Accumulating transferable points remains the most flexible way to earn free travel. Transferable points programs are great because instead of being locked into a specific airline or hotel program, you decide when and with whom to use your points. While the two most popular programs are Chase Ultimate Rewards® and American Express Membership Rewards®, the Citi ThankYou® Rewards program is worth exploring as well.

Since I originally wrote this guide, Citi has made strides to get their program on equal ground with Chase and Amex. Most importantly, they’ve increased the number of travel partners and introduced hotel partners into the mix. While there’s good value to be had, I still rank the Citi ThankYou points program in third place. I can’t look past the following negatives.

• There are only five credit cards that earn ThankYou points, so it’s difficult to amass points quickly with welcome bonuses
• While you can transfer points to Citi’s travel partners, access to this feature depends on which card(s) you own
• While Citi has lots of travel partners, they’re missing some of the most popular ones

All that being said, ThankYou points can be very versatile, if you know how to get the most out of them. This post will take you through everything you need to know — from how to earn Citi ThankYou Rewards to how to spend those points.

Earning Citi ThankYou Rewards

As with all of the flexible points programs, earning Citi ThankYou Rewards is pretty easy! Plus points don’t expire and there is no cap on the points you can earn.

Earning from Credit Cards

There are currently only five Citi credit cards that allow you to earn points in the ThankYou Rewards program.

Citi Card	Welcome Offer	Bonus Categories and Benefits	Annual Fee	Access to Travel Partners
Citi Strata Premier℠ Card	75,000 bonus points after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months	- 10x points on eligible travel booked through Citi Travel, 3x points on air travel, hotels, dining, grocery, gas and EV charging - $100 annual hotel savings hotel bookings of $500 or more through ThankYou.com	$95	Yes
Citi Custom Cash℠ Card	20,000 bonus points after spending 1,500 in the first 6 months	- 5x points in your top eligible spend category each billing cycle up to $500 spent, 1x points thereafter	$0	No (must transfer points to a card that has access)
Citi Double Cash® Card	20,000 bonus points after spending $1,500 in the first 6 months	- 2x points everywhere	$0	No (must transfer points to a card that has access)
Citi Rewards+℠ Card	20,000 bonus points after spending $1,500 in the first 3 months	- 2x points at supermarkets and gas stations - Get 10% points back on the first 100,000 points redeemed per year, including points earned on other cards linked to your Citi ThankYou accounts	$0	No (must transfer points to a card that has access)
AT&T Poitns Plus® Card	10,000 bonus points after spending $1,000 in the first 3 months	- 3x points on gas, 2x points on grocery, and 1x points everywhere else - Earn up to $240 back toward qualifying AT&T wireless bills every year after qualifying activities	$0	No (must transfer points to a card that has access)

In addition, there are 3 cards that are now closed to new applicants, but still allow existing cardholders to continue earning and redeeming points.

Closed Cards

• Citi Prestige Card
• Citi ThankYou® Preferred Card
• Citi ThankYou® Preferred Card for College Students

As I touched on above, not all ThankYou points are created equal. You must be a cardholder of the Citi Prestige or Citi Strata Premier cards in order to unlock the full value that comes by transferring points to the program’s airline partners. If you don’t own either of those cards, your points are worth a maximum of a penny each. In those cases, points can only be used towards gift cards, statement credits or other rewards on the Citi ThankYou website. Unfortunately, they can’t be transferred to most of the Citi travel partners.

Citi Application Rules

Citi has implemented application rules to prevent you from earning multiple credit card sign-up bonuses in a short period of time. So you’re not going to be able to build a big points balance by applying for cards over and over again. The rules state that you can only receive a sign-up bonus on a card as long as you haven’t received a sign-up bonus for that same card in the past 48 months. So it’s key that you time your new credit card applications accordingly, so you don’t miss out on any sign-up bonuses.

