Times Black ICICI Bank Credit Card Review

The Times Black ICICI Bank Credit Card is a Super Premium Credit Card issued by ICICI Bank in association with Times Internet Ltd. and Visa. Chances are you would have stumbled upon the Times Black card already multiple times, thanks to the Times group marketing efforts.

Now getting to the question, is the Times Black card worth the hype? Here’s everything you need to know in detail:

Overview

Type	Super Premium Credit Card
Reward Rate	2% + benefits
Annual Fee	20,000+GST
Best for	International Travellers
USP	Airport transfers & Concierge Services

Ideally it’s meant for international travellers, as only those can make use of the benefits that comes with the card.

Fees

Joining Fee	20,000 INR+GST
Welcome Benefit	– 10,000 INR Easemytrip Hotel Voucher – Zomato Gold (1 Year) – Other un-attractive vouchers
Renewal Fee	20,000 INR+GST
Renewal Benefit	Nil (not clear)
Renewal Fee waiver	25L INR

Here are the detailed info of welcome vouchers:

Easemytrip Hotel Voucher (10,000 INR): It’s quite simple and hope it works as expected.

Atlys Voucher (10,000 INR): This is less-useful for most cardholders because it covers only the “Atlys fee” and not the “Embassy Fee”.

I’ve used Atlys for Egypt and UAE Visa’s recently and the “Atlys service fee” was under 1500 INR each. Assuming one wouldn’t travel too much in 1 year, the actual value you get is much lower than 10,000 INR. So I’m not even considering this as a benefit.

Same is the case with Onevasco’s doorstep Visa service. Onevasco is not a popular service anyway and I wouldn’t be comfortable in handling my Visa’s with any such 3rd party.

Also, this service is likely limited to certain cities, which is the case with VFS doorstep service that I explored sometime back.

Zomato Gold (1 Year): While this is decent one, I hope they allow extension of existing membership, as the voucher will expire in 3 months otherwise.

Toni & Guy (3,000 INR): While I don’t value this voucher, it might be useful for some. Problem for most is that travelling to the outlet itself sometimes costs over 1000 INR. I’ve never used this similar benefit on Amex Plat Charge either, even though I’ve held it for 4 Years.

Rewards

SPEND TYPE	REWARD RATE (FLIGHTS/HOTELS)	MAX. CAP  ( PER STMT CYCLE)
Domestic Spends	2%	Nil
International Spends	2.5%	Nil
Utilities, Insurance, education, Gov. spends	2%	5,000 RP
Accelerated rewards on travel (coming soon)	–	–

• No rewards on rent & EMI transactions

The reward rate is quite low for a card that comes with 20K annual fee. But milestone benefits are there to take care of it pretty well.

Milestone Benefit

SPEND REQUIREMENT	Voucher Type	Voucher Value
2 Lakhs	Klook Voucher	10,000 INR
5 Lakhs	Airport Transfer (or) Heli ride	~8,000 INR
10 Lakhs	Tata CLiQ Luxury	10,000 INR
20 Lakhs	Ayatana Resorts	20,000 INR

Here are detailed info on each of these vouchers.

• Klook: It’s certainly good if you’re a traveller, assuming one can use it for booking tours. Most likely it will help to book international airport transfers as well, unless excluded.
• Airport Transfers / Heli Ride: It’s wonderful to see airport transfer benefit, but only limited to 2 times a year, in Innova. Alternatively one can take the Heli-ride, which will perhaps be the USP of the card if it goes well.
• Tata CLiQ Luxury Voucher: It’s similar to how we used to get one on Axis Magnus in the past.
• Ayatana Resorts: Stay at Ayatana Coorg/Ooty only. I see their rates might go upto ~25K INR, so one might need to spend little extra for the stay.

Ideally speaking, spending till 10L makes sense for most, assuming one wouldn’t travel to Coorg/Ooty just for a stay.

So that’s about 30K INR in value via milestones, which is 3% reward rate on top of 2% via regular rewards.

That’s a decent 5% return on spend you may think. But well, not to forget that we’re only getting 10K value with joining fee. So, we can’t assume that way, rather do some complex calculations to arrive at the card’s reward rate, which we’ll see in a minute.

