Just last week Citi increased the welcome bonus for their Citi ThankYou premier Card. With this offer you’ll earn 60,000 points after spending $4,000 on the card within the first month, which will give you a MINIMUM of $750 in value, if not more. The great thing about this offer too, is that the $95 annual fee is waived for the first year. This is actually the highest publicly available offer we’ve seen for this card, so it is a great time to jump on the card. Note: To view all offers on this page, you might want to turn off ad blockers.
This card has one of the best all around category bonuses
While the high sign up bonus on this card is a reason alone to get the card, it also comes with one of the best category bonuses in a single card. While there are many cards out there with increased category bonuses, many times it takes having a few different cards in your wallet at a given time to maximizing your points on your every day purchases. 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
For most people, common purchases include gas, eating out, grocery stores, travel, and entertainment. This card includes 4 out of 5 of those categories! If only it included grocery store purchases, this would be an amazing card! But it does include entertainment as a category bonus and that is incredible rare. And while there are a few cards out there that give you 3x points on travel and gas station purchases, there is not a single card out there that offers this increased number of points on BOTH purchases. If you like just having one card in your wallet and not fumbling through many cards to find “the best one” for that particular purchase, this could be the perfect card for you.
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. I like getting at least at 2 cent per point value with my points, but since their partners are slightly more unique, your valuation my vary depending on your partner of choice. This is a great option if you are knowledgable in international airline programs! So let’s say you get a 2 cent per point valuation when redeeming your points, you can think of this as earning 6% back on travel and gas station purchases and 4% cash back on dining and entertainment purchases. 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. For your category bonus purchases, you can thing of this as getting 3.75% cash back on your travel and gas station purchases and 2.5% cash back on dining and entertainment purchases.
- 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 card for your everyday spend and comes with a high sign up offer.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 have the Citi Premier for over 2 years now as a daily spending card. Can I apply for this same card and get the bonus of 60k?
@pho tastee – You could possibly get the bonus again but reports have been mixed as to whether or not you’ll be approved.