How many citi credit cards can i have

If you own a Citibank credit card, you will know there are many Citibank credit card promos available. Ongoing promotions and discounts include the Shopee, Lazada, Taobao, Qoo10, RedMart, Zalora, Harvey Norman, Esso, FoodPanda, GrabFood, Agoda, Marina Bay Sands, 1-for-1 Hotel Dining Treats and more. Visit Citi World Privileges online to view all. Visit Citi World Privileges online to view all.

Without much to show for additional benefits, the Citi Rewards+® Card* earns okay rewards, but its unique earning features are what make the card interesting. With both a round up to the nearest 10 points option and a Points Back feature, the card may make point earning more rewarding, but may not be enough to make up for the additional complexity of keeping track of another credit card and rewards system.

Rewards: 2 ThankYou Points per dollar at supermarkets and gas stations for the first $6,000 in spending per year and 1 ThankYou Point per dollar on all other eligible purchases

Welcome Bonus: 20,000 bonus points after spending $1,500 in purchases within 3 months of account opening; redeemable for $200 in gift cards at thankyou.com

Annual Fee: $0

Other Benefits and Drawbacks: The Citi Rewards+® Card* offers just-okay rewards earning structures but does offer some unique ways to earn additional rewards. With Round Up to the nearest 10 points, a $2 coffee purchase earns 10 ThankYou Points where it would otherwise earn 2 and a $12 meal purchase earns 20 ThankYou Points where it would otherwise earn 12. With a Points Back feature, the card returns 10% of ThankYou Points redeemed, such that 1,500 ThankYou Points are returned as points when 15,000 ThankYou Points are redeemed.

Note that the card does charge a 3% foreign transaction fee.

Additionally, the introductory APR offer may appeal to some: a 0% intro APR on balance transfers for 15 months from date of first transfer and on purchases from date of account opening. After that, the variable APR will be 17.74% - 27.74%, based on your creditworthiness. An intro balance transfer fee of either 3% of each transfer or a minimum amount of $5 within the first 4 months of account opening applies. After that, the amount of each balance transfer will be 5% of each transfer (minimum $5) applies. While certainly not the longest low intro APR period on this list of cards, it’s a solid card that can provide an interesting reward-earning structure as well.

CNN Underscored reviews financial products such as credit cards and bank accounts based on their overall value. We may receive a commission through the LendingTree affiliate network if you apply and are approved for a card, but our reporting is always independent and objective.

While our choice for the best first travel rewards credit card has long been the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, if you’re already gotten that card or you’re unable to apply for Chase credit cards due to that issuer’s application rules, there’s a strong runner-up to consider: the Citi Premier® Card.

Not only is the Citi Premier a solid contender in its own right, but if you’re interested in travel rewards, it potentially should be the first Citi card you apply for before considering any other Citi credit card. Yes, even our benchmark Citi® Double Cash Card.

Why? Let’s dive into the Citi Premier and the application rules related to it so you can see firsthand why we think it should be at the top of your list when looking for a new Citi credit card.

The Citi Premier is offering 80,000 bonus points

Right now for a limited-time, new Citi Premier card holders can earn 80,000 bonus points after spending $4,000 on purchases within the first three months after opening the account. That’s the highest bonus you can currently get on any Citi credit card.

You can now earn 80,000 bonus points for travel with the Citi Premier credit card

Exactly how much are those 80,000 points worth? Well, the Citi Premier earns points known as Citi ThankYou Rewards, which can be easily redeemed for gift cards or for any flight booked through Citi’s travel portal at a rate of 1 cent per point. That makes the card’s sign-up bonus worth $800 at a bare minimum, which is a great haul for a card that only has a $95 annual fee.

However, with a little bit of effort, you can get even more value for your points than that. That’s because Citi also allows you to transfer your ThankYou points to any of its 16 partner loyalty programs, which now includes two hotel programs — Choice and Wyndham.

You can now transfer Citi ThankYou points to Wyndham Hotels and 16 other travel partners.

While using your points this way requires some extra effort and flexibility, you can potentially get much more value for your rewards, especially if you redeem them for first or business class flights. That’s why frequent flyer website The Points Guy values Citi ThankYou points at 1.7 cents apiece. At that rate, the 80,000 bonus points on the Citi Premier are worth a whopping $1,360 toward travel.

Granted, there are some credit cards outside of Citi offering 100,000-point bonus offers or more, it’s important to keep in mind that not all points are created equal, and 100,000 points on some cards are worth less than the 80,000 points on the Citi Premier.

Also, some cards require a ridiculous amount of spending to earn the entire sign-up bonus — as much as $15,000 in some cases. But the $4,000 spending requirement on the Citi Premier breaks down to just $1,333 a month for each of the first three months you have the card.

Click here to get the 80,000-point sign-up bonus on the Citi Premier Card.

Citi has many complex rules for credit cards approvals

Similar to most major banks, Citi has rules on how often a customer can be approved for a credit card. Although Citi doesn’t limit the number of cards you can open, it does have restrictions on how many cards you can apply for within a given time.

Overall, you can only apply for one Citi credit card every eight days, and a maximum of two Citi cards every 65 days. That policy covers all of the issuer’s credit cards, including airline, travel rewards and cash back options.

Seems pretty straightforward and easy to understand, right? Except that Citi also has a 24-month “card family” rule. This means if you’ve opened or closed any card within specific families of Citi cards in the past 24 months, you won’t be able to receive a sign-up bonus when applying for a new card from that same family.

That rule is a little more complicated, so let’s look at it using the Citi Premier as an example. The Citi Premier earns Citi ThankYou points, making it part of the family of Citi cards that also earn ThankYou points, which includes the Citi Rewards+® Card and the no-longer-available Citi Prestige Card.

