#344

Varunah Plus BOBCARD

Keep

The middle Varunah: twelve lounge visits, 2.5% forex and 2.5% on travel, for a fee that waives at ₹1.5 lakh.

₹2,400

a year at ₹40,000 a month, after the fee

Verified · 4 documents

Skip the arithmetic — the board, ranked → · nothing to sign up for

What it's worth to you, after the fee

₹1,500
at ₹0.25L/month
₹2,400
at ₹0.4L/month
₹6,000
at ₹1L/month

Welcome: 500 reward points (₹125) on ₹5,000 of spend within 60 days, plus 12 months of Amazon Prime on ₹1 lakh of spend inside 90 days and — only on cards issued on or after 1 August 2026 — a 12-month FITPASS PRO membership

Priced on the everyday mix — 30% groceries · 10% utilities · 20% travel · 6% fuel · 34% everything else — with this card's published category rules applied. 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 →

Breaks even only by erasing its fee at ₹13,000 a month

At ₹13,000 a month — ₹1,56,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹800 gross (earn ₹800) against a fee of ₹0 — the ₹1,499 is waived, the spend having cleared ₹1,50,000 a year = ₹800 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 · why it ranks #344

BOBCARD (Bank of Baroda) · Not published · premium

Why #344 Open only to Indian Navy personnel, so no general reader can apply. It ranks on what it gives someone who qualifies: twelve lounge visits a year and a 2.5% forex markup for ₹1,499 that reverses at ₹1.5 lakh of annual spend.

₹1,499 + GST
Annual fee1
₹1,50,000 spend
Fee waiver

The take

Varunah Plus is the sensible tier of BOBCARD's Navy family. It costs ₹1,499 and asks the same ₹1.5 lakh of annual spend to waive as the ₹2,499 Premium above it, which makes the cheaper card the better bargain for anyone who was going to hit that bar anyway. What it gives up is the unlimited lounge entitlement — twelve visits a year at three a quarter, behind a much softer ₹20,000 prior-quarter gate rather than Premium's ₹75,000 — and half a point of forex, 2.5% against Premium's 2%. Both are still well under India's 3.5% norm. The earn ladder is two points per ₹100 as a floor (0.50%) and ten on travel, online, dining and international spends, which is 2.5% at BOBCARD's flat ₹0.25 redemption, capped at 2,000 points a statement. That is ₹20,000 a month of accelerated spend before the rung collapses. There is ₹50 lakh of air accident cover and ₹10 lakh non-air behind it, plus a year of Amazon Prime once ₹1 lakh goes through inside 90 days. The points remain a closed loop — statement credit at ₹0.25, no transfer partner, two-year expiry — so the travel value is the lounges and the markup, not the currency. For a serving officer who is not going to spend ₹75,000 a quarter, this is the tier to hold.

Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel

This card reaches break-even by ERASING its fee, not by out-earning it: the waiver is the decision.

₹1,50,000 annual spend erases that fee
₹13,000/mo is where the waiver, not the earn, saves it

the whole desk — your spend, what changed, the downgrade →

Keep, downgrade or cancel

₹1,499/yr at stake · 5 spend bands

The charge ₹1,499/yr

The waiver ₹1,50,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹12,500 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.

Break-even ₹13,000 a month — ₹1,56,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee, and it gets there by erasing the fee at the waiver rather than out-earning it.

At your spend

₹1,500 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged

₹3,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged

₹6,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged

₹18,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged

₹30,000 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 →

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

  • 12 domestic lounge visits a year (3 a quarter), on ₹20,000 of spend in the preceding quarter — a far softer gate than Premium's ₹75,000
  • 2.5% forex markup against India's 3.5% norm
  • 10 reward points per ₹100 (2.5%) on travel, online, dining and international spends
  • Fee reverses on spend: ₹15,000 in the first 180 days, then ₹1.5 lakh an anniversary year
  • ₹50 lakh air and ₹10 lakh non-air personal accident cover, plus 12 months of Amazon Prime on ₹1 lakh inside 90 days

