| Want to learn more about policies of major transferable points currencies? See my series about Amex Membership Rewards, Capital One, Chase Ultimate Rewards, and Citi ThankYou. |
Citi ThankYou is a popular transferable points currency. There are several excellent cards earning Citi ThankYou points, so these rewards are pretty easy to accrue, and there are great uses of them.
Sometimes the logistics associated with combining and redeeming points can get confusing. In this post, I’d like to go over the basics of moving Citi ThankYou points around, including how you transfer them to airline and hotel partners, and how you combine them between accounts.
How to transfer Citi ThankYou points to airline & hotel partners
Citi ThankYou points can potentially be transferred to 19 travel partners, including 15 airline loyalty programs and four hotel loyalty programs. Let me emphasize that this assumes that you have the Citi Strata Elite℠ Card (review) or Citi Strata Premier® Card (review), which allows you to unlock the full value of the ThankYou ecosystem.
If you exclusively have no annual fee cards, then the transfer ratios aren’t the same, and you don’t quite have access to the same partners (like American AAdvantage).
American AAdvantage and EVA Air Infinity MileageLands are two unique and valuable transfer partners of Citi ThankYou. Beyond that, Citi ThankYou transfer partners largely overlap with those of other points currencies, and my favorites include Air France-KLM Flying Blue, Avianca Lifemiles, Emirates Skywards, Qatar Privilege Club, and Singapore KrisFlyer.
The process of transferring Citi ThankYou points to partner loyalty programs is easy. To start, just log into your Citi ThankYou account. Make sure you’re logged in under an account that gets you full access to Citi ThankYou partners at the best redemption rates, including on cards like the Citi Strata Elite℠ Card (review) or Citi Strata Premier® Card (review).
Once you log into your account, click on “More Ways to Redeem,” and then “Points Transfer.”
Once you click that, you’ll be on the page that shows all the Citi ThankYou transfer partners. Just select the partner you want to transfer points to, by clicking “Continue.”
On the next page you’ll see a slider where you can select how many points you want to transfer, in increments of 1,000 points. You’ll also have to enter your loyalty program number. The name on the loyalty program account is already pre-populated with the name on the primary Citi ThankYou account. You can also choose to save your loyalty account number for future transfers, so you don’t have to enter it each time.
Note that you can only directly transfer points to a partner loyalty account belonging to the primary cardmember, so you can’t directly transfer your Citi ThankYou points to someone else’s American AAdvantage account, for example.
Note that you can transfer points between your various card accounts instantly and for free, though we’ll cover that a bit later. If you’re trying to transfer points to a partner loyalty program, you’ll want to do so from the Citi Strata Elite℠ Card (review) or Citi Strata Premier® Card (review). You can easily transfer points from excellent no annual fee complements, like the Citi Strata℠ Card (review) or Citi Double Cash® Card (review).
From there you just have to confirm the transaction, and then it should immediately start to process. See our guide to how long Citi ThankYou points transfers take. Transfers to a majority of partners are instant, though some transfers can take up to two days.
How to combine Citi ThankYou points between accounts
If you have multiple cards earning Citi ThankYou points, combining the points online is easy. This allows you to redeem all the points you earn with whatever the best redemption options are (for example, you need a premium card to transfer to most Citi ThankYou partners at the best ratio possible).
For all practical purposes, if you want to move your points to travel partners, you’ll want points to be with the Citi Strata Elite℠ Card (review) or Citi Strata Premier® Card (review).
To combine accounts, log into your Citi account, and then scroll over the dropdown at the top that has your name and ThankYou account balance. Then go to the “My Citi Accounts” section.
On the next page you’ll want to click “Combine My Accounts.”
Then you’ll easily be able to link any ThankYou accounts that you have under one online log-in.
If for whatever reason you don’t see all your cards under the same Citi ThankYou account listed, you may have to call up Citi ThankYou customer service, and they can manually link accounts.
There’s one important thing to be aware of. If you close a Citi ThankYou card, the points for the account you closed down will automatically expire after 60 days. This applies even if you still have another Citi ThankYou card open.
So be sure you remember this, or else your points could be forfeited. You can easily avoid this by just transferring the points to an airline or hotel partner, as the points follow that program’s expiration policy once transferred.
This 60 day rule can be rather frustrating, since Amex, Capital One, and Chase, aren’t so restrictive regarding combining points.
Bottom line
Citi ThankYou is a valuable points currency, as it has quite a few useful airline and hotel partners. Hopefully the above is a useful rundown of how you can transfer and combine Citi points.
The process of transferring points to airline and hotel partners is easy, as it is with most transferable points currencies. The same is true when combining points between Citi accounts, which can be done online at any point.
To Citi cardmembers, what has your experience been with transferring and combining points?
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