Cards versus Payback:

ICICI customers, did you know that your debit cards are capable of helping you in many ways than just getting swiped?  Not only do you buy things for the money you earned, you also get to buy things for the money you spend. This is almost like recycling. Most of the banks offer this facility only for credit cards but ICICI has been providing this for debit cards too for a long time now.

Payback, formerly known as imint is in collaboration with ICICI. The money you spend either by swiping or through net banking is accumulated as points in Payback which has a number of gifts that can be redeemed against your accumulated points. Say you have 4000 points, Payback has a number of gifts categorised for you to choose among them. The categories of gifts in Payback are home & Decor, Electronics, Apparel, Accessories etc. Choose your desired gift and click “Redeem points”. And there, your gift reaches you in about a week well packed and well notified.

You can also plan for a higher price gift and keep aiming for that product by accumulating the points. Or, if you are not interested in the gifts that is listed there or if you think that your accumulated points is not worthy enough for the gifts present, you can go for the vouchers. They offer Fabindia, Addidas, Lifestyle gift vouchers worth Rs.1000 for 4000 points. Certainly these are the best selling ones.

All you need to do this is to check if your payback card is linked with your account. If not do it right away. I recently noticed that ICICI site has included “Reward Points” tab through which you can view the points accumulated in your Payback account till now.

Other banks offer this type of redemption facilities through their credit cards. I have gone through the Citibank redemption catalogue and found it interesting. Most of them are gift vouchers. 

Guess that was useful!

Happy spending, Happy swiping! :)