A few days ago it was announced that Citi was removing their very generous welcome offer for their Citi ThankYou Premier Card where you can receive 60,000 points after spending $4,000 on the card within the first 3 months. This offer has been around for a few months and is the highest publicly available offer for the card we’ve ever seen, especially since the $95 annual fee is waived for the first year! There were some reports out there that Citi was fully removing this card from their portfolio. While that is not true, it is pretty clear that Citi has no plans to relaunch this high offer again. So you will always be able to apply for this card in the future, but it might not come with a welcome bonus. In case you are looking to apply for this card with the strong welcome offer, you’ll want to do so quickly as it is coming to an end tomorrow! This offer is worth a minimum fo $750, but I value it even higher due to its strong transfer partners. Note: To view all ads and offers on this page, please turn off ad blockers. Thank you for supporting Deals We Like!
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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