Lounge Access

ACCESS TYPE	VIA	LIMIT	GUEST ACCESS
Domestic Lounge Access	Visa	Unlimited	–
International Lounge Access	Priority Pass	Unlimited	–

Apart from primary cardholders, add-on cardholders are also given unlimited lounge access for both domestic & international. However, no guest access is provided.

That aside, chances are this card might be one of the few to be eligible for the VIP lounge access at 080 lounge in Blr airport, just like the other ICICI Emeralde Credit cards.

Forex Markup Fee

• Foreign Currency Markup Fee: 1.49%+GST = 1.76%
• Rewards: 2.5%
• Net return: 0.7% (gain)

While the card is decent for forex transactions as seen above, they could have easily given a higher reward rate or even lower forex markup fee to make it look attractive.

Events & Concierge Service

While invites to events (ET & Quorum events) are not really clear, I feel this is a missed opportunity to make it as a USP, given that ET conducts good number of events in a year. Only time will tell how this works in real life.

There appears to be iAssist & Criblife concierge services but again only time will tell how good these are, as they’re quite new to be experienced.

Other Benefits

• 1% Fuel Surcharge waiver upto 1000 INR per stmt
• Zero cancellation charges on flight and hotel bookings: Txn has to be done on card, only 4/5 star hotels, limited to max 2 incidents, upto 12,000 INR a year, domestic bookings only.
• Interflora 1000 INR voucher

I wish to give a medal to the one who thought this 1000 INR inter flora voucher would make sense for a 20K fee cardholder.

I feel that whoever designed the card “failed” to understand the “UHNI” segment and added benefits just like anyone would do for a 5K fee “retail” card.

Too many brands, too many t&c and having to redeem the benefits in 6 months makes life miserable. I wish they had limited set of partners like Klook, TataCliq, Avis and remove everything else from the card to make life simple and easy.

Is it worth it?

Assuming you spend 10L in a year, let’s do a quick math and see what we get:

BENEFIT	DESCRIPTION	VALUE (INR)
Welcome benefit	10K EaseMyTrip Voucher	10,000
Milestone – 2L	10K Klook Voucher	10,000
Milestone – 5L	Heli ride /Airport Transfers (assuming airport transfers)	8,000
Milestone – 10L	10K TataCliq Voucher	10,000
	Total	38,000

So we pay ~24K INR and get 38K INR back, that’s about 14K INR gain or 1.4% gain on 10L spend on top of 2% regular rewards.

Together that’s 3.4% return on 10L spend, which is decent but doesn’t live up to the hype. One can simply get Axis Atlas and enjoy much more than 5% return on spend, at four times lower annual fee.

How to Apply?

• Apply online on Timesblack website

Application process is super smooth especially for existing ICICI credit card holders, just like how the ICICI Amazon Pay Credit Card application system works. It’s instant approval and you can have the card details immediately as well.

ICICI Times Black Card is perhaps the only super premium card in the industry with such instant approval. But well, more about it in a while.

The Concern

There are 2 major concerns with the Times Black ICICI Bank card.

#1 ICICI Bank Times Black Credit Card is the only Super Premium Credit card with virtually no entry barrier.

While this is good for some, generally this would lead to a catastrophic event, just like how Axis Magnus did to Axis Bank, from which the Bank is still yet to recover from the loss even after an year. I hope both brands know what they’re doing by opening the gates to “almost” everyone.

#2 It’s sad to see Times Group disappointing the super premium credit card space these days. First somehow they managed American Express to bundle all tiny benefits into Times Prime with Amex Plat Charge price hike and now this. I wish the Times Group understands that HNI segment has to have simple benefits that doesn’t eat up lot of time and energy to use a card.

It took me roughly 1 hour to even understand all the benefits and decide if it’s really right for me or not (it is not, for now). Someone capable of spending 20K for a credit card should not need more than 5 minutes to take a decision.

Bottomline

• Cardexpert Rating: 3.5/5

The Times Black ICICI Bank Credit Card is the first card by Times Group in the Super Premium segment. While they’ve tried to add so many benefits to the card for a better value proposition, they could have done it LOT better by adding few noteworthy benefits instead.

That said, for most HNI’s ICICI Emeralde Private Metal Credit Card is much better than the Times Black Card. But for those who are not eligible for the Emeralde Private, Times Black does make sense, especially when you don’t hold any other super premium credit cards in your wallet.

What’s your thoughts on the ICICI Times Black Credit Card? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.