BOBCARD Etihad Guest
KeepThe ₹2,500 door into Etihad Guest — same pipe as the Premium, half the pressure.
a year at ₹40,000 a month, after the fee
Skip the arithmetic — the board, ranked → · nothing to sign up for
What it's worth to you, after the fee
Welcome: 7,500 Guest miles — 5,000 on ₹25,000 of spend in the first 60 days + joining-fee payment, 2,500 more at cumulative ₹50,000
Priced on the everyday mix — 30% groceries · 10% utilities · 20% travel · 6% fuel · 34% everything else — with this card's published category rules applied: it earns nothing on fuel here, so that spend is dropped, not paid at the headline, and stops pacing milestones and the waiver. Plus milestones, minus the fee. No accelerator credit — the ranking model on /compare adds ~20% of spend at the card's best accelerator, so its ₹ for this card reads higher.
How these numbers are computed — and why the rankings show a bigger one →
Spend tiers, milestones and fee waivers included, at our house ₹/point. Portal and category multipliers can push higher — run your exact number →
Pays for itself at ₹23,000 a month
At ₹23,000 a month — ₹2,76,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹2,600 gross (earn ₹2,600) against its ₹2,500 fee = ₹100 net — the first rung at or above ₹0. The ladder runs in ₹1,000 steps to ₹1,00,000 a month and ₹10,000 steps to ₹5,00,000; figures are rounded to the hundred, and the accelerator is never credited.
2 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants
The take
Since Amex walked away from Etihad on 30 June 2026, BOBCARD's pair is the only way an Indian card earns Guest miles from ordinary spend, and until now the desk showed readers only the ₹5,000 half. This is the same pipe at half the fee: 1 mile per ₹100 everywhere, 3 on etihad.com, and a milestone ladder that does the real work — 250 miles a month at ₹25,000, 2,000 a quarter at ₹2,00,000, 12,000 a year at ₹7,50,000. Run ₹1 lakh a month through it and the stack pays about 35,000 miles against a fee that has already been waived at ₹3,00,000 — roughly 2.9% at the ₹1/mile anchor, and better value per rupee of fee than the Premium at the same spend. What you give up is real: 1% forex instead of 0%, 8 domestic and 4 international lounge visits instead of 12 and 8, Etihad Guest Silver instead of Gold, and the same long exclusion list — telecom, education, insurance, government, rent and even train, bus and toll payments earn nothing. If you fly Etihad and don't spend ₹5 lakh a year, this is the one to hold.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
Here is the fee, the spend that clears it, and everything that has moved under this card since you last decided.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
₹2,500/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹2,500/yr
The waiver ₹3,00,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹25,000 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹23,000 a month — ₹2,76,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee.
At your spend
₹300 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹8,600 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹34,300 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹56,800 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹79,400 a year, net of the fee, at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
Everyday earn plus milestones, minus the fee — the same model as the value panel above, so the two cannot disagree. run your exact spend →
Your copy of this card
You hold this card.
Kept on this device, in your browser. It is never sent to us, never synced, and nothing else on the site reads it yet.
The downgrade
BOBCARD (Bank of Baroda) publishes no document naming a card you can step down to, so we name none — an invented product change is a phone call you would waste. That leaves keep or cancel, and the numbers above are the whole of it.
What has changed under this card
- 25 Aug 2026 BOBCARD withdraws accidental death cover from twenty cards issuer-wide
- 25 Aug 2026 Vietnam Airlines Lotusmiles opens a broad SkyTeam status match — up to Elite Plus a program these points reach
- 3 Aug 2026 SBI drops Etihad Guest from the MILES transfer table — the last SBI door into the programme a program these points reach
We price what is in force today — a change that has not happened yet is not in these numbers. the full archive for this card →
If you call to cancel
What the bank offers to keep you is the one fact this desk cannot compute. We are collecting those reports — dated, and only in aggregate — before publishing any: an offer one reader was made is not one you are owed. Called about this card? Tell us what they offered →
The desk publishes subscribable .ics feeds for the dates it knows — offer deadlines, devaluations, expiry audits. Your renewal date is not one of them: only your statement knows it.
What's good
- 1 Guest mile/₹100 everywhere, 3/₹100 on etihad.com — before the milestone ladder
- ~35,000 miles a year at ₹1 lakh a month once the monthly, quarterly and annual bonuses stack
- 8 domestic (2 per quarter) + 4 international (1 per quarter) lounge visits, no spend gate
- Complimentary Etihad Guest Silver, retained by one etihad.com transaction within 6 months
Watch out
- 1% forex — the Premium's 0% is the single clearest reason to pay the extra ₹2,500
- Single-program currency: miles sweep to Etihad Guest and redeem nowhere else, 3 days after your statement
- Long exclusion list: telecom, education, hospitals, government, rent, wallets, insurance and all rail/bus/toll transport earn zero
- Year one's ₹2,500 is charged at issuance and non-refundable — the ₹3,00,000 reversal only ever reaches a renewal
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes Etihad Guest into a programme that publishes an award chart. These points buy catalogue and portal redemptions, not award seats — so this page has no flight to show you, and will not invent one.
