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Citi Strata PremierSM Card (See rates and fees.)
Citi currently has an outstanding limited time initial bonus on one of the best rewards cards that opens up their ThankYou Rewards ecosystem – and all of its transfer partners.
Their “Strata” card is the rebranded Citi Premier Card with some improvements. Citi Premier is no longer available, and existing cardmembers get switched to this new card. They aren’t losing anything. These are the same cards, more or less, which is why having had Premier counts as the same card (or card family) for purposes of new cardmember bonus eligibility.
- Initial bonus: For a limited time, earn 75,000 bonus ThankYou® Points after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months of account opening, redeemable for $750 in gift cards or travel rewards at thankyou.com.
- Earn: 10 points per $1 spent on Hotels, Car Rentals, and Attractions booked on CitiTravel.com; 3 points per $1 on Air Travel and Other Hotel Purchases, at Restaurants, Supermarkets, Gas and EV Charging Stations; 1 Point per $1 spent on all other purchases.
- Annual fee: $95
- Additional benefits: $100 hotel credit on stay of $500 or more booked through the Citi Travel portal, once per calendar year.
EV charging earn is new with Strata, and 10x on eligible spend through the travel portal becomes a benefit of the card (it was previously deemed a limited-time offer). They’ve also added several travel protections to the card, rolling back a previous elimination, recognizing that they – like other issuers – went too far with cuts in the past.
Points can be transferred to a variety of frequent flyer programs, including:
- SkyTeam: Aeromexico Club Premier, Air France KLM Flying Blue, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
- oneworld: 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
- Non-alliance: Emirates Skywards, Etihad Guest, JetBlue TrueBlue,
Emirates first class: They left the bottle.
Citi’s card ecosystem is going to work for many. Remember that points from the no annual fee Double Cash card can be combined with these points and then transferred, and that card earns 2x on all spend. You’d never have to earn just one point per dollar on your spending.
*yawn* Wake us up when Citi releases Strata Elite or whatever they’re calling the replacement for the Prestige card!
And they will likely transfer to American in the near future. Easy choice to get this card as well as the Alaska Airlines card for One World/AA hook up
@AC — Bringing back AA as a transfer partner would be swell, but ‘talk is cheap,’ as they say. The reality is that there is no time frame whatsoever. So, it could be tomorrow, next year, or never.
Citi TY points are nice for sure but outside of maybe Diners Club there’s no program I can think of that’s so tough to accumulate lots of points with. The signup bonuses never reach 100K points for any card, there aren’t that many cards to begin with, churning is quite difficult, and there’s no available business card with helpful category spend bonuses.
Back in 2008, British Airways left a bottle of Chateau Leoville Poyferre on my table in first class. Those were the days.
These days, BA wouldn’t leave an extra glass of Lambrusco.
@Christian — Starting around 2014/2015, it seemed like each issuer implemented policies to reduce ‘churning’ but it still very much exists and works for those willing to follow the rules. As you likely already know, for Citi we must wait 48 months between earning bonuses on many of their cards. Of course, Chase has its 5/24 rule, and many of their cards require 24-48 months waiting between earning bonuses. However, at least with Citi and Chase, churning is still possible, and if you time it right, that’s ample American and United points from those respective card bonuses. Yet, Amex has its ‘once-per-lifetime’ bonus rule, so ironically you do reach a ‘ceiling’ with Delta sign up bonuses. At the same time, SkyPesos have devalued more than UA or AA. It seems like most long-haul Delta One is minimum 400,000 per way; whereas, UA and AA occasionally have similar long-haul business class for 70K or 90K on some partner airlines, or around 200K on its own metal, etc., which is ‘not great, not terrible.’ In the coming years, we’ll see whether anything good remains, or if we’re all condemned to the ‘dark ages’ of this hobby.
@1990 – part of AA going exclusive w Citi as their CC company is tying Thank You points to AA so that is almost certain to happen by 2026. If not the sign on bonus for this card still made it worth it. Have tons of Amex and Chase points. Good opportunity to get into the Citi game as a low cost