CitiBusiness ThankYou® Card Review
2023.2 Update: It seems this card is discontinued. HT: DoC.
2021.6 Update: This card is not in the Citi website credit cards list, and you can’t apply online, therefore not many people know its existence. Currently there’s 20k/30k/40k offer in branch depending on location. You can ask Citi to match to 40k. HT: DoC.
Contents
Application Link
- CitiBusiness ThankYou. This is just an info page, you have to go to a local branch to apply.
Benefits
- 40k offer: earn 40,000 ThankYou Points after spending $3,000 in first 3 months.
- We estimate that ThankYou Points (TYP) are worth about 1.6 cents/point, see below for a brief introduction. So the 40k highest sign-up bonus is worth about $640.
- Earn 3x TYP in quarterly rotating categories (uncapped), and 1x TYP on all other purchases:
- January-March: Advertising Services, Office Supply Merchants;
- April-June: Computer Equipment Merchants, Software Merchants, and Telecommunications Merchants;
- July-September: Airlines, Hotels and Car Rental merchants;
- October-December: Restaurants and Entertainment.
- No annual fee.
Disadvantages
- It has foreign transaction fee, so it's not a good choice outside the US.
Introduction to TYP
- You can earn TYP with Citi Premier, Citi Rewards+, Citi Custom Cash, Citi Double Cash, 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 Prestige or Citi Premier or Citi Custom Cash or Citi Double Cash, you can redeem your TYP at a fixed rate 1 cents/point towards cash.
- If you have Citi Rewards+, you can get 10% back when redeeming TYP, up to 100k TYP per year. This feature further boosts the value of TYP.
- 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
- It’s likely that you can only get one bonus in 24 months on this card, but I did not go to a branch to verify this. The bonus on this card does not affect the bonuses on TYP series personal cards.
- [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.
- 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.
Summary
If you can get the 40k bonus, then it is a good one for a no annual fee card. The 3x categories are not very good, probably useful for a few people, the good thing is no cap.
Historical Offers Chart
Application Link
- CitiBusiness ThankYou. This is just an info page, you have to go to a local branch to apply.
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