BOBCARD lifts its lounge spend gate to ₹75,000 a quarter
From 1 October 2026, Eterna, Eterna FD, Tiara and Varunah Premium need ₹75,000 of spend in the preceding quarter — up from ₹40,000 — to keep unlimited domestic lounge access. Finance charges jump to 45% p.a. and accident cover disappears on new cards.
BOBCARD published a three-part revision on 13 July 2026, and the travel-relevant one is the lounge gate.
From 1 October 2026, Eterna, Eterna FD, Tiara and Varunah Premium require ₹75,000 of spend in the preceding calendar quarter to keep unlimited domestic airport lounge access. The old bar was ₹40,000. That is an 87.5% increase — ₹25,000 a month of spend on a card whose whole pitch was that the lounge came easy.
The rest, effective 15 July 2026: finance charges on Eterna, Eterna FD and Tiara move from 3.25% to 3.75% a month — 39% to 45% a year. HPCL card fuel rewards and surcharge waivers now apply only at outlets on HPCL’s own merchant list, not every HPCL pump. And air and non-air accidental death cover is gone on cards issued after 15 July, across 16 variants; existing holders keep it only until 25 August 2026.
Update, 16 August 2026 — it landed early. BOBCARD’s own Product Features T&C, 15 July 2026 edition, already prints ₹75,000 in §5.1 Table 1 for Eterna, Eterna FD, Tiara and Varunah Premium, with no forward-effective caveat anywhere in the document — and that is the file the live Eterna product page links as its lounge-eligibility criteria. The announced 1 October start date is not what the governing document says, so treat the gate as ₹75,000 today. One softener the addendum never mentioned: the minimum-spend criterion is waived for the calendar quarter in which a fresh card is issued, and a card issued in the last month of a quarter keeps the benefit through the next one too.
Our take: BOBCARD joins AU, Regalia Gold, IndusInd Pinnacle and Diners Club Privilege in the same 2026 move — the unlimited domestic lounge is now a spend product everywhere, not a card benefit. Eterna is still lifetime free, so the maths is not a fee question, it is an attention question: ₹75,000 a quarter is real routing. If your BOBCARD sits idle between trips, assume the lounge is already gone unless you are spending ₹25,000 a month on it, and put a Priority Pass-bearing card in the wallet instead.