Citi ThankYou® Points rewards can be earned via credit card and bank account bonuses. Fortunately, even though you are earning ‘points’ you can still redeem them for cash back. And, if someday down the road you are looking to travel, you can instead redeem your points towards free travel with many hotel and airline partners.
Below, you’ll find everything you need to know about ThankYou Points.
Earn Points
Credit Cards
The easiest and quickest way to earn ThankYou points is through Citi credit card signup bonuses, category bonuses, and retention offers (call about once per year to ask if any offers are loaded to your cards). Below are the current Citi cards that earn ThankYou rewards.
Personal
Formerly the Citi Premier® Card, this is a new excellent rewards credit card with a solid signup bonus and 3x spending categories. Read the application rule carefully regarding "48 months."
This new ultra-premium card offers a solid welcome bonus, with an annual $300 hotel credit of a 2+ night stay when booked through Citi Travel®, and flexible redemption options.
Intriguing card that can have higher value if you combine points from this card with a premium Citi account.
Business
Citi Business ThankYou Card (Only available in-branch)
Redeem Points
In general, when redeeming your ThankYou Rewards points for cash back, you’ll earn 1 cent per point earned. However, if down the road you are looking to redeem points for travel, you might be able to receive a better value. You can learn more about this at our sister site, Travel Freely.
Cash back
Citi Strata Premier℠ Card, Citi Strata Elite℠ Card and Citi Prestige (no longer available) cardholders can redeem points for 1 cent each either as statement credits or as cash back.
Under the “Cash” tab, select which form of credit you’d like.
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 Citi credit cards, such as the Citi Double Cash® Card and Citi Custom Cash® Card are pure cash back cards.
For those looking for the utmost simplicity when it comes to earning cash back, the Citi Double Cash Card is one of the most popular. You earn 2% cash back on every single purchase you make — 1% cash back when you make the purchase, then another 1% cash back when you pay your statement. Although, unlike the other Citi cards mentioned here, this card doesn’t offer a welcome bonus, so it won’t give you a jump start on your immediate cash back earnings.
Other ways to redeem points
Through the ThankYou Rewards portal you can redeem points for gift cards, merchandise, charity, bill payments, and more. At most, with this approach you’ll 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.
Manage Points
Combine and Share Points
Citi allows you to both combine points into one ThankYou Rewards account (if you have cards within their program) as well as share points to other card members. If you are solely looking to redeem your points towards cash back, then this benefit isn’t as important.
But, if down the link you are looking to redeem for travel, then being able to combine and share points has their perks. It is also beneficial if you are looking to close an account and haven’t yet redeemed your points for cash just yet. You can learn more about the benefits of combing and sharing points at our sister site, Travel Freely.
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 cancelling 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.
This means if you are looking for cash back, there’s no reason to not redeem your points right away. Not only will you have the cash back in your wallet quicker, you also won’t ever have to worry about losing your 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.
Downgrading is another option. An easy way to keep your points alive and to avoid an annual fee is to simply downgrade to a no-fee ThankYou card. At the time of this writing, the options that will preserve your points are the ThankYou Preferred Card or no-fee Citi Strata and the AT&T Access Card.
Important re Double Cash: Downgrading to the no-fee Citi Double Cash card will not preserve your points. Even though the Double Cash card does let you convert cash back to ThankYou points, it is not considered a full-fledged ThankYou card.
Important re Points Expiry: Citi product changes result in a weird transition period quirk. Soon after product changing from one ThankYou card to another, you can log into your account, and you’ll see that your points will expire within 60 days. Don’t panic. Your points won’t really expire. Wait a few more weeks and you’ll see that the points no longer have an expiration date.
The downside to downgrading to a no-fee card, of course, is that this makes your points far less valuable. Unless you still have another premium card, you won’t be able to transfer points to loyalty programs.
Ultimately, if you are looking for cash back, there’s no reason to not redeem your points right away. Not only will you have the cash back in your wallet quicker, you also won’t ever have to worry about losing your points.
More information
Citibank’s official ThankYou Rewards FAQ can be found here.
Formerly the Citi Premier® Card, this is a new excellent rewards credit card with a solid signup bonus and 3x spending categories. Read the application rule carefully regarding "48 months."
This new ultra-premium card offers a solid welcome bonus, with an annual $300 hotel credit of a 2+ night stay when booked through Citi Travel®, and flexible redemption options.
Intriguing card that can have higher value if you combine points from this card with a premium Citi account.
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