Watch out

  • Indian Navy personnel only — there is no public application
  • The 2.5% rung stops at 2,000 points (₹500) a statement, then falls to 0.50%
  • The renewal waiver bar is ₹1.5 lakh — identical to the ₹2,499 Premium's, so the more expensive card is no harder to hold
  • Closed loop: points redeem as statement credit at ₹0.25 with no transfer partner, expire in two years and need 1,000 points minimum
  • Fuel and the Annexure-1 MCC list (rent, wallets, government, education, insurance, supermarkets, fast food) earn nothing
  • UPI transactions earn the core rate only — the 5X rung never applies to them

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 →

Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?

not published — and we say which

₹1,50,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹1,499 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 Varunah Plus BOBCARD earns, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver — the ₹1,50,000 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

72 of 793 tracked doors
3/quarter (12/year)
Domestic
None — Annexure 2 is domestic Indian airports only
International
Not published; food, drink and spa are charged to the card
Guests

Gate: ₹20,000 of net spend in the preceding calendar quarter (waived for the quarter a fresh card is issued in); ₹2 non-refundable validation swipe at the lounge and a 5-hour cooling period between visits

Opens 72 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 39 airports — see the full map →

Can you get it?

the route in — no cutoffs published

The cutoffs and the actual route in — not the "apply now" button, the door that opens.

Route Invite-only
Income · salaried not published
Income · self-employed not published
Age band not published

Invite-only — there is no public application form. The bank calls you.

BOBCARD (Bank of Baroda) publishes no income or age cutoffs for this card. Blank means blank — we don't invent numbers to fill a grid.

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.

Forex markup 2.5% of the transaction amount — its own band, between the 2% group and the 3% group
APR 3.75%/mo (45%/yr)
Late fee Nil below ₹100; ₹100 (₹100–500); ₹400 (₹501–1,000); ₹750 (₹1,001–10,000); ₹950 (₹10,001–25,000); ₹1,100 (₹25,001–50,000); ₹1,300 (above ₹50,000)
Cash advance 2.5% of the withdrawn amount or ₹500, whichever is higher
Add-on card Nil — up to 3 lifetime-free add-on cards for family over 18
Overlimit 2.5% of the amount over the sanctioned limit or ₹600, whichever is higher
Redemption fee Nil, but 1,000 reward points minimum to redeem against the statement

DEFENCE-GATED: Indian Navy personnel. ₹1,499 in both KFS fee tables; joining reversed by ₹15,000 of spend in the first 180 days, renewal by ₹1,50,000 in an anniversary year — the SAME renewal bar as the ₹2,499 Premium above it. 3 domestic lounge visits a quarter behind ₹20,000 of preceding-quarter spend. Core 2 RP per ₹100; 10 RP per ₹100 on travel, dining, online and international, capped 2,000 RP a statement cycle. Personal accident cover ₹50 lakh air, ₹10 lakh non-air including sea. The FITPASS PRO membership applies only to cards issued on or after 1 Aug 2026.

per the official BOBCARD (Bank of Baroda) MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026

What's changed for this card

6 dated changes

Full tracker →

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 2026
    Devaluation minor BOBCARD (Bank of Baroda)
    BOBCARD withdraws accidental death cover from twenty cards
    Air 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 2026
    Devaluation minor BOBCARD (Bank of Baroda)
    Etihad Guest Gold now costs ₹10,000 on etihad.com, not one rupee
  • 15 Jul 2026
    Lounge moderate BOBCARD (Bank of Baroda)
    BOBCARD nearly doubles the spend gate on unlimited domestic lounges
  • 5 May 2026
    Buff moderate BOBCARD (Bank of Baroda)
    Eterna's lifetime-free window rolls forward yet again
  • 1 Apr 2026
    Fee moderate BOBCARD (Bank of Baroda)
    BOBCARD reprices rail, toll and app-routed education
  • 5 Jan 2026
    Launch moderate BOBCARD (Bank of Baroda)
    BOBCARD 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.