Creditkeeda
Both the Scapia Credit Card and the BOBCARD Eterna are widely available as lifetime-free cards right now, and on paper, they look like very different beasts. Scapia is the sleek travel-and-forex card. Eterna is the premium online-spends-and-lounge card.
So which one actually deserves a spot in your wallet?
I put them head-to-head across ten rounds, the way you'd compare two phones. For each round, you'll see not just who wins, but exactly why.
The contenders at a glance
Scapia Credit Card
Scapia is a genuinely lifetime-free travel card. Its headline acts are 0% forex markup and Scapia Coins on every spend. You earn 10% coins on regular spends and 20% coins on travel booked through the Scapia app. The important catch is that coins are valued at 5 to a rupee and can only be redeemed for travel within the Scapia ecosystem. In practical terms, those earning rates translate to roughly 2% and 4%, respectively.
BOBCARD Eterna
BOBCARD Eterna is a premium card currently being offered as a limited-period lifetime-free card for new customers. Under its regular pricing, the card costs ₹2,499 + GST annually. It offers 5X rewards, equivalent to 3.75%, on online shopping, dining, travel and international spends, with points redeemable as statement credit. The catch is a long list of excluded MCCs that can quietly reduce rewards on many merchants.
Now, onto the rounds.
Round 1: Fees
Winner: Scapia
Scapia is lifetime-free with no strings attached. No spend conditions, no annual review and no renewal worries.
Eterna's lifetime-free status is promotional. Once the offer period ends, the card reverts to its regular fee structure, with the annual fee waived only if you spend ₹2.5 lakh in a year.
One card is structurally free. The other is free only if you get in during a specific window. Scapia takes this round on certainty.
Round 2: Welcome Benefits
Winner: Eterna
Eterna starts strong with a meaningful first-year value proposition. New cardholders get a 6-month FITPASS Pro membership worth around ₹15,000 and 10,000 reward points, worth ₹2,500, on spending ₹50,000 within the first 60 days.
Scapia, by comparison, offers little beyond a modest referral coin bonus.
Eterna wins this round comfortably.
Round 3: Reward Rate
Winner: Eterna
Eterna's 3.75% return on online shopping, dining, travel and international spends, redeemable as statement credit, beats Scapia's roughly 2% base return tied to travel redemptions.
The reason Eterna edges ahead is the combination of a higher earning rate and flexible redemption. The reason it is not a runaway win is that the advertised reward rate applies only where the MCC exclusions do not interfere. In the real world, some merchants that users assume are eligible may not earn accelerated rewards.
Even with that caveat, Eterna takes the round.
Round 4: Capping and High-Spender Headroom
Winner: Scapia
This is where Scapia fights back.
Scapia Coins are completely uncapped. Every rupee spent continues earning at the same rate.
Eterna's 5,000-point monthly cap applies only to accelerated rewards, not the base rewards. The cap is reached at roughly ₹41,700 of accelerated-category spend, after which only the base reward rate applies.
For moderate spenders, this may never matter. For heavy spenders, it matters a lot. The more you spend, the more attractive Scapia's uncapped structure becomes.
Scapia wins on headroom.
Round 5: Forex
Winner: Eterna
This one surprises many people.
Scapia charges 0% forex markup, which sounds unbeatable. The catch is that international transactions do not earn rewards. Your net return abroad is effectively zero.
Eterna charges a 2% forex markup but earns 3.75% rewards on international spends, leaving a net positive return of roughly 1.75%.
In pure rupee terms, Eterna can actually generate value on foreign transactions while Scapia merely breaks even.
That said, Scapia remains the simpler and more predictable option. There are no calculations, no reward assumptions and no surprises. Still, on pure value, Eterna wins.
Round 6: Lounge Access
Winner: Eterna
Both cards offer unlimited domestic airport lounge access, and neither offers international lounges.
The difference lies in how that access is structured.
Scapia requires ₹20,000 of spend in the previous month to keep lounge access active. Eterna requires ₹40,000 of spend in the previous calendar quarter, which works out to a similar monthly requirement but is easier to manage because spending can be concentrated.
Eterna also benefits from a stronger lounge network, add-on cardholder access and arrival lounge access.
The overall package is more comprehensive, so Eterna takes the round.
Round 7: Milestone Rewards
Winner: Eterna
Eterna rewards sustained spending with 20,000 reward points on ₹5 lakh of annual spend, in addition to its welcome benefits and regular rewards.
