The Best Credit Cards by Bank of Baroda

The Bottom Line

The Bank of Baroda ETERNA is the best credit card for Bank of Baroda Credit Card (BoB) customers charging more than ₹25,000 to their card each month.

The ETERNA gives effective rewards of 3.75% on travel, dining, online shopping & foreign transactions and 0.75% on all other spending.

Including the value of milestone rewards (₹5,000 on hitting ₹5 lacs in year), we estimate it offers a net reward yield of 1.6 – 2.7% on all your spending.

If you spend less than ₹25,000 a month on your card, we do not recommend any credit card from BoB.

At that level, none of the credit cards offered by BoB have a net reward yield of 1.5% or higher. We think there is no reason for most people to accept a net reward yield lower than 1.5% on their card.

If you have the option, consider getting your credit card from another card company like Axis Bank or SBI Card. The best cards from these providers offer much higher reward yields (2.3-3.0%) than anything from BoB. That difference can add up to thousands of rupees in a year.

BoB also offers special credit cards for members of various organizations such as the armed forces, government employees, ICAI and ICSI members. We also review some of these cards below.

Who this is for

If you would like a credit card from Bank of Baroda Credit Card (BoB), this guide is for you. We recommend the best credit cards, no matter what your spending level is.

We have friends who have raised maximizing credit card rewards to an art form. However not everyone wants put so much effort tracking deals, discounts, reward caps and spending categories.

Most of us simply want a solution that is easy to manage – good enough, not perfect. If that’s you, you are in the right place.

In our guides for other credit card providers (HDFC Bank, SBI Card etc.) we have also recommended card combos that help you supercharge your rewards without a lot of micromanaging.

However, while BoB offers more than 20 credit cards in India, juggling more than one of those will not meaningfully increase your rewards.

So we do not recommend any card combos for BoB customers.

How we picked

Banks and credit card companies in India offer hundreds of credit cards. Each credit card has a different set of rewards and other terms and conditions, which makes it difficult for most of us to figure out which card is best for us.

We cut through this complexity by ranking each card on its Net Reward Yield, which measures the total effective discount you receive in form of rewards, when you charge your expenses to the card.

To calculate the net reward yield of a credit card, we create 5 standardized spending profiles of a typical customer with different income levels. We then simulated the total rewards a customer with each spending profile would get on that card, based on the reward schedule for that card.

Table 1: Standardized Spending Profiles

Our reward calculations attempts to account for different types of rewards (cashback, points, miles etc.), reward caps by spending category, bonuses, fees and differences in realizable value of the rewards depending on how you redeem them (e.g. on Bank website as statement credit vs. for flight bookings).

We prefer cards with higher rewards yields, lower income thresholds and lower fees.

We apply this standardized methodology for every Bank of Baroda credit card, allowing you to zoom in to the best credit cards for you.

If you’re willing to manage multiple cards, you can supercharge your total rewards compared to using a single card.

However, managing multiple credit cards requires some effort.

At a minimum, you need to:

• Sign up for the card
• Set up the monthly credit card bill payments (monthly effort or one-time depending on the banks involved)
• Review your statement periodically
• Remember to claim the reward (in some cases)
• Remember to get the annual fee waived (in many cases)

More work is also required to figure out which card to use where and possibly change the setup on various sites and apps to use a different card.

So while adding more and more cards to the mix can keep increasing the potential benefits (at least for high spenders), we think most people would want to manage another card only if the additional benefit is meaningful and the additional mental load low.

With that in mind we decided to identify sets of 2 credit cards that will work well together for most people i.e. so that you can easily remember which card to use where, meet the minimum spend & other conditions and not lose track of all the admin stuff like paying the bill and getting annual fee waived.

To find the best card combinations, we considered 100’s of card pairs for to figure out the combos that work best with each other to maximize rewards.

In testing a pair of cards, we assumed that only one card will be used for each spending category and it would be the one with the higher rewards in that category.

We think this is reasonable as you only need to know which card to use in which situation and don’t need to keep track of your spending on each card through the month.

We think most people do not want to obsessively track their spend by card and category on a daily basis. So we have tried to avoid a situation where you need to switch from one card to other based on how much you have spent on it during the month, in total or for a specific category. That’s too much work for most people.

As mentioned above, we found that combining multiple cards strategically did not give better rewards with Bank of Baroda cards. We found that most people would do just fine by selecting our top pick in their spending category and using it for all spending.

You can read more about our credit card recommendation methodology here.

The Best Credit Card by Bank of Baroda

The Bank of Baroda ETERNA is the best credit card from Bank of Baroda Credit Card (BoB) for people who charge between ₹25,000 – 1 lacs to their cards each month.

We estimate most people will get a net reward yield of 1.6 – 2.7% using this card for all their spending.

The ETERNA offers 3.75% effective rewards on travel, dining, online shopping & foreign transactions and 0.75% on all other spending. It also offers unlimited domestic airport lounge access.

Table 2: Feature Summary – Bank of Baroda ETERNA Credit Card

The ETERNA has an annual fee of ₹2,499 which is waived on hitting annual spending of ₹2.5 lacs i.e. slightly more than ₹20,000 a month on average.

Because of the fee, outside the ₹25,000 – 1 lacs range, the net reward yield on this card is not very competitive compared to the best cards offered by many other card providers like like Axis Bank or SBI Card.

You can easily earn net reward yield of 2.3-3.0% on cards and card combos from these providers.

If you have the option of getting your credit card from those companies, you should take it because that difference in the net reward yields can add up to thousands of rupees every year for you.

Co-Branded Credit Cards

Bank of Baroda Credit Card (BoB) offers a number of co-branded credit cards for members of specific groups like the Indian Navy, the ICAI etc. Some of these cards offer much better rewards than the Snapdeal BoB Credit Card and would be a better choice for you if you are eligible for them.

However even these cards, in most cases, have a lower net reward yield compared to the best cards from some other credit card companies. So if you have a choice you should still prefer those other credit cards.

The table below lists these credit cards and the situation in which you should prefer them over the Snapdeal BoB Credit Card.

Table 3: Choosing Niche Cards

Based on this table, for e.g., Indian Navy personnel should prefer the BoB Varunah Premium over the Snapdeal BoB if their monthly credit card spending falls in the range ₹12.5-60K. If their monthly credit card spending falls outside of this range on either side, they should prefer the Snapdeal BoB (or even better one of our recommended credit cards from another card company like Axis or SBI Card.)

Table 4: Feature Summary – BoB Varunah Premium

Table 5: Feature Summary – Indian Army Yoddha BoB

Table 6: Feature Summary – The Sentinel BoB

Table 7: Feature Summary – BoB ICSI Diamond

Table 8: Feature Summary – BoB CMA One

Table 9: All Bank of Baroda Credit Cards Ranked by Rewards Yield

Table 10: Key Terms for Bank of Baroda Credit Cards