How is the BOBCARD Eterna annual fee waived?

The BOBCARD Eterna charges an annual fee of ₹2,499, and BOBCARD waives it when the card sees ₹2,50,000 of spend in a card anniversary year. The spend in one anniversary year decides the fee for the next one. The joining fee works on a separate rule. BOBCARD’s product page currently lists a ₹0 joining and first-year fee from 1 September 2026, marked as a limited-period offer, so the first year and every year after it run on different clocks.

How the annual waiver works

BOBCARD’s Key Fact Statement lists the Eterna at ₹2,499 a year, waived on ₹2,50,000 of spend in an anniversary year. The product page words it from the cardholder’s side: from the second year onwards, spend ₹2,50,000 in the preceding card anniversary year and the ₹2,499 fee is waived.

An anniversary year runs from the date the card was issued, not from January. A card issued in October counts its spend from October to the next October, and the fee posts, or does not, after that date. A statement view set to the calendar year or the financial year shows a total the waiver does not read.

Spread evenly, ₹2,50,000 comes to about ₹20,833 a month. The waiver reads a single annual total, though, so one large month counts as much as several small ones.

How the joining fee works

The Key Fact Statement dated 17 July 2026 carries the standard rule. The Eterna’s joining fee is ₹2,499, waived if the card sees ₹25,000 of spend in the first 60 days. If that spend is not met, the fee is charged in the third statement cycle. The timing is where people get caught: a new cardholder sees two clean statements, concludes the card is free, and the fee lands on the third.

The product page now sets that aside for new cards. It lists a ₹0 joining and first-year fee with effect from 1 September 2026 and calls it a limited-period offer. A card issued while the offer runs should carry no joining fee. One issued after the offer ends falls back to the 60-day rule. Either way, the annual fee from year two follows the ₹2,50,000 rule, so the card is not lifetime free.

What the fine print leaves open

Neither page says which transactions count toward the ₹2,50,000. The card’s own rules exclude fuel, rent and wallet loads from earning points, and UPI and utility payments earn only the core rate. Whether a transaction earns points and whether it counts toward a fee waiver are separate questions, and the published documents answer only the first.

Some spends also cost money to make. BOBCARD charges 1% plus tax on rent payments and on wallet loads, on utility transactions of ₹50,000 or more (capped at ₹3,000), and on fuel transactions of ₹10,000 or more. Routing a large rent payment through the card to reach the waiver can cost more in fees than the ₹2,499 it saves, even if the payment counts.

Refunds are the other open point. A purchase refunded inside the anniversary year may be netted off the total. BOBCARD’s terms do not say how, so the safe reading is that only spend that stays on the card counts.

What the spend earns along the way

The card earns 3 Reward Points per ₹100 as its core rate. Online shopping, dining, travel and international spends earn 15 per ₹100, which BOBCARD markets as 5X. Krediit’s catalog values a BOBCARD point at ₹0.25, the same rate the product page uses for cashback redemption. That puts the core rate at 0.75% and the 5X band at 3.75%.

The 5X band has a ceiling. Accelerated points across online, dining, travel and international spends share one cap of 5,000 points a month. That is worth ₹1,250, and it is reached at about ₹33,333 of accelerated spend in the month. Spend past that point earns the core rate.

Two milestones sit on top. The card pays 10,000 bonus points on ₹50,000 of spend within 60 days of issue, worth ₹2,500 at the catalog value, and 20,000 points on ₹5 lakh of spend in an anniversary year, worth ₹5,000. The points do not expire.

For scale, one year’s fee of ₹2,499 equals 9,996 points. At the core rate alone, the full ₹2,50,000 earns 7,500 points, or ₹1,875, which does not cover the fee. With most of that spend in the 5X categories the same total earns more, though it is the waiver, not the points, that takes the fee off the statement.

A worked example

Take a cardholder who puts ₹20,000 a month on the Eterna. Over an anniversary year that is ₹2,40,000, or ₹10,000 short of the waiver, and the ₹2,499 fee posts. Another ₹10,000 on the card before the anniversary date would have removed it.

Someone who passes ₹2,50,000 early in the year has no fee reason to keep routing spend to the Eterna. Further spend there earns only what its rates pay.

What to check on your own statement

First, find the card’s issue date. The anniversary year starts there, and the fee posts after it. Second, add up the spend since that date, leaving out refunds, and compare it with ₹2,50,000. Third, if the card is new, check which joining rule applies to it: the ₹0 offer, or ₹25,000 within 60 days with the fee in the third statement cycle. Fourth, look at how much of the 5,000-point accelerated cap each month used, since a month over the cap earns less than it looks.

The figures here are the card’s catalog record and BOBCARD’s published terms as of the date shown. Krediit’s fee-waiver reminder counts the spend you log on the card against ₹2,50,000 and shows the shortfall before the anniversary date.