Premium Citibank ThankYou Rewards cards — like the Citi Prestige Card and Citi ThankYou Premier — let you transfer their points to airline miles and hotel programs.

• Star Alliance: Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, EVA Air Infinity MileageLands, Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus
  
• Skyteam: Air France-KLM, Garuda Indonesia GarudaMiles
  
• oneworld: Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, Malaysia Airlines Enrich, Qatar Airways Privilege Club, Qantas Frequent Flyer
  
• Non-alliance: Etihad Airways Guest, Virgin America Elevate, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
  
• Hotel: Hilton HHonors

They’ve just added a new partner: JetBlue.

I like JetBlue’s ‘Mint’ — a fantastic product at a fair price. JetBlue points don’t expire and they offer family pooling of points. They have reasonable change fees. They just don’t have real leveragable redemption values.

You don’t get 1:1 transfers from Citi, but what’s unique about JetBlue is that even their no annual fee ThankYou cards offer JetBlue transfers (albeit at a reduced rate). Here are the transfer ratios for different cards.

For Citi ThankYou® Premier, Citi Prestige® and Citi Chairman® cardmember point transfers to TrueBlue, 1,000 Points = 800 TrueBlue points. For Citi ThankYou Preferred or Citi Forward cardmember point transfers to TrueBlue, 1,000 Points = 500 TrueBlue points.

It’s interesting that Barclaycard didn’t get exclusivity when they launched the new JetBlue credit cards earlier this year.

Considering that the JetBlue cards are earning at least 1 point per dollar, and Citi transfers are less than 1:1 (you lose 20% to half their value) I don’t generally recommend taking advantage of this new transfer. But more options are indeed better.

I tend to favor Singapore Airlines and Etihad transfers myself. Etihad doesn’t just let you redeem for their own flights, but myriad partners — including American Airlines at American’s old mileage chart prices and Brussels Airlines at under 37,000 miles roundtrip New York – Brussels in business class.

(HT: IADisGr8)