ICICI Bank is not exactly known for having rewarding credit cards. Though ICICI has many basic and premium offerings, there is not much that stands out in these when compared to the competition except the co-branded Amazon Pay card. ICICI has now launched an offering for Millennials under the Mine brand which includes both credit and debit cards. Let’s check the details of the ICICI Bank Mine credit card.
ICICI Mine Credit Card Plans and Fees
ICICI has an interesting freemium offering for Mine credit cards. There is only one variant with three different plans that the user has to opt into. All are monthly plans.
- Starter – Free
- PRO 49
- PREMIUM 149
Regular and Accelerated Rewards
All three plans offer 1% cashback on all retail spends with 5% accelerated cashback available on the Pro and Premium plans. The list of merchants where 5% cashback is available are Amazon, Amazon Prime, Big Basket, BookMyShow, Fitternity, Furlenco, Gaana, Grofers, Goibibo, Inox, MakeMyTrip, Myntra, Ola, PVR, Swiggy, Zomato. Of these only Amazon is the important one but with a cap on max cashback, ICICI’s own Amazon Pay card trumps Mine card with LTF and no upper cap on cashback. 🙂
Spend Waivers and Max Cashback
All three plans have a cap on the Max cashback and the two paid plans have a spend waiver point as well.
- Starter – Max Cashback of Rs 100 per month
- PRO 49 – Max Cashback of Rs 200 per month with Rs 10000 spend required for waiver
- PREMIUM 149 – Max Cashback of Rs 750 per month with Rs 20000 spend required for waiver
In case you missed it, all amounts above are for monthly spending. Generally, our credit card spends spike during the festive season – so spend waivers and cashback always make more sense at an annual level. The monthly criteria is a dampener because spends always need to reach the minimum threshold for a waiver. Wonder what ICICI was thinking here!
Other Benefits
Apart from the cashback on spends, ICICI Mine credit card offers two additional benefits:
- Fuel Surcharge Waiver – This is applicable on all HPCL pumps and all three plans.
- Rail Lounge Access – Limited to 1 per month only on PRO and PREMIUM plans
- Airport Lounge Access – Limited to 1 per month only on PREMIUM plan
ICICI Mine credit card vs the competition
Unlike a couple of years back, now there are many entry-level credit cards that offer excellent rewards while being LTF or with lower spend waiver criteria. For example, Axis Ace offers 2% on all spending and 5% on bill payments – no cashback cap on both. Even ICICI’s own Amazon Pay card is LTF and offers 1% on all spending, 2% on Amazon Pay merchants (which is pretty huge), and 5% on Amazon.in shopping – again without any cap on cashback.
If ICICI Bank really wants to target millennials with Mine credit card, then it needs to up the maximum cashback and lower the fees/spend waiver criteria. Till then, it does not make sense to opt for this.
