers under PM SVANidhi Scheme”, run jointly by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and the Department of Financial Services.

What the terms say:

• Fee: nil to join, nil in the first year, nil from the second, and no spend target, because there is no fee to waive.
• No supplementary card. “For ICICI Bank PM SVANidhi Credit Card, no supplementary card will be issued.”
• No foreign currency and no ATM cash. Both are “restricted” on this card, so the forex markup and the cash-advance fee simply do not apply.
• A ₹500 floor on penalties. Late-payment charges and interest begin only once ₹500 is outstanding; above that, ICICI’s standard ladder and 3.75% a month apply.
• No penalty for closing an EMI early — no foreclosure or prepayment charge.

What the terms do not say is just as clear. There is no reward rate, no credit limit, no lounge clause and no network named for this card, and ICICI has no product page for it — its sitemaps carry nothing. So we carry the card next to the scheme’s other four issuers here — Union Bank, BOBCARD, Indian Bank and PNB — but we do not rank it. It is a working-capital line for running a stall, not a card to choose for travel.

Source: ICICI Bank’s credit-card MITC.

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