Link: Apply now for the Citi Strata Premier℠ Card
There’s a lot to love about the $95 annual fee Citi Strata Premier℠ Card (review), including that the card is currently offering a great welcome bonus. One particularly compelling aspect of the card is that it’s the mid-range credit card with the best bonus categories, in my opinion.
In many ways the Citi Strata Premier Card is a competitor to the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card (review). While there are pros and cons to both cards, a huge advantage of the Citi Strata Premier is the superior bonus categories. In this post I wanted to take a closer look at how those bonus categories work.
In this post:
Citi Strata Premier Card 3x ThankYou points bonus categories
What makes the Citi Strata Premier Card lucrative long-term is that it offers 3x points in five different categories. The Citi Strata Premier offers 3x points on:
- Restaurants
- Gas stations & EV charging
- Supermarkets
- Airfare
- Hotels
How does Citi define each of these categories? In other words, specifically, which kinds of purchases qualify, and which don’t? Let’s go over each category below. I’d also like to mention that the card is ideal for purchases abroad, given that:
- The Citi Strata Premier has no foreign transaction fees
- The Citi Strata Premier bonus categories apply globally, rather than being US-centric
3x points on dining & restaurants
The Citi Strata Premier offers 3x points on dining and restaurant purchases, which generally include cafes, bars, lounges, fast food restaurants, takeout, and delivery.
You generally won’t earn bonus points for purchases made at bakeries, caterers, and restaurants in other establishments (like hotels, department stores, grocery stores, discount stores, convenience stores, and warehouse clubs).
That makes the Citi Strata Premier one of the best cards for dining and restaurant purchases.
3x points on gas stations & EV charging
The Citi Strata Premier offers 3x points on gas station and EV charging purchases. The gas station category typically includes gas and other gas station purchases, while the EV charging category includes most places where you can charge your car.
You generally won’t earn bonus points for gas and EV charging purchases at warehouse clubs, discount stores, department stores, convenience stores, or other merchants that aren’t classified as gas stations or EV charging.
That makes the Citi Strata Premier one of the best cards for gas station purchases.
3x points at supermarkets
The Citi Strata Premier offers 3x points at supermarkets.
You generally won’t earn bonus points for purchases made at general merchandise or discount stores, freezer or meat locker provisioners, dairy product stores, miscellaneous food and convenience stores, markets, drugstores, warehouse clubs, wholesale clubs, specialty vendors, bakeries, candy stores, nut stores, confectionary stories, and meal kit delivery services.
That makes the Citi Strata Premier one of the best cards for grocery and supermarket purchases.
3x points on airfare
The Citi Strata Premier offers 3x points on airfare. This includes all airfare purchased directly with airlines or through a travel agency. Not just ticket costs qualify, but generally, other fees associated with airline tickets as well.
That makes the Citi Strata Premier one of the best cards for airfare purchases.
3x points on hotels
The Citi Strata Premier offers 3x points on hotels. This includes hotels booked directly or through a travel agency. This also includes incidental purchases at hotels, and not just the room rate.
That makes the Citi Strata Premier one of the best cards for hotel purchases. Also keep in mind that the Citi Strata Premier offers a once annual $100 hotel credit, which can be applied toward a single hotel stay of $500+ when booking through the Citi Travel portal.
Citi Strata Premier Card 10x ThankYou points Citi Travel portal
In addition to the widely useful 3x points categories offered by the Citi Strata Premier Card, the card also offers 10x points on hotels, rental cars, and attractions, booked through the Citi Travel portal. Based on my valuation of points, that’s like a 17% return on that spending.
Now, it’s worth emphasizing that this won’t be for everyone. If you’re staying at a major hotel chain, you typically won’t earn points or receive elite perks on third party bookings. However, for someone who isn’t terribly brand loyal, or if you’re staying at an independent hotel, this could be very rewarding.
Maximize ThankYou points with Citi Double Cash Card
If you want to maximize the Citi ThankYou points you earn, you can’t beat having the Citi Strata Premier Card in conjunction with the no annual fee Citi Double Cash® Card (review). The card offers 2x points for everyday spending, making it one of the best cards for non-bonused spending.
It’s tough to beat the combination of the Citi Strata Premier Card and Citi Double Cash Card, so that you can earn 2-3x points on all purchases. The points earned on the Citi Double Cash are also more valuable if you have the card in conjunction with the Citi Strata Premier, since that allows you to transfer all points to the ThankYou airline and hotel partners.
The only catch is that the Citi Double Cash has foreign transaction fees, so I’d only recommend using it for domestic purchases.
Bottom line
The Citi Strata Premier Card offers incredibly well-rounded bonus categories, as you can earn triple points on gas and EV charging, at supermarkets, restaurant, airfare, and hotel purchases. When you add it all together, you can easily average multiple points per dollar spent, making this one of the most compelling mid-range cards out there.
Hopefully the above sheds some light on how each bonus category is defined, since it can sometimes get confusing to figure out which purchases qualify for each bonus category.
If you don’t yet have the Citi Strata Premier Card, this is a fantastic time to apply.
I just picked it up, had 30k TY points laying around, figure I’d turn it into 105,000 with better partners than my Double cash can provide.
The 3x points in all of those categories on the same card is unprecedented. I can beat it but I need 4 cards to do it. Oh and fingers crossed sometime in the next year or two citi has another special offer to transfer points to American Airlines, my gut tells me it’s going to happen.
Given Citi's longtime relationship with American Airlines, not having them as a transfer partner remains a weakness for the card...
This reads like a sponsored post, with little more than you'd get by reading the Citi Strata marketing materials. I have no idea what a "meat locker provisioner" even is. It'd be more helpful to add some compare/contrast. Like, Chase generally does a "travel" category, so what are you missing with the Citi bonus categories? Are there nuances in the way retailers are categorized? What competitors offer better or worse category bonuses?
The transfer partners of Citi Thank You Points cannot compare to Chase Sapphire. There are no major US airlines unless you consider Jet Blue a major US airlines.
Ditto for hotel transfer partners unless you consider Choice Hotels a good “choice” ( pun intended).
It's also worth noting that railway tickets and taxis are not in the 3X category.
I use this card exclusively for restaurants both in the US and internationally and it works beautifully. Also use it to pay taxes on award tickets for 3X.
Strata Elite by mid-year 2025.