what the cards that DO reach a chart can fly — 2,196 corridors priced →
What earns, what doesn't
8 sourced rules · 7 pay zero
MITC §13 is one sentence — "Spends on special categories (MCC's) listed in Annexure 1 won't qualify for base miles" — and Annexure 1 is the same list the Premium carries, because the document covers both variants. It is long: agriculture (763–825), contractors (1520–1799), passenger transport, railways, bus, toll and road/bridge fees (4111/4112/4131/4784/4789), telecom (4814), rent (6513), cleaning, laundry and personal services (7349/7211/7230/7276/8111/8641), government (9211–9405), education (8211–8299), hospitals (8011/8062), wallets (6539–6543), insurance (5960/6300) and charity (8398/8661). Everything not on it earns 1 mile per ₹100. BOBCARD publishes no spend gate for the ₹3,00,000 annual-fee reversal, so no `qualifying` block is claimed here.
- Rent & property management · excluded MCC 6513 — no base miles, plus a 1% processing fee per transaction
- Wallet loads · excluded MCC 6539/6541/6542/6543 — no base miles, plus a 1% processing fee per transaction
- Fuel · excluded Fuel earns no miles at all: a 1% surcharge waiver applies on ₹500–₹5,000 transactions (max ₹250 a statement), and a 1% processing fee applies above ₹10,000
- Insurance · excluded MCC 5960/6300
per BOBCARD (Bank of Baroda) T&C · rank every card by spend category →
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹3,00,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹2,500 fee. A different question from the one above — earning points and counting toward a threshold are separate rules, and issuers write them separately.
Not published. BOBCARD (Bank of Baroda) states what the BOBCARD Etihad Guest earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver and the milestones — the ₹3,00,000 bar. We won't guess it from the earn table or from a sibling card: Axis published three cards' rules on one day and all three lists differed. If you hold this card and have it in writing from the issuer, send us the document and we'll source it.
Lounge access
40 of 793 tracked doors
Gate: ₹2 non-refundable penny-drop card authentication on the DreamFolks web-access portal before each visit
Opens 40 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 37 airports — see the full map →
Can you get it?
income, age and the route in
The cutoffs and the actual route in — not the "apply now" button, the door that opens.
Direct application — no invite list, no banking relationship required.
per the official BOBCARD (Bank of Baroda) MITC — figures marked (community) aren't in the PDF; the issuer won't say · filter the board by what you can get →
The fine print
7 of 7 MITC rows published
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
Fee ₹2,500 + GST a year. The KFS carries two rows at the same number, but BOBCARD's own page calls it one charge — "a joining and annual fee of ₹2500+GST, charged at card issuance and non-refundable" — so year one cannot be spent away and the ₹3,00,000 reversal only ever reaches a renewal. Same processing fees as the Premium: 1% on rent (MCC 6513) and wallet loads, 1% on utility transactions ≥₹50,000, 1% on fuel transactions ≥₹10,000. Fuel surcharge waiver 1% on ₹500–₹5,000 transactions, max ₹250 per statement. Card replacement ₹100. Annexure 1 lists the MCCs that earn no base miles at all: agriculture, contractors, passenger transport/railways/bus/toll, telecom, rent, personal services, government, education, hospitals, wallets, insurance and charity. MITC v2.0 APR 2026, dated 22-06-2026.
per the official BOBCARD (Bank of Baroda) MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
What's changed for this card
8 dated changes
Devaluations and buffs that touch this card directly, its issuer, or the points and programs it earns and transfers to. Every one is dated here; the tracker carries each one's before → after and the write-up.
- 25 Aug 2026BOBCARD withdraws accidental death cover from twenty cardsAir and Non-Air Accidental Death Cover bundled with Eterna, Eterna (FD), Premier, Premier (FD), Select, Select (FD), Tiara, Empower Business, Corporate Platinum, Swavlamban, Prime, Elite, Platinum Select, Signature, Assure, Renaissance and the three Pragati RRB variants. → No Air or Non-Air Accidental Death Cover. Already gone on anything issued after 15 July 2026; existing cardholders keep it only until 25 August 2026.
