IRCTC BOBCARD
Downgrade10% back on lean-season train tickets, earned ₹250 a cycle at most — a rail coupon with rail lounges.
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: 500 bonus reward points on spending ₹5,000 within the first 60 days
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 ₹7,000 a month
At ₹7,000 a month — ₹84,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹400 gross (earn ₹400) against its ₹350 fee = ₹0 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
The IRCTC BOBCARD does exactly one thing and charges you ₹500 to join plus ₹350 a year to keep doing it: up to 40 reward points per ₹100 on train tickets booked at irctc.co.in, which sounds like 10% back until you read the asterisks. The 40-RP rate applies only to travel dates in the railways' lean seasons (15 Jan–31 Mar and 15 Jul–15 Sep — the rest of the year earns 16), only on the primary cardholder's share of an AC-class fare, and the train earn is capped at 250 IRCTC Travel Points — ₹250 — per statement cycle, so the headline 10% throttles to about ₹3,000 a year of realised value. There is one more travel rung worth knowing, and BOBCARD buries it in a shared rewards annexure rather than on the card's page: book a flight or a hotel inside the BOBCARD app's SmartDeal section and this card earns 8 points per ₹100 on the flight and 20 per ₹100 on the hotel — 2% and 5%, against a base of 0.5%. Everything else earns that base 2 RP/₹100 at a flat ₹0.25 a point, the forex markup is a full 3.5%, and there is no airport lounge. What it does give a regular rail traveller is genuinely useful: 4 railway lounge visits a year, a 1% waiver on IRCTC's transaction charge, and a fuel surcharge waiver. Hold it if you live on the rails; there is nothing here for anyone else.
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
₹350/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹500 joining, then ₹350/yr
Break-even ₹7,000 a month — ₹84,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee.
At your spend
₹1,100 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹2,500 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹5,300 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹16,600 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹27,900 a year, net of the fee, at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend
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
- 15 Jul 2026 BOBCARD nearly doubles the spend gate on unlimited domestic lounges issuer-wide
- 1 Apr 2026 BOBCARD reprices rail, toll and app-routed education issuer-wide
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
- Up to 40 RP/₹100 (~10%) on IRCTC train tickets for lean-season travel dates — the reason to hold it
- 8 RP/₹100 on flights and 20 RP/₹100 on hotels (2% and 5%) booked through SmartDeal in the BOBCARD app
- 1% waiver on IRCTC's transaction/convenience charge on every rail booking
- 4 complimentary railway lounge visits a year (max 1 per quarter)
- 1% fuel surcharge waiver (₹500–₹3,000 txns, ₹100/statement cap)
Watch out
- The 40-RP rate is lean-season only (travel 15 Jan–31 Mar & 15 Jul–15 Sep; 16 RP/₹100 the rest of the year) and train earn caps at 250 Travel Points (₹250) per statement cycle
- Reward points are ₹0.25 flat; the departmental-store 4-RP accelerator caps at 1,000 RP per cycle
- 0.5% on everything outside train tickets, SmartDeal travel and departmental stores; 3.5% forex markup and no airport lounge
- The SmartDeal 8/20 rates need the booking made inside the BOBCARD app's SmartDeal section, and the points post 48 hours after the journey — not after the booking
- ₹500 joining + ₹350 annual fee with no spend-based waiver published
- Points expire 2 years from membership registration; train earn and Travel-Point redemption are primary-cardholder only, and redemption must cover the full fare
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes BOBCARD Reward Points 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 · 5 pay zero
Base 2 RP/₹100; 4 RP/₹100 at grocery/departmental stores; up to 40 RP/₹100 on IRCTC train tickets (irctc.co.in). BOBCARD publishes no full MCC exclusion table for this card — treatments below follow BOBCARD standard practice and are flagged. Reward points redeem at ₹0.25, capped 1,000 RP/statement cycle.
- Fuel · excluded Zero RP; 1% fuel surcharge waiver ₹500–₹3,000, cap ₹100/statement (official)
- Rent & property management · excluded Rent excluded — BOBCARD standard, community, flag
- Wallet loads · excluded Wallet loads excluded — BOBCARD standard, community, flag
- Government / tax · excluded Government payments excluded — BOBCARD standard, community, flag
per BOBCARD (Bank of Baroda) T&C (community-sourced) · rank every card by spend category →
Lounge access
22 of 793 tracked doors
Gate: 4 railway-lounge visits/year (max 1/quarter)
Opens 22 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 20 railway stations , via DreamFolks Railway — 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.
Joining ₹500 + GST, annual ₹350 + GST, no spend-based waiver published. Up to 40 RP/₹100 on IRCTC train tickets (irctc.co.in), 4 RP/₹100 grocery/departmental stores, 2 RP/₹100 other. Welcome 500 RP on ₹5,000 spend in 60 days. 4 railway lounge visits/year (max 1/quarter); no airport lounge. 1% waiver on IRCTC transaction charge; 1% fuel surcharge waiver ₹500–₹3,000 (cap ₹100/statement). Point redemption valid only on 1AC/2AC/3AC/CC/EC IRCTC fares, primary-cardholder fare only; points lapse 2 years from membership registration. RuPay. APR/late-fee slabs and income/age follow BOBCARD standard — verify against the card-specific MITC.
per the official BOBCARD (Bank of Baroda) MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
What's changed for this card
6 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.
- 5 Aug 2026Etihad Guest Gold now costs ₹10,000 on etihad.com, not one rupee
- 15 Jul 2026BOBCARD nearly doubles the spend gate on unlimited domestic lounges
- 5 May 2026Eterna's lifetime-free window rolls forward yet again
- 1 Apr 2026BOBCARD reprices rail, toll and app-routed education
- 5 Jan 2026BOBCARD and Etihad Guest deal two co-brands — the last pipe in
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 — 5 of them, each with the day we read it
- official BOBCARD IRCTC product page — ₹500 joining / ₹350 annual, 500-RP welcome at ₹5k/60d, seasonal 40 vs 16 RP/₹100 by travel date, 250-TP/1,000-RP per-cycle caps (footnote)
- official IRCTC co-brand loyalty document — 10 TP/₹100 lean-season (15 Jan–31 Mar, 15 Jul–15 Sep) vs 4 TP/₹100 rest of year, 1 TP = 4 RP, 1 RP = ₹0.25, AC classes only
- official BOBCARD Features & Rewards T&C (w.e.f. 15-Jul-2026) — IRCTC core 2 RP/₹100, the 5311 accelerator capped 1,000 RP a cycle, and SmartDeal at 8 RP/₹100 on flights, 20 on hotels
- official Bank-wide KFS (17-Jul-2026) — ₹500 joining and ₹350 annual for IRCTC, both with fee-waiver criteria NIL; 3.5% forex on standard cards
- community CardInsider — corroborates 2 RP/₹100 base, 4 RP departmental (adds grocery), 500 RP welcome at ₹5k/60d, 3.5% forex, eligibility (21–65, ₹3.6L salaried / ₹4.8L self-employed)