The Citi Strata Premier℠ Card is Citi’s premier rewards credit card that earns flexible ThankYou® Points. It competes with other premium cards like the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, American Express® Gold Card, and Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card. It is the primary card for Citi with excellent spending categories and an easy way to redeem your points for cash back. This guide has everything you need to know about the Citi Strata Premier and its benefits.
Additionally, points earned from the Citi Strata Premier card can also transfer to various transfer travel partners at a 1:1 ratio. If you might be interested in redeeming your points for travel at some point down the road, visit our sister site, Travel Freely, to learn more.
Citi Premier Application Tips
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Citi Application Tips
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Should you apply?
The Citi Strata Premier card typically has a reasonable welcome bonus that can equate to some great cash back right in your wallet. It also has excellent bonus categories for ongoing spend in the most common categories. But one thing to note: Citi removed most travel protections from this card a couple of years ago, making it not a great card to use if you are looking to book travel with baked-in protection. HOWEVER, with this new updated product, Citi has reintroduced travel protections such as the following:
- Trip Cancellation and Trip Interruption
- Trip Delay
- Lost or Damaged Luggage
- MasterRental Coverage (Mastercard®’s car rental insurance program)
If you are eligible (see next section), the welcome bonus on this card certainly makes it worthwhile for at least the first year.
Are you eligible?
To get the new account bonus on this card, it must be 48 months since you last received a new account bonus.
How to apply
You can find the current best welcome bonus information below. Click the card name to go to our Citi Strata Premier card page to find more information and a link to apply.
Application status
After you apply, call 1-866-252-0118 to check your application status.
Reconsideration
If your application is denied, definitely call for reconsideration (800-695-5171). It’s surprising how often denials can be changed to approvals just by asking.
Perks
Below are the perks you’ll receive with the Citi Strata Premier card:
Travel Benefits
- No foreign transaction fees
- $100 Annual Hotel Savings Benefit: Once per year you can apply a coupon for $100 off on an after-tax hotel booking of $500 or more. Unfortunately, you have to book through Citi’s ThankYou portal, which is notoriously overpriced and does not allow access to hotel member rates, AAA rates, or other discounted rates. In other words, this perk won’t save you a full $100 in many situations.
Travel Protections
NEW! The Citi Strata Premier includes travel protections. These include trip cancellation and trip interruption benefits on common carriers, trip delay benefits, lost or damaged luggage insurance, MasterRental coverage (Mastercard®’s car rental insurance program). These benefits are pretty standard on most travel cards and have been reintroduced by Citi with the new Citi Strata Premier card.
Purchase Protection
- Extended Warranty: Citi extends the manufacturer’s warranty by 24 months on items with a manufacturer’s warranty of 5 years or less. This is the best extended warranty coverage of any issuer.
- Damage and Theft Protection: Covers your new purchases for 90 days against damage or theft up to $10,000 per claim and $50,000 per calendar year.
Earn Points
Intro Bonus
This card earns ThankYou points. Here’s the current welcome offer:
Redeem Points
Cash Back
Cardholders can redeem points for 1 cent each either as statement credits or as cash back.
Note: Check out our Citi ThankYou Points Complete Guide if you prefer to redeem points for travel.
From there, you’ll insert your bank information and confirm the total number of points that you’d like to redeem in the form of cash back.
Other ways to redeem points
Through the ThankYou portal, you can redeem points for cash back, gift cards, merchandise, or experiences. With this approach, you’ll usually get 1 cent per point value. One exception is that Citi occasionally offers gift cards at a discount so you may be able to get better than 1 cent per point value during a gift card sale.
You can also use points to pay some merchants directly (Amazon.com for example). Don’t do this. These options offer very poor value. Further, they may compromise the security of your account (i.e. if someone hacks into your Amazon account, they might spend your Thank You points – causing you a headache in getting your points reinstated). The only time it is worth using points this way is when Amazon runs a coupon to save when using points: you can sometimes use 1 point to save $15 off of $50 or something like that, and in those cases, it might make sense to use only 1 point, though it’s best to de-link your points from Amazon after utilizing the discount.
Manage Points
Combine and Transfer Points
If you are the primary account holder with multiple cards, you can combine ThankYou Rewards accounts. When your points are combined, they can then automatically be redeemed at the same value as your best card. This will most likely benefit you the most if you decide to redeem your points for travel versus cash back.
But, if you do combine points, note that you’ll lose the ability to pick and choose which points are used when you redeem awards. You’ll also lose visibility into how many points remain with each card.
The above disadvantages become important when you want to cancel a card: when you cancel a card, all points earned from that account are lost after 60 days. It’s best to downgrade to a no-fee ThankYou card rather than canceling outright. That way, your points are safe.
Additionally, you can transfer ThankYou points to anyone else, for free. But shared points expire after 90 days, and there’s a 100,000 limit. This feature comes in handy, again, if you prefer to redeem your points towards travel.
How to Keep Points Alive
There are several situations in which you may have Citi ThankYou Rewards points that will expire:
- Points earned by a credit card account expire 60 days after canceling that account.
- Points transferred to your account expire after 90 days.
- Points earned from some older credit cards expire in a set amount of time after points were earned (e.g. 3 or 5 years after December 31 of the year in which the points were earned).
- Points earned from some credit cards expire if your credit card account has no purchase activity in 18 months.
- Points earned from Citibank banking products expire 3 years after December 31 of the year in which the points were earned.
Additional considerations regarding credit card points: how to keep points alive
With most credit card points (except with some older credit cards which are no longer available), points remain alive until you cancel the card from which they were earned. Once you cancel the card, points expire after 60 days.
Combining accounts does not solve the problem. When you combine multiple ThankYou accounts, it’s natural to assume that as long as you keep any ThankYou Rewards credit card open, your points will be safe. That’s simply not the case. Citi keeps track of where each ThankYou point came from. If you cancel a card, the points earned on that card expire after 60 days. Period. They are not known to reinstate points.
The best way to preserve your ThankYou points is to keep your credit card account alive. If you don’t want an annual fee, then call to downgrade to a no-fee ThankYou card. There is a side benefit to this approach too: Your no-fee card may be eligible for occasional lucrative retention offers.
Lifecycle
How to meet minimum spend requirements
Once you are approved for a Citi card, you generally have three months to meet the required spend in order to get the welcome bonus. If your usual spend isn’t enough, consider using the Plastiq bill pay service to use your card to pay bills that can’t usually be paid by credit card (rent, mortgage, contractors, etc.). Note that Mastercards like the Strata Premier card can be used to pay a greater range of payees than Visa or Amex cards. Click here to read the many ways you can meet a minimum spend requirement.
Keep, cancel, or product change?
Is this card worth keeping in the long run? The main reason to keep this card around long term is as a way to transfer points to airlines and other programs. If you want to transfer ThankYou points to partners, you’ll need the Citi Strata Premier (or discontinued Citi Prestige). If you don’t need that capability for a while, consider downgrading to the no-fee Citi Rewards+. Citi Rewards+ only allows ThankYou Points to transfer to Choice Privileges, Wyndham Rewards, and JetBlue TrueBlue.
Note the Double Cash is not a ThankYou card. Downgrading to the Double Cash will count as having closed your Premier card and you will not be eligible for the welcome bonus again on the Strata Premier card for 48 months after you earned the Citi Strata Premier (or Citi Premier) welcome bonus.
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