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Taking the top spot in our review of the best rewards cards for gas & fuel, the Citi Premier® Card offers some of the best earning rates of any rewards card with an annual fee under $100. Cardholders earn 3X points per $1 on airfare and hotels and at gas stations, restaurants, and supermarkets, and 1 point per dollar spent everywhere else.
- 60,000 point signup bonus worth $750 towards airfare through the ThankYou Travel Center, or potentially much more when transferred to airline partners
- 3X points per $1 on airfare and hotels and at gas stations, restaurants, and supermarkets
- Annual Hotel Benefit: Save $100 off a single hotel stay of $500 or more (excluding taxes and fees) when you book through ThankYou.com
- No foreign transaction fees
- $95 annual fee
- 3X points per $1 spent on airfare, hotels, and at gas stations
- 3X points per $1 spent on dining at restaurants, including cafes, bars and lounges
- 3X points per $1 spent at supermarkets
- 1X points per $1 spent on all other purchases
Cardmembers who opened their Citi Premier account before April 10, 2020 will also earn 2X points on entertainment and 3X points on a broader range of travel purchases through April 9, 2021.
Citi Premier® Card Signup Bonus
In addition to the stellar points-earning potential of the Citi Premier, the signup bonus is currently sitting at 60,000 ThankYou Points after you spend $4,000 in purchases within the first 3 months of account opening. That is 10,000 points higher than the previous offer on this card!
Redeem ThankYou Points for a Fixed-Value or Transfer to Airline Partners
As a Citi Premier cardholder, ThankYou Points are worth 1¢ per point towards travel when redeemed through the ThankYou Travel Center. You can redeem points for airfare, hotels, rental cars, cruises, and more. There are no blackout dates, and airline tickets are treated as revenue fares—meaning you'll earn both elite and redeemable miles. This gives the signup bonus a base value of $600 towards travel when redeemed through the Citi travel portal for a fixed-value.
The most valuable way to redeem your ThankYou Points, however, is transferring them to Citi's airline partners.
| Citi Transfer Partner | Transfer Ratio | Transfer Times |
|---|---|---|
| Aeromexico Club Premier | 1:1 | Instant |
| Cathay Pacific Asia Miles | 1:1 | Instant |
| Avianca LifeMiles | 1:1 | Instant |
| Emirates Skywards | 1:1 | Unknown |
| EVA Air Infinity MileageLands | 1:1 | 24 hours |
| Etihad Guest | 1:1 | Instant |
| Air France/KLM Flying Blue | 1:1 | Instant |
| Jet Airways InterMiles (formerly JetPrivilege) | 1:1 | Instant |
| JetBlue TrueBlue | 1:1 | Instant |
| Malaysia Airlines Enrich | 1:1 | 1 day - 2 days |
| Qantas Frequent Flyer | 1:1 | Instant |
| Qatar Airways Privilege Club | 1:1 | 1 day - 2 days |
| Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer | 1:1 | 1 day, 17 hours |
| Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus | 1:1 | 3 days - 7 days |
| Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles | 1:1 | 1 day, 49 minutes |
| Virgin Atlantic Flying Club | 1:1 | Instant |
| Sears Shop Your Way® | 1:12 | Unknown |
Citi ThankYou transfer partners don't receive quite the same attention as rival programs Chase Ultimate Rewards or American Express Membership Rewards, but the program has some fantastic partners offering top value for your points.
For example, one of the best ways to book flights on United Airlines (and many Star Alliance airlines) is using Singapore KrisFlyer miles. You can book a round-trip, business-class ticket within the continental U.S. for 40,000 miles and a round trip to Hawaii for only 35,000 miles in economy or 60,000 in business class.
When thinking about booking United flights, many people assume Chase points are better since they transfer directly to United's MileagePlus program, but all three of these tickets cost fewer points if you transfer points to Singapore KrisFlyer than if you booked the same itinerary with United MileagePlus.
