Citi just increased the welcome bonus for the Citi ThankYou Premier Card where you can receive at least $750 in value, if not more! With this offer, you’ll receive 60,000 points after spending $4,000 on the card within the first 3 months – and the $95 annual fee is waived the first year! This is the highest publicly available offer we’ve seen for this card. There is no set date for when this increased offer will expire.
Card Benefits
- With this card, you’ll earn:
- 3x points on all travel and gas station purchases
- 2x points on dining and entertainment
- 1x point on all other purchases
- There are no foreign transaction fees
- The $95 annual fee is waived the first year
These are definitely some strong bonus categories in a single card. While you can earn these bonus categories with other cards, usually it requires having multiple cards to make up the above bonuses. Earning 3x points at gas stations is rare amongst other cards and 2x points on entertainment is not common either.
Using Your Points
This card earns Citi ThankYou points where you can redeem your points in out of three ways:
- Transferring Your Points to Partner Airlines: You can transfer your points at a 1:1 ratio (for most airlines, not all) which typically will give you the best value – on average the 60,000 points is worth about $1,200. Once you transfer your points over to a partner airline, you’ll then book your flights with that particular airlines as if you earned your points directly with them. Typically, the best value you receive is with business or first class redemptions, but of course they require more points. Partner airlines include: AirFrance / KLM, Avianca, Cathay Pacific, Etihad, EVA, Garuda Indonesia, Jet Airways, JetBlue (1,000 ThankYou Points = 500 JetBlue points), Malaysia, Qantas, Qatar, Singapore, Thai, Turkish, and Virgin Atlantic
- Booking Flights Directly: You can always book directly with an airline (and not worry about award redemption availability) where 1 point = 1.25 cents towards travel. So 60,000 points is worth a fixed $750 in free travel.
- Gift Cards: This is definitely the worst value for your points, but for those that do not travel as often and just looking for gift cards, you can redeem your 60,000 points for $600 in gift cards at participating stores.
Who is Eligible?
Citi does not limit the number of cards you can have at a given time, but you are only allowed to get one card within an 8 day time period, and a maximum of two cards every 65 days. So if you’ve been approved for 2 Citi cards in the past 2 months, you’ll have to wait a bit, other than that you should be good to go.
Also, if you’ve received a bonus or have closed one of these three Citi cards in the past 24 months, you are not eligible for the bonus. This cards include: Citi ThankYou Preferred, Citi ThankYou Premier, and Citi Prestige. Now, if you currently have one of those cards and it has been more then 2 years since you’ve received the sign up bonus, you ARE eligible for this card.
Keep in mind though that this card will count towards your Chase “5/24” count. You can read more about Chase’s “5/24” rule here.
Overall… this is a great offer for this card. The points are valuable as they allow you to diversity your points and transfer to partners that are not included in the Chase and American Express partnerships, and having the annual fee waived for the first year is great.
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I had a Citi Thankyou card and canceled it many years ago. Am I eligible for the bonus?
@Sharon – Yes you are! Just had to be at least 2 years since you’ve closed the card or earned the bonus.