Savings
ICICI Bank RD interest rates: the FD card, paid in monthly instalments
ICICI Bank pays 6.50% on any RD of 39 months or longer and 7.10% to seniors to 5 years. The late charge, the closure penalty and what ₹5,000 a month becomes.
ICICI Bank’s recurring deposit schedule, effective 29 December 2025, pays a peak of 6.50% to the general public on every tenure from 3 years 3 months to 10 years, and 7.10% to senior citizens from 3 years 3 months to 5 years — past five years the senior rate steps down to 7.00%. The card is the bank’s fixed-deposit card restated in months: at every tenure an RD can actually be booked at, the rate is the one the FD card pays for the same period. What sets the product apart is the instalment rules — a ₹12-per-₹1,000 monthly charge on a late instalment, a maturity date that moves if you pay late, and a closure penalty keyed to the tenure you booked.
Rates below are read from ICICI Bank’s own RD rate page on 10 September 2026 and apply to resident domestic recurring deposits. Confirm the rate on the booking screen; the page says rates may change without notice and the rate on the deposit date is the one that applies.
The buckets that actually pay
| Tenure | General | Senior citizen |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 6 months | 4.50% | 5.00% |
| Above 6 months to 9 months | 5.50% | 6.00% |
| Above 9 months to 15 months | 6.25% | 6.75% |
| Above 15 months to 2 years | 6.30% | 6.80% |
| Above 2 years to 3 years | 6.45% | 6.95% |
| Above 3 years to 5 years | 6.50% | 7.10% |
| Above 5 years to 10 years | 6.50% | 7.00% |
ICICI publishes two columns and seven rows, and nothing is collapsed here. The rows read as ranges, but an RD can only be booked for six months to ten years in steps of three months — 39 tenures in all — and the table sorts them into seven prices: 6 months at 4.50%, 9 months at 5.50%, 12 and 15 months at 6.25%, 18 to 24 months at 6.30%, 27 to 36 months at 6.45%, and all 28 tenures from 39 to 120 months at 6.50%. So 39 months is the shortest commitment that earns the top rate, the 36-month RD most people reach for sits one step below at 6.45%, and for a senior the 7.10% band runs from 39 to 60 months exactly. Nothing longer than 39 months pays the general depositor more; for a senior anything past five years pays ten basis points less.
For orientation, ICICI’s savings account pays 2.5% a year across all balances, effective 26 June 2025. Even the six-month RD at 4.50% pays two percentage points over leaving the money where it is.
The RD schedule is the FD card in months
ICICI’s product page puts the relationship in one line — “Earn interest at attractive rates, similar to fixed deposits” — and its RD FAQ says the deposit “earns interest similar to FDs”. Similar is not identical, so the two cards were compared bucket by bucket, and at every one of the 39 bookable tenures the rates match: six months lands in the FD card’s 91-to-184-day bucket at 4.50%, twelve months in one year to under 18 months at 6.25%, and 39 months and beyond on the same 6.50% plateau with the same 7.10% and 7.00% senior split at five years. The RD table says “above 3 years” where the FD card says “3 years 1 day”, but because an RD moves in three-month steps the difference never lands on a tenure you can choose.
The two pages carry different dates — the RD table is marked effective 29 December 2025, the FD card 11 September 2026 — so the RD page is the older document and a future FD change may reach it late. Read the RD page, not the FD page, on the day you book. The FD card itself, with its cliffs at 45 and 184 days, is in our page on ICICI Bank FD interest rates.
What ₹5,000 a month becomes
| Instalment and tenure | Rate | Total deposited | Maturity value | Interest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ₹5,000 for 12 months | 6.25% | ₹60,000 | ₹62,061 | ₹2,061 |
| ₹5,000 for 24 months | 6.30% | ₹1,20,000 | ₹1,28,159 | ₹8,159 |
| ₹5,000 for 36 months | 6.45% | ₹1,80,000 | ₹1,98,970 | ₹18,970 |
| ₹5,000 for 39 months | 6.50% | ₹1,95,000 | ₹2,17,524 | ₹22,524 |
| ₹5,000 for 39 months, senior | 7.10% | ₹1,95,000 | ₹2,19,751 | ₹24,751 |
| ₹5,000 for 60 months | 6.50% | ₹3,00,000 | ₹3,54,961 | ₹54,961 |
| ₹5,000 for 60 months, senior | 7.10% | ₹3,00,000 | ₹3,60,623 | ₹60,623 |
| ₹5,000 for 120 months | 6.50% | ₹6,00,000 | ₹8,44,956 | ₹2,44,956 |
These are our own figures, not ICICI’s. The method follows the bank’s terms — interest calculated at quarterly intervals and paid at maturity — applied to each instalment from the month it is paid: quarterly compounding for the full quarters it stays, simple interest for the one or two months left over. The bank’s calculator may differ by a few rupees on the broken quarter; run your own instalment and tenure through the RD calculator. None of these figures allows for TDS, which ICICI deducts from accrued interest twice a year and at maturity.