Earning Through Banking Relationships

Eligible banking customers can also earn ThankYou points through a Citi banking relationship. Citi awards points on a monthly basis based on the accounts you own. To earn points, enroll your eligible checking account and complete one direct deposit and one bill payment each statement period. The more accounts you own, the more points you can earn.

Note: You can combine the ThankYou points earned from all your credit cards and banking relationships into one ThankYou account for ease of use.

Redeeming Citi ThankYou Rewards

ThankYou points can be redeemed for cash back, statement credits, gift cards and travel. The three most common redemption options are:

1. Cash Back, Statement Credits, and Gift Cards
2. Citi ThankYou Travel Center
3. Transferring to Travel Partners

The value of each redemption option varies. Redeeming for cash back, shopping or gift cards brings the lowest value and should really be avoided unless you have absolutely no plans to travel. The travel portal is next in potential value while transferring to travel partners brings the most bang for your buck.

To get started, log into your ThankYou account. On the home page you’ll see a dashboard with all of your redemption options.

Cash Back, Statement Credits and Gift Cards

These options generally are the worst value redemptions and should be avoided if possible. However, if you’re not traveling anytime soon or you really just need the cash, these could make sense for your situation.

Cash Back and Statement Credits

A cash back redemption comes at a flat rate of 0.5 cents per point, and only in denominations of $50 or $100.  This is by far the worst way to spend your points. Plus the cash is only delivered via a mailed check that can take 1 to 3 weeks to receive.

Statement credits can be redeemed at the same rate of 0.5 cents apiece. They’re slightly more flexible than cash back because there are 7 denominations available from $15 to $250.

Gift Cards

You can also redeem points towards third-party gift cards. Most redemptions start at a rate of 0.7 cents per point. However, the value of your points increases as the amount of the gift card also increases.

For example, a $25 Starbucks gift card currently costs 3,500 points, whereas a $100 gift card costs 10,000 points. So your points are only worth 0.7 cents apiece if you purchase the $25 gift card, but worth 1 cent apiece on the $100 gift card. Thus it’s better to wait until you have enough points to redeem at the 1 cents per point rate.

Citi’s ThankYou website has over 120 brands to choose from, including restaurants, clothing stores, travel and electronics.

Other Redemptions

There are several other “cash back” redemption options available:

• Online Bill Pay With Points: Citi checking account holders can use points, or a combination of points and cash, to pay bills via Citi’s online bill pay feature.
• Payments toward a mortgage or student loan: You can use points to pay towards your mortgage or student loan. To redeem either option, you have to call the ThankYou Service Center at 1-800-THANKYOU.
• Charity: You can donate points at a rate of 1 cent a piece, to 7 different charities, starting at just 2,500 points.
• Shop With Points program: You can redeem points towards purchases made at Amazon.com.

Redeeming with the Travel Portal

If you don’t want to deal with learning airline award or hotel charts or risk being blacked out on your preferred travel dates, you can redeem ThankYou points through Citi Travel. This travel portal works just like any other 3rd-party booking site, such as Expedia or Orbitz.

Points redeemed for travel vary in value based on the itinerary. From my experience they’re worth between 0.7 and 0.8 cents per point when redeemed in the travel center. It could still be worthwhile if you’re you’re booking a cheap rate, but run the numbers. You might get a better deal booking an award flight directly with the airline or a room directly with the hotel. You could also redeem points from another transferable points program, like Chase Ultimate Rewards, where your points could be worth a lot more.

For the majority of flights booked through the portal, you will earn redeemable and elite-qualifying miles. However, the same is not true with hotels. Unfortunately you won’t earn hotel points or elite stay credits when booking hotel stays through the portal. This is the same concept as when you book through Hotels.com, Expedia, Orbitz, etc.

Transferring to Travel Partners

Cardholders of the Citi Prestige and/or Citi Strata Premier cards have another option for redeeming their points — transfers to travel partners. As long as you hold one of these two cards, you can combine points earned from any of the lower-tier cards and transfer those as well.