Points Earning Potential and Category Bonuses
The Citi Premier features a lucrative set of bonus categories, arguably the best earning structure of any mid-tier rewards card, including the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card.
Citi Premier bonus categories include:
- 3X points per $1 spent on airfare, hotels, and at gas stations
- 3X points per $1 spent on dining at restaurants, including cafes, bars and lounges
- 3X points per $1 spent at supermarkets
- 1X points per $1 spent on all other purchases
Citi Premier Retail and Travel Benefits
Unfortunately, Citi announced dramatic changes to retail and travel benefits in 2019, including the removal of almost all travel and purchase protections across almost all Citi cards.
The Citi Premier retained extended warranty cover and purchase protection but lost many of its benefits including:
- Car Rental Insurance
- Trip Cancellation & Interruption Protection
- Travel Accident Insurance
- Trip Delay Protection
- Baggage Delay Protection
- Lost Baggage Protection
- Citi® Price Rewind
- Return Protection
- Missed Event Ticket Protection
- Roadside Assistance Dispatch Service
- Travel & Emergency Assistance
Application Restrictions
Citi dishes up a somewhat complex set of application restrictions that can have a significant impact on your ability to get ThankYou Rewards earning cards. Rules include:
- Maximum of one (1) personal card per eight days
- Maximum two (2) total cards per 65 days
- Maximum one (1) business card per 95 days
- You can only receive the signup bonus if you haven't opened or closed a ThankYou Rewards earning card in the previous 24 months.
Bonus ThankYou® Points are not available if you received a new cardmember bonus for Citi Rewards+℠, Citi ThankYou® Preferred, Citi ThankYou®Premier/Citi Premier℠ or Citi Prestige®, or if you have closed any of these accounts, in the past 24 months.
Final Thoughts
The Citi Premier® Card is a reward-focused card that will help you earn the maximum number of points possible from your spending. While it's light on big-ticket feature benefits, the high points earning rate still makes it a great standalone travel card with a modest annual fee.
The welcome bonus alone provides enough points for a round-trip business class flight to Hawaii, plus you can take advantage of great category bonuses and earn valuable points that transfer to a variety of airline partners.
The comments on this page are not provided, reviewed, or otherwise approved by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
The one concern causing me to hesitate is the chance that I might not be able to charge $4000 on the card in the first three months. That can happen at times, but not most times. Are there ideas for boosting the charges without being too wasteful?
Thank you for the information about this card. I hope I am correct to conclude that Citi Priemier points can be transferred to Turkish Air at 1:1, and then use 15,000 Turkish miles for a round-trip flight to Hawaii on United. That seems too good to be true, so I hope it is correct. I’m wondering if such an itinerary to Hawaii would be limited to certain west coast airports, or would include my home airport in the Midwest?
Will hold off doing anything with Citi cards until I process all the fallout from the withdrawal of the travel benefits.
Devaluation is a game changer for me. I think I’ll wait some.
citi is changing up all their cards.
Can you manage your Thank You point earning cards from the same Citibank log in as American Airline cards?
Interesting review, not a card I will look at the moment. Too bad many seem to be on the devaluing trend.
This card used to be good but know that they are cutting the benefits across the board I would just use it for the sign up bonus and either PC after a year or just cancel
Ouch, pay a fee for the card and don’t have those insurance benefits, not worth it.
Love the new layout!
Citi has never been my favorite banking institution. I haven’t really had the Thank You card on my radar. They do have some partners, I agree, just not the ones that I would utilize. Well, several are already on my Chase and Amex cards. I’ll see how the dusts settles on this dropping benefits. I wonder if maybe they’ll replace them with others?
I have the prestige card 🙁 i wish citi would let us get this card too
Thanks for the review. Sad that some of the protections may be going away…
Last year I used the 70k offer.
Recent Citi stripping of other benefits from cards really makes it hard to keep these cards other than for the signup bonus.