So if you open a Citi Rewards+ card, you won’t be able to also get the sign-up bonus on the Citi Premier card until 24 months have elapsed. And since the Citi Premier offers a much higher sign-up bonus — four times as high as the Citi Rewards+ card — and better rewards, you’ll want to make sure to apply for the Citi Premier card first.

It's important to understand the application rules when it comes to getting Citi credit cards.

The good news is our benchmark Citi Double Cash Card isn’t part of any Citi card family. So you can safely apply for it after you get the Citi Premier — as soon as eight days after if you want it that fast. And these two cards actually pair together very well, because if you have both, you can convert the cash back earned on your Citi Double Cash into points, and combine them with the points you earn on the Citi Premier, giving you one big pot of travel rewards.

See if you qualify for the Citi Premier credit card.

Citi ThankYou points are easy to earn and redeem

Compared to all of the other Citi credit cards, the Citi Premier has the most robust set of bonus categories. You’ll earn 3 points for every dollar you spend on air travel, hotels, gas stations, supermarkets and restaurants (including takeout), and 1 point per dollar on all other purchases. Plus, there’s no limit to the number of points you can earn.

This also brings up a second reason that the Citi Premier pairs well with the Citi Double Cash Card. Since the Citi Double Cash earns 2% cash back on everything you buy — 1% when you make a purchase, and another 1% when you pay it off — and you can convert your cash back to ThankYou points when you also have the Citi Premier, you can effectively maximize the rewards you’re earning on all your purchases by having both cards.

Read CNN Underscored's review of the Citi Double Cash Card

How? Well, if you have both cards in your purse or wallet, you’d pull out the Citi Premier whenever you’re making a purchase in one of its bonus categories in order to earn 3 points per dollar, and then you’d pull out the Citi Double Cash Card for everything else to earn 2% cash back, which is effectively 2 points per dollar when you convert the cash back into ThankYou points. That way you’re always earning at least twice as much as the basic 1 point per dollar on everything you buy.

The Citi Premier is also the only Citi card you can currently get that, on its own, allows you to transfer points to any of Citi’s 16 travel partners, potentially increasing the value of your points. All of the other Citi cards earn cash back or “basic” ThankYou points that can only be redeemed for gift cards or used through the Citi travel portal at 1 cent apiece.

Citi ThankYou points transfer at a 1-to-1 ratio to all partners, which means the 80,000 points from the Citi Premier sign-up offer equals 80,000 points or miles in any of these 16 airline or hotel programs:

Citi ThankYou Rewards Transfer PartnersAirlinesAeromexico Club PremierJetBlue TrueBlueAir France-KLM Flying BlueQantas Frequent FlyerAvianca LifeMilesQatar Airways Privilege ClubCathay Pacific Asia MilesSingapore Airlines KrisFlyerEmirates SkywardsThai Airways Royal Orchid PlusEtihad GuestTurkish Airlines Miles&SmilesEVA Air Infinity MileageLandsVirgin Atlantic Flying ClubHotelsChoice PrivilegesWyndham Rewards

Additionally, at times, Citi runs promotions for transfer bonuses of 10% to 30% when transferring your points to certain partners during certain time periods, which means you can get even more bang for your buck. The only rule when it comes to transferring points is that they must be transferred in blocks of 1,000, and no more than 50,000 points can be transferred at a given time.

Citi also makes it incredibly easy to transfer points from one person’s ThankYou Rewards account to another. This is a great feature if you’re looking to combine points among friends or family members. But you need to make sure you’re ready to use your ThankYou points before you combine them with someone else, because points shared with another person expire 90 days from the date they’re received, and you can transfer a maximum of 100,000 ThankYou points in a calendar year.

Get the Citi Premier and combine your cash back from other Citi credit cards.

Comparing the Citi Premier and Chase Sapphire Preferred

Both the Citi Premier and the Chase Sapphire Preferred have $95 annual fees, so they’re comparable in cost. With the Sapphire Preferred, you’ll earn Chase Ultimate Rewards points, which transfer to a different set of partners than Citi ThankYou points. Chase offers three hotel partners in addition to 11 airline partners, while Citi has more partnerships available but only two hotel partners.

Chase also offers more domestic partner opportunities, such as United Airlines and Hyatt hotels, while Citi focuses on international carriers. But Citi partners with many airlines that don’t partner with anyone else, such as Turkish Airlines.

Chase Ultimate Rewards has transfer partners such as United, while Citi's transfer partners are focused more on international carriers.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred also offers many shopping and travel protection benefits. For example, if your flight is delayed overnight, causing you to have to fly out the following morning, the Sapphire Preferred will reimburse you for any unexpected out-of-pocket costs — such as a night at a hotel, food and taxis — up to $500 per passenger.

6 reasons to get the Chase Sapphire Preferred

While the Citi Premier no longer offers these nice-to-have perks, it does have more bonus categories, and in some cases at a higher rate. For instance, the Citi Premier earns 3 points per dollar on travel purchases, whereas the Chase Sapphire Preferred earns only 2 points per dollar unless you book through Ultimate Rewards.

At the end of the day, they are both great credit cards that you’ll want to consider if you’re thinking about earning travel rewards for the first time. While the Chase Sapphire Preferred remains our favorite first travel credit card, the Citi Premier is an underrated contender, and should definitely be the first Citi card on your list. You can even apply for both and diversify your points — the ultimate way to ensure you have the right points when looking to go on your next much-needed vacation.

Does Citi have a 5 24 rule?

Can you have 2 Citi Cards one account?

Which Citi credit card has the highest limit?

How often does Citi automatically increase credit limit?