Citibank is devaluing points transfers to two of their partners effective April 19, 2026. Premium ThankYou Rewards cards will see a worse transfer rate to Choice Privileges and to Preferred Hotels I Prefer starting at that time.
- Currently 1,000 ThankYou Rewards Points transfer to 2,000 Choice Privileges points. Effective April 19, that rate will be cut by 25% to 1,500 Choice Privileges points.
- Currently 1,000 ThankYou Rewards points transfer to 4,000 Preferred Hotels I Prefer points. Effective April 19, that rate will be cut by 50% to 2,000 I Prefer points.
Ironically, Citibank emails to cardmembers sharing this change close, “A little ThankYou… can go a long way.”
These are somewhat niche partners, but Preferred Hotels offered real value at the old 1:4 ratio, giving you 2-3 cents per Citibank point. It’s hard to imagine there will be many opportunities for transferring Citibank points to Preferred Hotels at reasonable value with this change. Meanwhile, I value Choice points at perhaps half a cent apiece. I wouldn’t transfer at the old rate. This new rate makes them a non-partner in my calculations.
Here’s Citi’s transfer partners.
- oneworld: American Airlines AAdvantage, Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, Malaysia Airlines Enrich, Qantas Frequent Flyer, Qatar Airways Privilege Club
- Star Alliance: Avianca LifeMiles, EVA Air Infinity MileageLands, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus, Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles
- SkyTeam: Aeromexico Club Premier, Air France KLM Flying Blue, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
- Non-alliance: Emirates Skywards, Etihad Guest, JetBlue TrueBlue
- Hotels: Leading Hotels of the World Leaders Club, Accor ALL – Accor Live Limitless, Choice Hotels Choice Privileges, Preferred Hotels I Prefer, Wyndham Hotels Wyndham Rewards
There’s value in American AAdvantage, Cathay Pacific, Qantas, and Qatar (which can further transfer to other Avios programs like British Airways and Finnair). There’s value in LifeMiles, EVA Air, Singapore, Air France KLM Flying Blue and even Virgin Atlantic.
I view Malaysia airlines, THAI, Aeromexico and Turkish largely just running up the score on having partners at this point. Turkish used to offer strong value but they’ve largely eliminated those opportunities.
EVA Air is a real sleeper by the way because they offer better availability to their own members than to partners. It’s actually possible to get business class awards, say, from Seattle to Asia via Taipei using Infinity MileageLands points while doing so with United or Air Canada miles is rare.
Turkish had value when they ran a 50% bonus on transfers from Citi lat fall. The fuel surcharges are very high although not as bad as BA.
Other than that, yeah very little value.
Honestly, I can understand credit card fatigue at this point. We’re seeing one, if not several, devaluations a week from some bank or loyalty program at this point, and finding the “sweet spots” is getting more and more cumbersome. What good is “80K points to Japan in JAL first class” if it’s only available for one seat on one flight every other year, has to be booked 11 months out, and sells out 5 minutes after becoming available?
While I like the flexibility of a credit card loyalty program, the points game is becoming less and less lucrative to play, and more and more exhausting, especially with regards to aspirational redemptions. Unless you’re totally committed, this is becoming not worth it for more and more people. It’s hard to get outsized value now.
That really hurts. This was my preferred way to redeem ThankYouPoints, and this is also the primary program I was operating in. Banks getting in on devaluations are just driving the value of participating in these programs to “juice isn’t worth the squeeze.”
Gonna take a wager out of the dark and guess that the Choice one has to do with Wells’s issuer relationship with Choice. Citi and Choice likely had some sort of preferential contract predating Wells’s introduction of transferable points. Choice’s agreement with Wells likely included some kind of exclusivity/preferential treatment, hence the downgrade. Iprefer’s recent inclusion into the C1 ecosystem may similarly impact Citi’s turf.