The five-year row is the one to read twice: ₹3,00,000 of instalments earns ₹54,961 for a general depositor and ₹60,623 for a senior, ₹5,662 more for the same money.
The instalment rules that decide the outcome
The minimum instalment is ₹500 a month, and any higher amount in multiples of ₹100. The instalment and the number of instalments are fixed at opening and, in the words of the terms, “cannot be altered subsequently”; the FAQ adds that the debit date and the funding account cannot be changed either. Saving more means opening a second RD.
Each instalment is due by the last working day of its calendar month, normally by auto-debit from the linked ICICI savings account, and the credit date is the date the bank receives clear funds. A missed instalment is not lost: money paid after a gap goes first to the oldest unpaid instalment. What the pages do not say is how many missed instalments end the account — the FAQ says only that prolonged non-payment may see the deposit “treated as discontinued”. There is no sweep-in or sweep-out and no partial withdrawal; the only ways out are closure or a loan against it.
Paying late costs ₹12 per ₹1,000 a month
The default charge is interest of ₹12 per ₹1,000, or part of ₹1,000, for each month or part of a month the instalment is late, recovered from the interest the bank pays at maturity. On a ₹5,000 instalment that is ₹60 for one late month, while the same ₹5,000 earns about ₹27 in a month at 6.50% — one late month costs more than two months of the interest that instalment would have earned. As an annual rate the charge is 14.4%, more than double what the deposit pays.
Maturity, and the day after
An RD’s maturity date is not simply the opening date plus the tenure. The terms define it as one calendar month after the last instalment is paid, or the end of the tenure, whichever is later — pay the final instalment late and the maturity moves with it. Interest is paid on the maturity date, not before.
Unlike an ICICI fixed deposit, an RD is never auto-renewed: the general deposit terms, updated 16 April 2026, place fixed deposits on auto-renewal by default but expressly exclude recurring deposits, tax-saver deposits and deposits of ₹2 crore and above. On maturity the accumulated instalments and interest are credited to the linked savings account, the same day even on a non-working day, and from that moment the money earns the 2.5% savings rate. Rolling it into a fixed deposit is your instruction to give, not the bank’s.
Breaking it early: the rate is rebuilt, then the penalty comes off
ICICI’s rule for an RD is the same as for its FDs, and the general terms say so in one clause covering both. On premature withdrawal, interest is paid for the period the money actually stayed with the bank, at the rate that prevailed at booking for that shorter period — not the contracted rate — and a penalty is then deducted. The RD page adds one clarification the FD page lacks: the penalty is keyed to the original tenure, the one you booked.
| Original tenure | Penalty |
|---|---|
| Less than 1 year | 0.50% |
| 1 year to less than 5 years | 1.00% |
| 5 years and above | 1.00% |
The RD page also shows 1.50% at five years and above for deposits of ₹5 crore and above, where the general terms say ₹25 crore; neither touches a retail RD.
Take ₹5,000 a month booked for 39 months at 6.50% and closed after 20 instalments. Twenty months falls in the above-15-months-to-2-years bucket, which paid 6.30% on the booking date; the 1.00% penalty for a 39-month original tenure comes off that, leaving 5.30%. On ₹1,00,000 of instalments the deposit earns about ₹4,750 instead of the ₹5,857 the contracted rate would have paid — a gap of about ₹1,107, of which the penalty is ₹922 and the rebuild only ₹185, because ICICI’s 20-month and 39-month rates are just 20 basis points apart. On a flat card the visible penalty is the real cost. All three figures use the same quarterly method as the maturity table.
Three rules sit around that mechanism. No interest at all is paid on an RD closed within seven days of opening, and the FAQ warns that a closure inside a very short period — under three months is its example — may earn none either. A jointly held deposit cannot be closed online; the general terms require every holder’s consent at a branch. And the clause waiving the penalty after a depositor’s death is written for fixed deposits and not repeated in the RD section, so ask the branch before relying on it.
If the need is temporary, a loan or overdraft against the RD is the alternative to closing it; when borrowing beats breaking is worked through in our page on loans against a fixed deposit.