This is a good bonus offer, and a good card for on-going spend; likely not one for the sock drawer. However, Citi’s recent planned cuts to purchase and travel protections do perhaps make other options more appealing/
Have not even bothered due to the limited transfer partners
I love this card. Access to event tickets has really paid off for me. Sorry to hear Citi is dropping their insurance coverages as I may have to start using a different card for travel.
Good sign up bonus except for the rules on who can get it.
Counting all TY cards in the same category is a stupid mistake on Citi part.
Given Citi has just dropped may complimentary insurances. I wonder does it will make sense to stick with them ?
I was seriously considering this card until Citi gutted all the benefits. I’m going to hold off for now. Their devaluations are a game- changer.
funny timing on this… as of this September Citi is neutering nearly all their card benefits
Just read the above comment about the devaluation of benefits for this card… that’s super unfortunate. And the transfer airlines wasn’t too appealing either. But great info if it works for you/your lifestyle.
Citi’s elimination of nearly every travel related benefit should give anyone pause before applying for any further Citi cards.
I was definitely interested in this card before Citi’s huge devaluation. Now, I’m not so sure.
James makes a valid point. It appears they’ve made massive changes to the agreements they’ve made to their customers.
Is this one of the cards that is losing the benefits?
As another reader said, it’s hard to put any faith in Citi right now based on the slashing of all sorts of benefits to their cards. In the bigger picture, hopefully that doesn’t become an industry wide thing though.
I love the initial bonus and the easy 1:1 Jetblue transfer ability. Thank you for the posting.
Citi just announced a massive devaluation of benefits to cards such as the Citi Presitge, announcing yesterday:
“Effective September 22, 2019, Worldwide Car Rental Insurance, Trip Cancellation & Interruption Protection, Worldwide Travel Accident Insurance, Trip Delay Protection, Baggage Delay Protection, Lost Baggage Protection, Medical Evacuation, Citi® Price Rewind, 90 Day Return Protection, and Missed Event Ticket Protection will be discontinued and will no longer be provided for purchases made on or after that date”
I don’t trust Citi enough now to honor benefits if I get a new card with them,
the 60k bonus offer is sitting on my desk. that’s better than many of the Chase offers these days.
Do purchases at warehouse gas stations count towards the gas bonus?
That’s a good question. Check out our merchant lookup tool: https://awardwallet.com/merchants. It’s far from perfect, but we’re working to get all the data from AW member purchases to help you know what to expect for bonus points.
Citi has great transfer opportunities
I see that it can be used at gas stations. I’m on the road a lot, so sounds good.
I would hold off on Citibank credit cards until we understand the gutting of the added protections that used to be standard with this card.
It’s disappointing, to say the least, to watch one hand giving 60,000 bonus points while the other hand is taking away good card features, even if the latter action is delayed a few months.
Not confidence inspiring for a long term relationship.
No, many cards/banks don’t seem to be in search of a relationship, but rather flings 🙁 Are they afraid of commitment? 😉
I agree. Holding off on this for now.
Citi does seem to be the easiest cards to be approved for, even if you have multiple other Citi cards and multiple credit report inquiries.
Yes, its hitting the news cycle that citi is basically dropping all travel related benefits on all their cards including the premier and prestige. no more trip interruption, trip delay, baggage delay, car rental etc.
The only reason i was using the prestige over the amex plat was for the trip/travel protections. Now that they are gone, no need for the prestige as the amex plat plus amex gold with 4x on restaurants worldwide is a good alternative.
citi you just made a terrible mistake.
I have the CITI thank you premier card. My only wish is that they would make an American Airlines a transfer partner!
That’s a blatant omission.
Never realized how limited the transfer partners are — not good!
Now now… there are some good names on the list if you know how to make the most of them. SQ, Avianca, Virgin Atlantic, Flying Blue. Some huge value to be had there.