Doctor of Credit has covered recent speculation that perhaps Citi might add Japan Airlines Mileage Bank as a new transfer partner. While we have not heard anything to confirm this, it is nonetheless interesting to see that Japan Airlines can indeed be found within the depths of the Thank You Portal.
To be clear, Japan Airlines does not show up on the list of transfer partners to which you can transfer Citi Thank You Points. For many years, Japan Airlines did not partner at all with U.S. transferable currency systems, but within the last year, we’ve seen them become transfer partners with both Bilt and Capital One.
Some eagle-eyed rewards enthusiasts have noticed that Japan Airlines is now a loyalty program that you can save within your Citi Thank You profile. Again, this doesn’t show up on the list of transfer partners, but if you log in to ThankYou.com and you pull down the drop-down by your name and go to your profile page and scroll to the bottom, there’s a place to add loyalty program information.
When you click “add” to save loyalty program information, you’ll find Japan Airlines Mileage Bank in the list of programs you can add to your profile.
As it says in the screenshot, the purpose here is to add loyalty programs for “easy reference for booking future travel and transferring points”.
On the surface, Japan Airlines being included in that list wouldn’t seem notable. Maybe they are just offering the opportunity to save your loyalty program information so that you can easily attach it to bookings made through the Citi Travel Center (like if you wanted to credit a paid American Airlines flight to JAL).
However, you’ll notice that the only programs you can add in your profile there are Citi Transfer Partners (apart from Japan Airlines Mileage Bank). That is to say you can’t store your United Airlines account or your Delta SkyMiles account. You can only store Citi Thank You Transfer Partners…..and Japan Airlines Mileage Bank. That leads some to wonder if we may soon see Japan Airlines Mileage Bank added as a new Citi Transfer Partner.
My bet would be on Citi adding Japan Airlines Mileage Bank, though I have no idea whether that will be a near-term add or if they are in the early stages of making this move. I imagine that the process of adding a transfer partner includes some complicated IT work, and perhaps this is just something that got left on the production side as a piece of the early work that goes into adding a new partner. Maybe we won’t see any news on this front for months, or perhaps we won’t see Japan Airlines added at all. We will certainly need to keep an eye out for future developments on this.
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JAL just joined the Marriott Bonvoy program as a partner, so it does seem they are broadening their reach.
Weird seeing you post pictures of yourself constantly
Not as weird as seeing your picture in every Post Office. They say they “want” you. It’s kinda creepy if you think about it. It’s like you’re being stalked or something. It’s like you’re not able to just get away.
Are you saying that Citi has accidentally loaded a transfer partner before they are actually allowing cardholders to transfer to that partner? Hmmm.
Given the number of JAL miles being printed this year it’s definitely an earn and burn situation.