Citibank Is Slashing Points Transfers To Two Partners April 19 — One Drops 25%, The Other 50%

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.