What Can I Use Citi Rewards Points On?

Citibank’s form of rewards points, or the ThankYou Rewards, are accumulated when you spend more with your Citi rewards cards. Some of these cards include the Citi Reward+ Card, the Citi Premier Card, and the upper-tier Citi Prestige Card. Each respective card has different rewards rates; for example, the Citi Reward+ gives 2x points at supermarkets and gas stations, the Citi Premier gives 3x points on travel and gas with 2x on entertainment and restaurants, and the Citi Prestige gives 5x points on air travel and restaurants with 3x points on hotels and cruises.

Different Citi cards offer different levels of rewards value. The Citi Premier and Citi Prestige offer the greatest value for the same amount of points. However, one interesting perk about the Citi points ecosystem is that you can transfer points between accounts and even convert cash back earned by the Citi Double Cash Card.

In terms of spending ThankYou points, there are a plethora of ways to do so. It typically seems that the greatest value you can get out of your points is actually by spending it on travel; however, there are many other options as well, which we will go over.

Spending Citi ThankYou Points on Travel

Spending points on travel has the most potential and options for you to get a good deal out of your ThankYou Rewards. There are two key ways to get value out of your rewards points through travel.

Card-specific perks - Citi offers card-specific travel perks like the fourth-night free benefit that comes with the Citi Prestige or the 1.25 cents per point earned by booking airline tickets through the Travel Center with the Citi Premier. The fourth-night free gives you a free night at a hotel twice a year for stays of at least four days long. The 1.25 cents per point is an efficient way to gain more value for the same amount of points; however, Citi unfortunately announced that it was going to take off that benefit starting April of 2021.

Transferring points to miles - Citi partners with 16 airlines across the globe that you can transfer your Citi points to for miles, with some airline examples being JetBlue, Emirates, Virgin Atlantic, and Flying Blue. The key here is that airline-specific miles can be worth more or less for each respective airline, depending on the flights that they offer. This requires a bit more research on your end to find the best deals for the flights that you want to take in the future. 

Let’s take a look at a quick example. If you transferred 50,000 Citi Rewards points at a 1:1 ratio to Flying Blue, you would have 50,000 Flying Blue miles. Flying Blue typically has a lot of Promo Award sales where your miles-cost of certain flights go down. You can also use Flying Blue miles with their partners like Delta and Alaska. Let’s say you wanted to book a flight to Hawaii that would have cost 50,000 Citi ThankYou points on the Citi portal—you could easily find deals for Flying Blue and Delta that would get you the same flight for around 40,000 miles, which would be a great deal!

Finding these deals for traveling takes a lot of personal research; make a list of destinations that you want to go to in the future and look for the best routes for those trips.

Other Ways to Spend Citi ThankYou Points

Citi offers many more ways to spend your ThankYou points apart from just travel. Here’s a quick list of some of the options.

Statement credits - You can redeem your ThankYou points for a direct statement credit that goes towards your next credit card bill. However, this typically doesn’t give you the best worth that you can get out of your points. It can be convenient though.

Gift cards - Citi offers a variety of gift cards through its portal that you can receive by cashing in your points. Some of the partners include AMC, Best Buy, Coach, Foot Locker, lululemon, and Sephora, just to name a few. Cashing in your points in this method is pretty direct—each point is the equivalent of one cent. 

Shop with Points (Amazon, PayPal) - Speaking of convenience, you can also use your points to purchase things through Amazon and PayPal. This opens up your options of what you can buy with points by a lot. If you’ve been eyeing a certain product on Amazon for a long time and always wished you had a discount, you could use your points to make that purchase.

Cash rewards - Citi also allows you to get a direct deposit of your points to your checking account. This is a very straightforward way to get physical cash back.

Paying for your mortgage/student loans - Citi also has a specific portal that allows you to pay off up to $1000 in your mortgage or student loans with your points. That is the equivalent of 100,000 points. This could be especially useful if paying off student loans is a priority for you.

Citi offers a great variety of ways for you to spend your rewards points. If you have accumulated a lot of points as a loyal Citi cardholder, find one of many ways to treat yourself by redeeming those rewards.