Scapia has no milestone structure.
This is a straightforward win for Eterna.
Round 8: Added Benefits
Winner: Eterna
Eterna offers a broader range of lifestyle perks. Cardholders get a Buy One Get One movie offer worth up to ₹250 per month, Mastercard golf benefits and air accident insurance cover of up to ₹1 crore.
Scapia counters with no-cost EMI on travel bookings made through the app, airport shopping and dining benefits, and a companion RuPay card for UPI payments.
One thing worth highlighting is the RuPay card's advertised 5% reward rate on UPI transactions. Since rewards are paid in Scapia Coins valued at 5 coins per rupee, the effective value works out to roughly 1%.
Overall, Eterna's benefits are broader and likely to be more useful to most cardholders.
Round 9: Redemption Flexibility
Winner: Eterna
This is perhaps Eterna's biggest advantage.
Its reward points can be redeemed as statement credit against eligible spends, making them effectively cash-equivalent.
Scapia Coins can only be redeemed for travel bookings within the Scapia app.
Flexible cash-like rewards beat restricted travel credits for most users, making this an easy win for Eterna.
Round 10: Support and Trust
Winner: Scapia
Scapia's app is genuinely well-designed, and its integration with Federal Bank makes onboarding and servicing smooth.
BOBCARD, on the other hand, has a long-standing reputation for slow and inconsistent customer support. It is a complaint that surfaces frequently across user communities and review platforms.
When something goes wrong, the service experience matters.
Scapia wins this round.
The Scorecard
Final tally: BOBCARD Eterna 7, Scapia 3.
The Small Print We Didn't Score
A few differences were too minor to count as full rounds, but they can still influence your decision.
Both cards waive the 1% fuel surcharge, though Scapia caps the benefit at ₹500 per month while Eterna caps it at ₹250. Frequent fuel users may appreciate the extra headroom.
Scapia also allows travel bookings made through its app to be converted into no-cost EMIs, a feature Eterna does not offer.
For UPI users, Scapia has another advantage. It issues both a Visa or Mastercard credit card and a companion RuPay card together. That means you get UPI scan-and-pay functionality without giving up your primary card network. With Eterna, you must choose between the Mastercard and RuPay variants.
Eligibility is another area where the two cards differ. Scapia is easier to obtain, offers app-based onboarding and generally caters to a broader audience. Eterna targets a more premium profile and typically expects an annual income of around ₹12 lakh.
Finally, remember that Scapia Coins have a 36-month validity and can expire if the card remains inactive for long periods. Eterna's statement-credit redemption largely avoids that concern.
And one final reminder: it is easy to misread Scapia's 10% and 20% coin earning rates as cashback percentages. They are not. Since coins are valued at 5 to a rupee, those rates translate to roughly 2% and 4% in real-world value.
None of these differences changes the overall result, but they do make Scapia slightly more attractive for travel, fuel and everyday convenience.
Verdict
On points, BOBCARD Eterna is the winner.
It offers stronger rewards, better lounge access, milestone benefits, international spend value and far more flexible redemption. If you spend heavily on online shopping, dining and travel, and can secure the card while it is lifetime-free, Eterna delivers more value overall.
But this is not a knockout.
👉 Choose Eterna if you're a heavy online and dining spender who wants flexible cashback-like rewards and a strong lounge card. Just keep a close eye on the excluded merchant categories, because they are the one thing that can quietly erode all that value.
🔗 Apply for Eterna:
https://www.creditkeeda.com/to/bob-eterna✈️ Choose Scapia if you travel frequently, spend internationally, want a card that stays free forever with zero effort, prefer a simple 0% forex experience and value a polished app backed by a better service experience.
🔗 Apply for Scapia:
https://www.creditkeeda.com/to/scapia
And here's the nuance the scoreline doesn't capture: if your accelerated-category spending regularly exceeds roughly ₹41,700 a month, Eterna's accelerated rewards hit the monthly cap and additional spending earns only the base reward rate. Scapia, on the other hand, continues earning at its regular rate without a rewards cap. The higher your spending beyond that point, the closer the gap becomes.
The smartest move of all? Since both cards are currently available for free for life, they complement each other surprisingly well.
Use Scapia for travel and forex.
Use Eterna for online shopping, dining and lounge access.
Let each card do what it does best.
Card features and offers are accurate at the time of writing and are subject to change. Always verify the latest terms and conditions on the issuer's website before applying.