Banks restricting lounge access? These non-premium credit cards come to rescue

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. ICICI Bank is the latest major bank to restrict lounge access for its card users. ICICI credit card holders will now need to spend ₹75,000 every quarter to unlock complimentary lounge access in the subsequent quarter.

Earlier this year, Axis Bank and HDFC Bank had also introduced minimum quarterly spending caps of ₹50,000 and ₹1 lakh, respectively, on select cards to unlock lounge access on them. A senior bank official of a leading bank informed Mint that the lounge is increasingly becoming a loss-making feature given the increase in cardholders using their cards for lounge access. Banks buy lounge access in bulk depending on the eligible cardholders and previous years trends of how manyof the users actually use them.

With usage volumes shooting up, after paying the lounge and the card network, banks have started making losses. To restrict the usage, banks are introducing curbs in the form of minimum spending thresholds. Restrictions on the ICICI Bank credit cards mainly impact users of non-premium cards with lower spending.

For instance, MakeMyTrip ICICI credit card allowed eight complementary domestic lounge visits annually until spending threshold was introduced. It was a good deal for a card with only a ₹1,000 fee, which would be negated by the ₹1,000 MMT voucher given as a joining benefit. But now, the user has to spend an average of ₹25,000 every month to unlock two visits every quarter.