• Hey there! Welcome to TFC! View fewer ads on the website just by signing up on TF Community.

Devaluation ICICI Bank Credit Cards: Major Devaluation Announced (Effective Jan–Feb 2026)

Whats dcc vs forex?
DCC fee is an additional fee applicable when you pay in INR on POS machines overseas. You might get that option at some places.

It's something people generally avoid. Might be beneficial at some places, I don't know for sure.

Anyway, I don't think EPM is the right card for foreign spends. Even if you are net positive after 2% + GST fee, the final return rate is just way too less to be anything of significance. Better to use a zero forex card and save upfront instead.
 
ICICI Bank Emeralde Metal Credit Card
• Reward points on transportation MCCs (4111, 4112, 4784, 4131)
• Capped at ₹20,000 per month
Earlier → uncapped earning
Now → monthly ceiling introduced
I got this for my Timesblack...

"A fee of 1% of the amount will be charged for transactions carried out through Transportation Merchant Category (MCC: 4111, 4112, 4784, 4131) exceeding ₹50,000."
 
Offers spend based ok, now transportation is capped ? Just imagine you use credit card for vehicle purchase or vehicle maintenance or uber Ola etc that's going to be a massive hit. This will not stop here, wait and watch every daily spends which we are doing in credit card will be capped and an interest will be levied.... mark it, save it 😂
 
Offers spend based ok, now transportation is capped ? Just imagine you use credit card for vehicle purchase or vehicle maintenance or uber Ola etc that's going to be a massive hit. This will not stop here, wait and watch every daily spends which we are doing in credit card will be capped and an interest will be levied.... mark it, save it 😂
Well, we’ll be going back to old plain simole UPI again then lmao. But genuinely, the only use of these shietty ICICI cards are for the spend based offers
 
There is no change to points earning, as far as I can see.

But there are 2 big changes:
1. Add on cards now come with a hefty 3.5K one-time fee per card (still some time, if you were ever planning to apply for it)

2. BOGO upto 750 on Bookmyshow is now conditional on spends of 25K in the preceding quarter. TBH, it makes zero sense on a super premium card. Looks like ICIC thought - Infinia does not give free movie tickets. So why should we keep doing this? Let's apply spend based criteria on EPM as well.

Afterall, it is almost like ICICI just wants to keep EPM an inch ahead of Infinia somehow. Doesn't look like the other rewards are going to last long on EPM at this rate. iShop devaluations are highly likely too pretty soon.

25k quarterly on EPM should be piece of cake.

I can understand folks who own Sapphiro may not be spending 25k quarterly on it. But everyone who owns EPM will be spending about a lakh per monthly easily.

Yeah, you're right.

Especially when you're buying vouchers, even if no such big expenses are there in one such quarter you can easily meet that. So probably not a very big deal, but it does set some precedence for future devaluations like this - like lounge access, for example. Sounds unlikely at this moment as ICICI still wants EPM to compete with Infinia, but this is an indication that they'd continue to make devaluations.

I actually have Sapphiro too, came LTF when I had opened an account with them years back. That becomes useless for me, atleast.
For EPM BoGo still remains unconditional. The email doesn’t mention anything about BOGO
 
Not applicable on Amazon Pay ICICI credit card right?
They have mentioned all retail cards, so it should also include Amazon pay card.
Don't remember exactly, but I think earlier also ICICI said no rewards for wallet load, still we were getting rewards for the same for Apay untill now.

Btw, no email received yet specifically for apay cc. For other cards got the email.

If they charge additional for wallet then this is the only thing would affect me to some extent. Free rotation (~0.5%) to chargeable (~1.5%). We need to have a 1.5% bill payment reward DC to cover this up.

Remaining ICICI cards were already dead for most of us. They are useful only for taking loan/debt or instant bank discounts.
 
Back
Top