Citi ThankYou Points might be my favorite transferable currency due to its excellent portfolio of transfer partners and appealing credit cards. However, it has a rather draconian policy for transferring points between cardholders. Each calendar year, you can send a maximum of 100,000 points to another cardholder and receive a maximum of 100,000. The catch is that those transferred points then expire 90 days after they’re moved, a bug feature that I’ve seen burn countless folks.
Unfortunately, Citi may be about to make its transfer policy even worse, as some cardholders (including me) have received the following message on their April statements:
Update to ThankYou® Rewards Point Sharing
Effective 5/17/2026, Point Sharing will no longer be offered as a ThankYou® Rewards redemption option. Additionally, you will no longer be able to receive
shared points. You can share and receive shared points until 5/16/2026.
As a reminder, shared points expire 90 days after the date they were shared.
I received that notice on the statement for my Citi ThankYou Mastercard, a peculiar product that I believe exists only for folks who were converted from another Citi card that was discontinued; mine used to be the old Sears Shop Your Way card.
The reason I mention this is that I’m not yet 100% sure the change will apply to all ThankYou Points earned from any Citi card, or just those earned from this particular one. The only data points I can find from folks who have actually received this message are from their ThankYou Mastercards, also. The points from that card are already treated differently from other ThankYou Points, in that they expire 3 years after they’re earned, whereas the points earned from other cards don’t expire so long as the card is open.
There’s no notice on the ThankYou Point website, and when I called Citi to ask about points-sharing, no one I spoke to knew anything or could find any information about it…except the rep from my ThankYou Mastercard.
That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Citi is notoriously poor at communication, and it could just be that the message is showing up on ThankYou Mastercards first. After all, American Express doesn’t allow transfers between cardholders, and Chase only permits it between cardholders within the same household. It’s not like Citi would be completely out on its own if it decided to mimic Amex.
What Now?
That said, let’s assume that Citi is really ending points transfers on 5/17. I’ve never used the feature myself, as I can’t stand the 90-day expiration policy and didn’t want to be pressured to use them within that window. That said, I’m certain that many people in multiplayer households use it to transfer points in order to immediately use them for a specific award; losing that ability stinks.
It’s important to note that this doesn’t seem to affect the ability to pool points. For instance, I have my Citi Strata Elite, Strata Premier, Double Cash, Custom Cash, and ThankYou Mastercard all on the same ThankYou points account, so they all are deposited into one pool. There is no reason to ever have to use points transfer to move points from one of your cards to another, only between cardholders.
Many people get confused by this because the ThankYou Rewards website (where you combine accounts) is notoriously fickle. Any difference in profile between two cards will keep them from being combined online. This could be an initial, an odd space in the street address or zip code, or even that one account has a phone number listed as “home” while another has it under “mobile.” You can either try to figure out what’s wrong or call the ThankYou Rewards service center, and they can process it for you. However, just to be clear, ending points sharing should have no impact on your ability to pool points between your own cards.
For folks who regularly transfer between players, it will take some household planning, similar to what folks already do with Amex. It’s worth considering whether it makes sense to have one person as the primary point-of-sale earner, with the other using either mobile payment apps or authorized user cards.
It’s also worth taking a look at what redemptions you may want to make over the next year or so, then transferring points before May 16th. Just remember to move them into the relevant loyalty programs before the 90 days are up.
Final Thoughts
It looks like points sharing between Citi cardholders is coming to an end on May 17th. This is undoubtedly a customer-unfriendly move that stinks for folks used to moving points freely between cardholders. This puts Citi’s policy in line with Amex’s, but it’s much more punitive than Chase’s and Capital One’s.
This is most likely intended as an anti-fraud measure, though that’s no comfort to folks who used it as intended. I’m surprised that Citi felt like they needed to do this, given the 100k annual limit and 90-day expiry, but here we are.
I love Citi points and never use the points sharing feature, so I won’t notice its departure. However, for folks who rely on household transfers to build a redeemable stash of points, it may be worth designating one person as the Citi “point-earner” and then focusing on Capital One and Chase in order to share points freely between players.
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Can you transfer to the airline or hotel account of an Authorized User? That would make “points sharing” pretty easy.
It’s confirmed for all TYP cards. That’s been posted around the internet already in multiple places already today.