While this option may require a little more time and effort, it also gets you the greatest value more times than not. For example, you can transfer points to book round-trip flights to international destinations that would cost thousands of dollars out of pocket.

Points transfers to most travel partners occur at a ratio of 1:1, but there are a few exceptions.

• Choice Privileges: 1:2
• Accor Live Limitless: 2:1
• Leaders Club: 5:1

If you don’t own one of the premium ThankYou cards that allows full transfers to partners, you can still transfer to the following three programs, but at lower rates.

• Choice Privileges: 1:1.5
• JetBlue TrueBlue: 5:4
• Wyndham Rewards: 1:0.8

You must transfer at least 1,000 points, in increments of 1,000, up to a maximum of 500,000 points. Additionally, unlike with Chase or Amex, where points almost always transfer instantly, Citi transfer times are more hit and miss.

Program		Transfer Time
Accor Live Limitless		Instantaneous
Aeromexico		Instantaneous
Avianca		Instantaneous
Cathay Pacific		Instantaneous
Choice Privileges		Instantaneous
Emirates		Instantaneous
Etihad		Instantaneous
EVA Air		3 days
Flying Blue (Air France/KLM)		Instantaneous
JetBlue		Instantaneous
Leaders Club		Instantaneous
Qantas		Instantaneous
Qatar Airways		2 days
Singapore Airlines		1 day
Thai Airways		7 days
Turkish Airlines		1 day
Virgin Atlantic		Instantaneous
Wyndham Rewards		Instantaneous

Note: Once you’ve moved your points to a travel partner, you cannot get them back.

So how do you maximize value by transferring ThankYou points to travel partners?

There are 14 airline transfer partners, but because of airline alliances, you’ll be able to fly on dozens more. Miles from one airline can be used to book award flights on alliance partners. There are three main airline alliances.

• OneWorld Alliance – points transferred to Citi partner Etihad can be used to book award flights on American Airlines
• Star Alliance – points transferred to Avianca or Singapore Air can be used to book award flights on United Airlines or Lufthansa
• SkyTeam Alliance – points transferred to Virgin Atlantic can be used to book award flights on Delta

So you can see that knowing Citi’s travel partners, and then understanding each of their alliance partners, can open up almost limitless options!

Examples

Below are a few of the best ways to use ThankYou points for booking awards with Citi’s travel partners.

• Etihad: Fly round-trip business class to Europe on American Airlines operated flights for 67,500 Etihad Guest miles
• Singapore Airlines: Book United operated flights from North America to Hawaii for 35,000 miles round-trip in economy
• Avianca: Fly one-way in economy on United operated flights within the U.S. for between 6,500 miles to 13,500 miles per direction
• Virgin Atlantic: Fly one-way to Europe in business class on Delta operated flights for 50,000 miles
• Turkish Airlines: Fly round-trip in economy to Hawaii on United Airlines for only 15,000 miles or 12,500 miles one-way in business class (booking partner awards online can be difficult, so it’s often better to call 800-874-8875 to book instead)

Bottom Line

While maybe not as popular as some other programs, Citi ThankYou Rewards can still offer a lot of value. The program offers so much flexibility in terms of earning points and ways to redeem them! For the best value, Citi Prestige and Citi Strata Premier cardholders can transfer to airline partners, such as Singapore Airlines, Virgin Atlantic or Turkish Airlines.

Overall I still rank Chase Ultimate Rewards and Amex Membership Rewards ahead of Citi. I like Chase’s program better because points are worth more than a penny each when used in the their travel portal. Chase Sapphire Preferred and Ink Preferred cardholders can redeem points for 1.25 cents apiece while Sapphire Reserve cardholders can redeem at a rate of 1.5 cents per point. So if you want to travel but don’t want to deal with transferring to travel partners, Chase is by far the best option. I also like Amex’s program because it’s so easy to accumulate points with eleven total credit cards that earn Membership Rewards points.

All that being said, the Citi ThankYou Rewards program is worth considering for travelers looking for versatility and flexibility.