Seniors, and the Post Office comparison
| Category | Uplift over the general rate |
|---|---|
| Age 60 and above, tenures up to 3 years and above 5 years | +50 basis points |
| Age 60 and above, above 3 years to 5 years | +60 basis points |
| Age 80 and above | No separate rate |
The FAQ restricts the preferential rate to resident senior citizens and says the category is set from the date of birth on the bank’s records. The pages read do not say what happens to a depositor who turns 60 mid-tenure; the rate is fixed at booking, so assume the general rate holds to maturity.
The natural comparison for a monthly saver is the Post Office. The National Savings Recurring Deposit pays 6.7% for the period running to 30 September 2026, unchanged since October 2023, on a five-year term with no senior band at all. For a general depositor that beats ICICI’s 6.50% by 20 basis points — about ₹1,876 on ₹5,000 a month over five years — with sovereign backing and no insurance ceiling. For a senior it runs the other way: ICICI’s 7.10% earns roughly ₹3,787 more over the same five years. The scheme’s own rules are in our page on the Post Office RD interest rate, and the rest of the family in post office savings schemes. A retiree with a lump sum rather than a monthly surplus should look first at the Senior Citizens Savings Scheme, which pays 8.2% for the quarter ending 30 September 2026 with a quarterly payout and a ₹30 lakh ceiling — 1.10 percentage points above ICICI’s best senior RD rate.
Tax takes the next bite
RD interest is taxable at your slab rate as income from other sources, in the year it accrues, whether or not the bank has paid it. Because an RD pays everything at maturity, a 39-month deposit is taxed across four or five financial years, depending on the month it opens, while the money arrives in one; the interest certificate under the Tax Centre on iMobile or Net Banking supports each year’s return.
TDS applies to RD interest exactly as to FD interest; the belief that recurring deposits sit outside it is old and wrong. ICICI’s general deposit terms put the threshold at ₹50,000 of interest across all your deposits at the bank in a financial year, or ₹1,00,000 for a resident senior citizen, and 20% where no PAN is on record; the statutory rate with PAN is 10%. For an RD the bank deducts on interest accrued on 30 September and 31 March each year and again at maturity. The RD terms page and the rate-page FAQ still print the older ₹40,000 figure; the PDF updated 16 April 2026 is the current one. One clause comparison tables never mention: the interest the deducted TDS would have earned until maturity is itself adjusted out of the interest payable, so a large RD matures a little lower than even the after-TDS calculation suggests.
Where you have no tax liability at all, the declaration that stops TDS is Form 121, which replaced Forms 15G and 15H from 1 April 2026; ICICI’s April 2026 terms still name the older forms. The test is nil estimated liability and total income below the basic exemption limit, both, and TDS is only an advance credit. The thresholds, the declaration conditions and the accrual rule are in our guide to tax on FD interest, and every word of it applies to an RD. At 6.50% before tax, a depositor in the 30% slab keeps about 4.5% after cess; a senior at 7.10% keeps about 4.9%.
Insurance stops at ₹5 lakh per depositor per bank
Deposit insurance covers eligible principal and accrued interest up to ₹5 lakh per depositor per bank, in the same right and capacity, after lawful set-off. It is not ₹5 lakh per deposit, per branch or per app, and an RD balance counts inside the same ₹5 lakh as every FD and savings balance you hold at ICICI.
An RD grows towards the limit slowly and then crosses it unnoticed. On our arithmetic, ₹5,000 a month at 6.50% passes ₹5 lakh in the 80th month, so any RD longer than about six and a half years at that instalment is partly uninsured by maturity even if you hold nothing else at the bank; the ten-year row in the table above matures at ₹8,44,956. To keep a five-year RD at 6.50% inside the cover on its own, the instalment has to stay under roughly ₹7,000 a month; for a ten-year RD, under roughly ₹2,950. Those are our figures on ICICI’s published rate, not the bank’s. Joint accounts, different capacities and claim timing are in our page on DICGC deposit insurance.
Before you book
| If the money is needed in | The tenure that fits | General rate | The trap next to it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Six months | 6 months | 4.50% | 9 months pays 5.50% — one more quarter is worth 100 basis points |
| Nine months | 9 months | 5.50% | 12 months pays 6.25% |
| A year to fifteen months | 12 or 15 months | 6.25% | Nothing shorter than 12 months reaches it |
| Eighteen months to two years | 18, 21 or 24 months | 6.30% | 27 months pays 6.45% |
| Two to three years | 27 to 36 months | 6.45% | 39 months pays 6.50%; 36 months does not |
| Three years or more | 39 to 60 months | 6.50% | Seniors get 7.10% here and 7.00% from 63 months |
| More than five years | 63 to 120 months | 6.50% | The general rate never rises; the balance may outgrow the ₹5 lakh cover |
Set the tenure in months as a multiple of three, check the maturity date on the confirmation screen against the date you need the money, keep the linked account funded on every debit date, and make sure a senior citizen’s RD is booked in that category — the difference is 60 basis points on the band most seniors will choose, and the rate is fixed at booking.
