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When it comes to online shopping, few things make the experience better than earning additional rewards courtesy of a shopping portal. There's now a new program in existence — Citi Shop — that offers eligible Citi cardholders a chance to bank statement credits and additional savings on purchases at 5,000+ online retailers.
Here's everything you need to know about the new Citi Shop program.
What Is Citi Shop?
Like other online shopping portals — such as Rakuten, Capital One Shopping, and a dozen others — Citi Shop operates via a browser extension. After downloading the extension and linking an eligible Citi credit card, you're ready to shop and earn extra rewards in the process.
The rewards you earn on eligible purchases will reflect on your linked card's statement as a credit. And depending on the retailer you shop from, rewards are denominated as either a percentage of the purchase you'll get back or as a flat dollar amount.
Unfortunately, Citi Shop's most significant up-front negative is that the terms suggest statement credits will take 61–180 days to post to your account. That's a long time.
Citi Shop will also hunt for promo codes while you complete the checkout process. If Citi finds a functional code, it'll allow you to apply the code before submitting payment.
Related: The Best Credit Cards for Online Shopping
How to set up Citi Shop
Setting up Citi Shop is easy to do. Simply download the Google Chrome browser extension, log into your Citi account, and link one credit card. Any Citi-branded credit card should work — even co-branded ones. The statement credits you earn will go to the linked card and the linked card only. After completing the linkage process, you're free to shop and earn rewards.
Presently, there's no official list of eligible retailers even though Citi advertises that 5,000+ participate. You'll be able to tell if a store offers rewards by visiting the retailer's website and looking for the Citi Shop popup from your browser extension, or by searching for a generic product and seeing if the icon shows up next to a merchant.
To round out the process, ensure you activate the offer before you checkout. After that, wait for the rewards to roll in. But remember, you might have to wait a while.
Final Thoughts
If you're looking to save a bit of money on your online purchases, Citi Shop is worth a look. Depending on the retailer you shop from, there might be a chance to save a decent amount of money — if you can find an eligible retailer. And at that, even when we have discovered eligible stores, the rewards rates aren't anything spectacular. For example, here's a handful of stores that presently offer cash back and the rate at which you'll earn it:
- Autozone: 0.3% cash back
- Nike: 0.3% cash back
- Petsmart: 0.7% cash back
- Samsonite: 1.9% cash back
- Walmart: Up to 3.1% cash back or $0.78 cents back on the creation of a Walmart Business Account
As always, your mileage may vary. But our recommendation is to keep Citi Shop on the back burner and only use it if the reward is compelling enough to beat a portal like Rakuten, Capital One Shopping, or one of the dozen airline shopping portals. Quickly comparing the offers across multiple portals is the easiest way to maximize your online shopping rewards. If Citi Shop has the best (or only) offer on what you want to buy, then it could be a good option to have at your disposal.
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