ICICI Bank MakeMyTrip Platinum Credit Card Review: Pay Once, Keep It Forever

The ICICI Bank MakeMyTrip Platinum Credit Card is an entry-level travel co-brand with an unusual fee structure: you pay a ₹500 joining fee once and never pay an annual fee after that. In return you get MakeMyTrip-flavoured welcome and milestone rewards, a little lounge access if you spend enough, and a reward rate that is honestly modest everywhere else. It suits occasional travellers who already book holidays on MakeMyTrip and want a card they can keep for years at no cost. As an engine for everyday rewards, it doesn't do much.

Fees and eligibility at a glance

The joining fee is ₹500 and the annual fee is zero, so from year two the card costs nothing to hold. That makes it an easy card to keep open for credit history. Eligibility asks for a minimum monthly income of ₹20,000 and a minimum age of 21, and both salaried and self-employed applicants can apply. It runs on Mastercard. The forex markup is 3.5%, the standard mass-market rate, and cash withdrawals cost 2.5% of the amount or ₹500, whichever is higher, plus GST.

Rewards and how they actually work

The everyday earn rate is low. General spending earns 0.5%, and travel spending earns a better 1.5%. Put ₹10,000 of groceries and bills on the card and you get back about ₹50; put a ₹10,000 flight on it and you get about ₹150. Statement credit and ICICI's own catalogue vouchers are free to redeem, while select third-party items carry a ₹99 plus GST fee per request.

The more meaningful value sits in the fixed bonuses. When you pay the joining fee you get a MakeMyTrip holiday voucher worth up to ₹3,000 plus ₹500 in myCash, MakeMyTrip's wallet credit. That ₹500 myCash effectively hands the joining fee back if you were going to book on MakeMyTrip anyway. There are also two milestone tracks: ₹1,000 myCash when your annual card spend reaches ₹2.5 lakh, and another ₹1,000 myCash at ₹50,000 of spend on the MakeMyTrip platform. ₹2.5 lakh a year is roughly ₹20,800 a month.

Be clear-eyed about where this value lives: myCash and the holiday voucher only work inside MakeMyTrip. If you book directly with airlines or use another portal, much of what this card offers never reaches you.

Lounge access, fuel and other perks

You get one complimentary domestic airport lounge visit per quarter for the primary cardholder, but only after ₹75,000 of spend in the quarter. That is about ₹25,000 a month to unlock one visit every three months, or a maximum of four a year. The more accessible perk is the four complimentary railway lounge visits a year, which are useful for anyone who travels by train between cities. There is also a 1% fuel surcharge waiver at HPCL pumps on transactions between ₹400 and ₹4,000. No international lounge access or travel insurance is listed for this card.

How it compares with the MakeMyTrip Signature and ICICI Coral

The MakeMyTrip ICICI Bank Signature Credit Card follows the same keep-forever model with bigger numbers. It charges a one-time ₹2,500 joining fee and no annual fee, earns 2% on general spend and 6% cashback on travel (capped at ₹1,500 a month), and welcomes you with ₹1,500 myCash and a ₹2,500 holiday voucher. It adds a complimentary MMTBLACK Platinum membership, 2 domestic lounge visits a quarter (subject to a quarterly spend condition), 1 international visit a year through DreamFolks and 1 railway lounge visit a quarter. The bar is higher, at a 730 credit score and ₹30,000 monthly income. The extra ₹2,000 of joining fee is recovered by the 1.5 percentage point gap in base earn after about ₹1.33 lakh of general spend, so anyone who will genuinely use the card should look at the Signature first.

The ICICI Coral has the same 0.5% base rate, the same single lounge visit a quarter gated at ₹75,000 of prior-quarter spend, and the same four railway lounge visits a year, but charges a ₹500 annual fee (waived at ₹1.5 lakh of spend). Coral runs on RuPay, so it can be linked to UPI, which the Mastercard-based Platinum cannot. If UPI doesn't matter to you, the Platinum delivers nearly the same perks without the recurring fee.

What's genuinely good about this card

No annual fee, ever, is the headline, and the ₹500 myCash on joining means the one-time fee is close to free for a MakeMyTrip user. The railway lounge visits are easy to use and don't depend on spend. And the two milestone tracks give a regular MakeMyTrip customer more than one way to earn bonus myCash.

Where it falls short

The 0.5% base rate is weak, and it makes the ₹75,000 quarterly lounge condition look steep: you would spend ₹3 lakh a year for four lounge visits while earning very little on that spend. The 3.5% forex markup is a poor fit for a card with "travel" in its pitch. Most of the value is locked into a single platform, and the lounge benefit covers only the primary cardholder.

Who this card actually makes sense for

This card suits people who book a holiday or a few flights on MakeMyTrip each year, first-time cardholders who want a no-annual-fee card with some travel flavour, and rail travellers who will use the railway lounges. Pair it with a proper cashback card for daily spending. If you plan to run serious monthly spend through a MakeMyTrip card, the Signature is the better buy.

Where to go from here

For the rest of ICICI's lineup, see the ICICI credit cards guide. If a no-recurring-fee card is your main goal, compare options in our best lifetime free credit cards roundup, and for train travellers the credit card railway lounge access guide covers which cards get you into station lounges.