BOBCARD's July revision notice has a quiet fourth clause, and it lands on 25 August 2026: the Air and Non-Air Accidental Death Cover comes off twenty product variants at once — not just new cards, but every card already in a wallet. Cards issued after 15 July 2026 never had it. Call it minor and mean it, because this desk does not price the perk and neither should you: air-accident death cover is the benefit every Indian issuer prints in bold and nobody ever claims, it pays only on death in a common carrier, and it costs the issuer almost nothing precisely because it almost never pays. Losing it changes no number on this site. What it signals is the direction: the same notice already moved the unlimited-domestic-lounge gate on Eterna, Eterna (FD), Tiara and Varunah Premium from ₹40,000 to ₹75,000 of preceding-quarter spend, and raised the finance charge on Eterna and Tiara from 3.25% to 3.75% a month. The insurance line is the third cut in one PDF, and it is the one that reaches cards nobody thought were being repriced. ON THE LOUNGE DATE, because BOBCARD published three answers and two of them are still live. The 12 June notice set the ₹75,000 gate for 15 July 2026. Four days later, on 16 June, BOBCARD issued an ADDENDUM — "This communication serves as an addendum to our earlier communication on Friday 12th June 2026" — that DEFERRED the lounge change alone: "₹40,000 in preceding calendar quarter" applicable till 30 September 2026, "₹75,000" from 1 October 2026, with the finance-charge and HPCL clauses left at 15 July. Then the operative Features and Rewards T&C dated 15 July 2026 — which POSTDATES the addendum — prints §5.1 Table1 as "Eterna / Unlimited / Rs. 75,000 in preceding calendar quarter", with no date qualifier and no ₹40,000 anywhere, and BOBCARD's product pages agree. The operative document governs, so ₹75,000 is what this desk carries on all four cards; the addendum is recorded here because a reader who reads the addendum and not the T&C will believe they have until October, ; the ₹75,000 gate is the one that applies.
- 25 Aug 2026Vietnam Airlines Lotusmiles opens a broad SkyTeam status match — up to Elite Plus
- 5 Aug 2026Etihad Guest Gold now costs ₹10,000 on etihad.com, not one rupee
- 3 Aug 2026SBI drops Etihad Guest from the MILES transfer table — the last SBI door into the programmeSBI Card Travel Credits transferred 1:1 into Etihad Guest, one of eighteen airline partners in §3 of the MILES rewards T&C. At the ₹1/partner-mile anchor that was a full-value exit, and it was the only route left after the two Etihad Guest SBI co-brands were retired. → No Etihad route at all. The MILES rewards T&C now lists seventeen airline partners and Etihad is not one of them — the word does not appear anywhere in the seven-page document. Every other SBI partner survives at the same ratio.
SBI Card's own MILES rewards T&C, re-fetched on 22 August 2026 and carrying a 3 August 2026 ModDate inside the PDF, has one fewer airline in it than the edition this desk read on 2 August. The deletion is provable from the numbering rather than from absence alone: the table's first seven rows are unchanged (Air Canada 3, Air France-KLM 4, Air India 5, British Airways 6, Cathay 7), and every row from position eight onward has moved up exactly one — Thai from 14 to 13, Qantas from 17 to 16. Position eight was Etihad Airways / Etihad Guest / 1:1. All twenty-four other partners we carry, airline and hotel, are still there at the same ratios, so this is Etihad being dropped and not SBI narrowing transfers. The timing matters more than the ratio. SBI phased out the Etihad Guest SBI and Etihad Guest SBI Premier cards from December 2025 and reissued holders onto MILES products, and the transfer route was what made that migration survivable — a Premier holder who had spent six years earning Etihad miles could keep feeding the same account through Travel Credits. That is now closed, and India's remaining pipes into Etihad Guest run through BOBCARD's Etihad co-brands, not through SBI. If you hold SBI Travel Credits earmarked for an Abu Dhabi business seat, they are Aeroplan, Flying Blue, Avios or Maharaja points now. ON THE DATE: SBI publishes no notice and no cut-off. The date here is the day the desk read the change out of SBI's own document; the PDF's internal ModDate puts the edition at 3 August 2026, which is the earliest day we can prove, not an announcement.
- 15 Jul 2026BOBCARD nearly doubles the spend gate on unlimited domestic lounges
- 30 Jun 2026Amex India cuts Etihad Guest as an MR transfer partner
- 25 Jun 2026Aeroplan re-cut the partner column of its Flight Reward Chart — India to Asia business up 25%
- 5 May 2026Eterna's lifetime-free window rolls forward yet again
Every BOBCARD (Bank of Baroda) change we've dated → 6 events in 2026, 4 of them nerfs — worst year 2026.
Verified against BOBCARD (Bank of Baroda)'s own documents on · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 6 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product page + FAQs — "Earn 3 Miles per ₹100 on Etihad Airways and 1 Mile per ₹100 on every other domestic & cross-border spends", 1% forex, and a single ₹2,500 + GST a year
- official MITC-cum-KFS — the fee table gives the base card ₹2,500 + GST against the Premium's ₹5,000, and the forex row gives it 1% against the Premium's 0%
- official Program Benefits PDF — the base variant's milestone table: 7,500 welcome miles, 250 monthly at ₹25,000, 2,000 quarterly at ₹2,00,000 and 12,000 annual at ₹7,50,000
- official Global Airport Lounge List for the two Etihad co-brands — 52 rooms, none in India, entered through DreamFolks' web-access portal rather than any card scheme
- community CardExpert review of the pair — corroborates the base/premium split on earn, lounge counts and tier status
- community LiveFromALounge launch coverage of both Etihad co-brands