Following the recent trend in the industry, the ICICI Bank has come up with a brand new shopping portal in the name of iShop, a shopping/travel booking portal that offers accelerated rewards on spends, similar to HDFC Bank’s SmartBuy.
ICICI Bank’s iShop portal offers up-to 12X rewards on spends done on the portal that gives a reward rate of up-to sweet 36%. Here’s everything you need to know:
Accelerated Rewards
| Credit Card | Regular Rewards | iShop Flights / Vouchers (6X) | iShop Hotels (12X) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emeralde Private Metal | 3% | 18% | 36% |
| Times Black | 2% | 12% | 24% |
| Emeralde PVC | 1% | 6% | 12% |
| Other Cards | 0.75% | 3% | 6% |
| Co-brand Cards (Cashback) |
~ | 4% | 4% |
Apart from that, even debit cards and NetBanking transactions would earn accelerated rewards, but they’re not exciting per se, so it’s safe to ignore.
That’s outstanding 36% return on hotels and upto 18% savings even on vouchers, especially on Amazon Pay Vouchers too. We’ll look back after a week or two to see if it continues to exist. 😉
Max Cap
| Card | Max. Cap (on Bonus) |
|---|---|
| Emeralde Private Metal | 18,000 Points |
| Times Black | 12,000 Points |
| Emeralde PVC | 12,000 Points |
| Other Cards (Coral, CSK, HPCL, ManU, Parakram, Rubyx, Sapphiro) |
9,000 Points |
| Co-Branded Cards (Amazon, Adani, Emirates, MMT, etc.) |
₹1,100 Cashback |
It’s evident from above that ICICI Emeralde Private Metal and ICICI Times Black Credit Cards are the best ones to hold to take advantage of the iShop accelerated rewards system, as both reward rate and max cap are good enough to explore those cards.
That’s about 1L INR spend equivalent on Emeralde Private Metal or Times Black for Flights/Vouchers or 50K INR spend on Hotels, which is quite good.
That said, I’m not sure if the cap is on calendar month or statement cycle.
Redemption
- Flights: 95% points (1 Point = 1 INR)
- Hotels: 90% points (1 Point = 1 INR)
- eVouchers: 50% points (1 Point = 0.60 INR)
So there are 2 portals now if you wish to redeem rewards earned on ICICI Bank Credit Cards.
One, the regular rewards portal which ICICI Bank recently launched by replacing Payback points system. The other is the new iShop portal.
One can redeem their existing rewards on their ICICI Bank credit cards for anything on iShop portal, partially or fully, with above restriction in place.
The ICICI Bank’s iShop portal is much better compared to HDFC (Smartbuy), Axis (Traveledge) or most other platforms for typical travel redemption.
The portal looks neat and simple and lists all cards linked to your profile beautifully, along with the points available on each.
However, it is to be noted that ICICI is yet to bring up their points transfer partners into the system, which I’m hoping would go live anytime.
As of now, one can transfer points to Air India at 1:1 on regular rewards portal.
Is it Live?
I contacted ICICI Wealth Banking support regarding this, but they lacked clarity and simply advised me to trust the information as long as its on the bank’s portal.
I also reached out to ICICI Bank’s PR team, who confirmed that there has been no formal launch of iShop so far.
At this point, there is no official communication. However, even Axis Bank never explicitly communicated about the Travel Edge portal for a long time after its launch.
So it seems this is targeted at maximizers – allowing the bank to generate some good revenue while points maximizers get what they want – rewards, lots of rewards!
iShop Portal
- Open the link: icicibank.com/ishoplogin
- Login using your ICICI Bank credentials and it will take you to the iShop portal.
- Choose the category from the menu
- Verify the bonus points for your card before placing the order & proceed with payment.
Hands-on experience
I attempted to buy eVouchers using my Emeralde Private metal, but the transaction was initially declined for “security reasons”.
Since I’ve faced similar issues before, I knew the fix – calling support to whitelist the merchant/transaction on my account.
I tried again after five minutes, and this time the transaction was successful. The vouchers are working without any issues.
That aside, I did notice that the system is picking the rewards on my ICICI Sapphiro credit card (replaced from Intermiles Sapphiro) but not the rewards on Emeralde Private metal’s.
That looks weird, so I’ve dropped an email to support to see if they can fix, or I’ll better close the Sapphiro to see if that fixes the issue.
Now, it’s a waiting game to see if the rewards kick in as expected – and how will it be given? as regular rewards or as iCash!
In a nutshell
ICICI Bank Credit Cards were never considered as a mainstream credit card for reward seekers, because of their not so good reward rate.
But with the launch of the accelerated rewards on iShop portal, their super premium credit cards like ICICI Emeralde Private Metal & ICICI Times Black looks lucrative all of a sudden and now it competes wonderfully well with Axis and HDFC Bank in the segment.
Given that ICICI Emeralde Private Metal is not easy to get, I’m expecting lot of applications going towards ICICI Times Black Credit Card, which makes sense for those who can’t get hands on with Axis Magnus Burgundy or HDFC Infinia.
While the initial impressions of iShop are promising, time will tell if it reshapes the perception of rewards on ICICI Bank Credit Cards – until then enjoy more rewards & more joy with iShop.