Citi Premier® Card Review (2021.5 Update: 70k/60k Offer)

2021.5 Update: The offer in branch is now 70k (or 75k if you are a Citigold customer). HT: DoC.

2020.8 Update: New benefits are added as of 2020.08.23:

• The new earning structure is: earn 3x TYP at restaurants, supermarkets, gas stations, air travel, and hotels; earn 1x TYP on all other purchases.
• New benefit added: $100 Annual Hotel Savings Benefit: Enjoy $100 off a single hotel stay of $500 or more, excluding taxes and fees, through thankyou.com, once per calendar year.
• The ability use TYP as a fixed value 1.25 cents/point is removed. However, you can still transfer TYP to airline miles which is a better way to redeem your TYP anyway, so this is not a big bad news.

Application Link

Benefits

1. 60k offer: earn 60,000 ThankYou Points (TYP) after spending $4,000 in first 3 months.
2. We estimate that ThankYou Points (TYP) are worth about 1.6 cents/point, see below for a brief introduction. So the 60k highest sign-up bonus is worth about $960!
3. If you have this card, you can transfer your TYP to partner airlines miles. Besides, with this card, you can also cash out TYP at a fixed ratio 1 cent/point.
4. [New] Earn 3x TYP at restaurants, supermarkets, gas stations, air travel, and hotels; earn 1x TYP on all other purchases.
5. [New] $100 Annual Hotel Savings Benefit: Enjoy $100 off a single hotel stay of $500 or more, excluding taxes and fees, through thankyou.com, once per calendar year.
6. No foreign transaction fee.

Disadvantages

1. $95 annual fee, NOT waived for the first year.

Introduction to TYP

• You can earn TYP with Citi Prestige, Citi Premier, Citi Rewards+, Citi ATT Access More, etc.
• You can add all these cards into the same thankyou.com account, and points that are about to expire will be redeemed first in the order in which they expire automatically.
• In most cases, TYP never expire. But closing account, product change, or receiving points from other people may cause TYP on that account to expire.
• If you have Citi Prestige or Citi Premier, TYP can be transferred to some airline miles. The best way to use TYP is to 1:1 transfer them to Asia Miles (Oneworld) or Avianca (AV) miles (Star Alliance). Other good options are: Singapore Airlines (SQ) (Star Alliance), Flying Blue (SkyTeam), Virgin Atlantic (VS) (Non-alliance), etc. If you use TYP in this way, the value is about 1.6 cents/point.
• If you have Citi Prestige, you can redeem your TYP at a fixed rate 1.25 cents/point towards air tickets on thankyou.com. This is a common way to use TYP. Points+cash is available when redeeming for air tickets, so no need to worry if you do not have enough TYP.
• If you have Citi Premier or Citi Prestige, or you use the “Student Loan Rebate” trick, then you can redeem your TYP at a fixed rate 1 cents/point towards cash.
• In summary, we estimate that TYP are worth about 1.6 cents/point.
• For more information about TYP, see Maximize the Credit Card Points Values (overview), and Introduction to TYP: How to Earn & Introduction to TYP: How to Use (very detailed).

Recommended Application Time

1. [1/24 Rule] Bonus ThankYou Points are not available if you received a new cardmember bonus for Citi Rewards+, Citi ThankYou Preferred, Citi Premier or Citi Prestige, or if you have closed any of these cards, in the past 24 months. Product change is treated as account closure if the account number is changed.
2. [8/65 Rule] You can apply for at most 1 Citi cards every 8 days, and at most 2 Citi cards every 65 days, no matter approved or not.
3. Citi values the number of recent hard pulls a lot, we recommend you apply when there’s less than 6 hard pulls in the past 6 months.
4. We recommend you apply for this card after you have a credit history of at least one year.

Summary

In 2020, this card becomes stronger. The ability to earn 3x TYP on restaurants and supermarkets is very useful. If you want to play with the ThankYou Points (TYP) system, you need either Citi Premier or Citi Prestige to make redemptions. Nowadays Citi Prestige becomes weaker and weaker with a really high annual fee, and Citi Premier is a better choice for most people in my opinion.

Related Credit Cards

Recommended Downgrade Options

• Citi Rewards+. We recommend you downgrade this card to these no annual fee cards that can earn TYP, because you can keep your TYP if so. If you downgrade this card to DC/Dividend, the TYP you earned from this card will expire in 60 days.

Historical Offers Chart

Note 1: The offer before 2015.4 is: earn 20k TYP after spending $2000 in the first 3 months, and another 30k after spending $3000 in the first 3 months of next year.

Note 2: The 60k offer in 2015.9 is a special link, and it probably is a glitch, so we should not expect it to appear again in the near future.

Application Link

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