BOBCARD Etihad Guest Premium
KeepThe last clean pipe into Etihad Guest — 2 miles/₹100, 0% forex, milestone confetti.
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: 15,000 Guest miles — 10,000 on ₹25k in 60 days + fee payment, 5,000 more at ₹50k; the offer T&C behind it runs only for cards onboarded to 30 Sep 2026
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 ₹5,200 gross (earn ₹5,200) against its ₹5,000 fee = ₹200 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.
3 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants · why it ranks #12
Why #12 Our value model puts this card in the top six among obtainable cards and we have seated it lower anyway, so here is the argument. The number is real: ₹70,000 a year at ₹1,00,000 a month, the best of any card in the group we compared it against. What the number cannot show is that every one of those miles auto-sweeps into ONE airline programme with no onward transfer at all, that the programme is trending down towards its own ₹0.40 floor, and that Etihad Guest miles lapse after eighteen months of inactivity — a window only a flight resets, not a card spend. The rule this board applies elsewhere is that points which leave the building beat points that earn more and stay put, and applied honestly it costs this card its top-six seat. Fly Etihad twice a year and nothing at ₹5,000 comes close. Never fly them and you are collecting wallpaper.
Our #1 for First travel card; #2 for Status & memberships — 2 of the 23 questions this desk ranks.
Fee, justified: before you earn a single point, this card bundles ~₹2,500/yr of memberships + elite status you'd actually use — weigh that against the ₹5,000 annual fee. Rewards and milestones stack on top (run your spend → · every card's perks, ranked →).
The take
With Amex's Etihad exit on 30 June 2026, this Mastercard is the only card that EARNS Guest miles directly from Indian spend (Axis EDGE still transfers in at 5:2, Olympus 1:4 — but transfers aren't earning) — and it earns hard: 2 miles per ₹100 everywhere, 6 on etihad.com, plus 500 miles a month at ₹50k, 4,000 a quarter at ₹3L and 24,000 a year at ₹12L. Run ₹1L a month through it and the stack pays 70,000 miles — 5.8% at the ₹1/mile anchor — with the ₹5,000 fee waived at ₹5L and 0% forex on top. The catch is concentration: every mile auto-sweeps into one drifting-dynamic airline program, and the exclusion list (telecom, education, insurance, government — even train, bus and toll payments) guts the "2% on everything" pitch for household spend. Fly Etihad to AUH or Europe even twice a year and nothing at this fee comes close; never fly them and the miles are wallpaper.
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
₹5,000/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹5,000/yr
The waiver ₹5,00,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹41,667 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.
₹600 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹11,300 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹28,600 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹1,13,700 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹1,58,800 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
- 5 Aug 2026 Etihad Guest Gold now costs ₹10,000 on etihad.com, not one rupee
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
- 2 Guest miles/₹100 base, 6/₹100 on Etihad — before milestones
- 70,000 miles/yr at ₹1L/month once the monthly, quarterly and annual bonuses stack
- 0% forex markup and 12 domestic + 8 international lounge visits, no spend gate
- Etihad Guest Gold in year 1 on your first etihad.com purchase over ₹10k within 6 months (Silver on first swipe; both tiers run 12 months from issuance)
Watch out
- THE ONE THAT VOIDS THE BALANCE: your miles die 18 months after your last qualifying activity, and Etihad's own help pages say that window is "extended to an additional 18 months by flying with Etihad Airways or any partner airline" — spending on this card is not named as an extension anywhere. Earn diligently, never board an Etihad or partner flight, and the whole balance expires at 23:30 GST on the last day of the 18th month. Only Platinum and Emerald members are exempt
- Single-program currency: miles auto-transfer to Etihad Guest and redeem nowhere else
- Long exclusion list: telecom, education, hospitals, government, rent, wallets, insurance — and all rail/bus/toll transport — earn zero
- 1% processing fee on rent and wallet loads; utility fee ≥₹50k; fuel fee ≥₹10k (MITC)
- Etihad keeps drifting dynamic — the ₹1/mile anchor is the middle, not the floor
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
13 sourced rules · 8 pay zero
The official MITC-cum-KFS (22-06-2026) publishes the exclusion table (Annexure 1): agriculture, contractor, passenger transport/rail/bus/toll, telecom, rent, cleaning & personal services, government, education, hospital, wallet, insurance, charity earn no base miles. Supermarkets and fast food — reported excluded by early community coverage — are NOT on the official list. The MITC adds 1% processing FEES on rent, wallet loads, big utility and big fuel transactions.
- Fuel · excluded Zero miles — the official MITC says the fuel transactions that get the waiver earn nothing; 1% fuel-surcharge waiver on transactions of ₹500–₹5,000, capped at ₹250 a statement cycle; 1% processing fee on fuel txns ≥₹10k
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero miles (Annexure 1, MCC 6513) + 1% processing fee (official MITC)
- Wallet loads · excluded Zero miles + 1% processing fee on MCCs 6539–6543 (official MITC)
- Insurance · excluded Zero miles — Annexure 1 MCCs 5960/6300 (official MITC)
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
₹5,00,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹5,000 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 Premium earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver and the milestones — the ₹5,00,000 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 ₹5,000, waived at ₹5L anniversary-year spend. Watch the processing fees: 1% on rent (MCC 6513) and wallet loads, 1% on utility txns ≥₹50k (cap ₹3,000/txn), 1% on fuel txns ≥₹10k. Card replacement ₹100. BOBCARD publishes no income cutoff; age 21–60 from the official application guidelines. MITC 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 — 12 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Launch "2X Welcome Bonus Miles" offer T&C, captured 11 Jan 2026 — Premium 10,000 miles on ₹25,000 in 60 days, a single tranche, for cards onboarded 5 Jan – 4 Feb 2026
- official Product page — "6 Miles per ₹100 on Etihad Airways and 2 Miles per ₹100 on every other domestic & cross-border spend"
- official BOBCARD revision notice, effective 5 Aug 2026 — Gold Tier now needs a transaction of ₹10,000 or more on Etihad.com within 6 months of card issuance, not any transaction
- official MITC-cum-KFS PDF (Premium forex 0%, ₹5,000 joining + annual, Annexure-1 zero-earn MCCs, once-per-period milestone rule, 1,000-mile twice-a-year Etihad flight bonus)
- official Welcome-offer T&C PDF — the 10,000+5,000 construct, for cards onboarded 1–30 Sep 2026 only; miles auto-sweep to Etihad Guest within 3 days of statement
- official Program Benefits PDF — official milestone table (Premium welcome 15,000 against the Base variant's 7,500, monthly 500, quarterly 4,000, annual 24,000) and the welcome-miles credit timeline
- official Etihad Guest help pages — Bronze/Silver/Gold miles are valid 18 months, "extended to an additional 18 months by flying with Etihad Airways or any partner airline"
- official Etihad Guest terms, clauses 4.1.11–4.1.15 — miles expire at 23:30 GST on the last day of the 18th month after the last Qualifying Activity; Platinum and Emerald balances do not expire
- community LiveFromALounge launch coverage
- community Mint — cards launched on the Mastercard network
- 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 — Silver on first swipe, Gold (year-1) on first etihad.com purchase; 12 domestic + 8 international lounge visits