Common questions
Is the ICICI Bank RD interest rate the same as its FD rate?
At every tenure an RD can actually be booked at, yes. ICICI's product page says RD rates are "similar to fixed deposits", and a bucket-by-bucket comparison on 11 September 2026 found no difference: six months pays 4.50% on both, twelve months 6.25%, three years 6.45%, and everything from 39 months to ten years 6.50%, with the same 7.10% senior rate on 39 to 60 months. The two pages carry different effective dates — 29 December 2025 for the RD table, 11 September 2026 for the FD card — so read the RD page itself on the day you book rather than assuming the FD card has been carried across.
What does ICICI Bank charge for a late RD instalment?
Interest of ₹12 per ₹1,000, or part of ₹1,000, for every month or part of a month the instalment is late, recovered from the interest the bank pays at maturity. On a ₹5,000 instalment that is ₹60 for a single late month, against roughly ₹27 that the same ₹5,000 earns in a month at 6.50% — one late month costs more than two months of the interest that instalment would have earned. As an annual rate it is 14.4%. Money paid after a gap goes to the oldest unpaid instalment first, and the pages read do not state how many missed instalments end the account.
What does closing an ICICI RD before maturity actually cost?
Two things in sequence. Interest is recomputed at the rate that applied on the booking date for the period the deposit actually ran, and a penalty then comes off that: 0.50% where the original tenure was under one year, 1.00% from one year upwards. The penalty is keyed to the tenure you booked, not the one you served. On ₹5,000 a month booked for 39 months at 6.50% and closed after 20 months, the deposit earns about ₹4,750 instead of ₹5,857 — the penalty accounts for ₹922 of the gap and the rate rebuild only ₹185. An RD closed within seven days of opening earns no interest at all.
Can I take a loan against an ICICI Bank recurring deposit?
Yes. ICICI's RD FAQ says a loan or overdraft is available against a recurring deposit up to 90% of the amount deposited, the RD keeps earning its contracted rate while the loan runs, and any outstanding balance is adjusted against the maturity proceeds. What the FAQ does not print is the rate — only that it is linked to the RD rate with a small spread. The bank's overdraft against a fixed deposit is priced at the deposit rate plus 2%, or plus 1% for a senior citizen; ask the branch whether the same spread applies before choosing a loan over closure.
Do senior citizens get a higher RD rate at ICICI Bank?
Yes, and by more than the usual half a percentage point on the band that matters. Six of the seven RD buckets add 50 basis points; the above-3-years-to-5-years bucket adds 60, taking 6.50% to 7.10%. From above five years the senior rate is 7.00%, so a senior's best RD is any tenure from 39 to 60 months. The preferential rate is for resident senior citizens, set from the date of birth on the bank's records, and there is no separate rate for depositors aged 80 and above. The Post Office recurring deposit, by contrast, pays 6.7% to everyone with no senior uplift.
Sources
Rates and rules on this page were read directly from the following sources on the dates shown. Figures change — if you are about to act on one, confirm it at the source.
- ICICI Bank RD Interest Rates 2026 — Recurring Deposit interest rates by tenure (w.e.f 29 December 2025), with the late-instalment penalty and the early-withdrawal penalty table
- Recurring Deposits — product page (₹500 minimum in multiples of ₹100, 6 months to 10 years in multiples of 3 months, "Earn interest at attractive rates, similar to fixed deposits", TDS on 30 September, 31 March and maturity)
- Terms and conditions for Recurring Deposit (instalment rules, ₹12 per ₹1,000 delay interest, maturity-date definition, premature withdrawal, TDS)
- Recurring Deposit FAQs (senior citizen eligibility, instalment cannot be changed, loan or overdraft up to 90%, premature closure, maturity credit)
- General Terms and Conditions for Deposit Accounts (FD/RD and deposit variants), PDF "Updated on Apr 16, 2026, Version 2" — auto-renewal exclusions, premature withdrawal, TDS thresholds, section F Recurring Deposits
- FD Interest Rates — ICICI Bank FD Interest Rate for general and senior citizens (w.e.f. from September 11, 2026)
- Overdraft Against FD (up to 90%, FD rate + 2% general, FD rate + 1% senior)
- Savings Account interest rate w.e.f 26 June 2025
- National Savings Recurring Deposit Account Scheme — interest rate since inception (6.7% for 1.10.2023 to 30.09.2026)
- Small savings schemes — interest rates
- Guide to deposit insurance
- Income Tax Department e-Filing portal