Citi ThankYou Rewards has made a program update and it is now possible to transfer from several popular cards with no annual fee to American Airlines AAdvantage
The Deal
- Citi ThankYou Rewards can now be transferred to American Airlines from both qualifying premium cards and qualifying cards with no annual fee at the following ratios:
- Citi Strata EliteSM, Citi Strata Premier®, Citi Prestige® Cardmembers
- 1,000 Citi ThankYou Rewards : 1,000 American Airlines AAdvantage miles
- Citi ThankYou® Preferred, Citi StrataSM Card, Citi Double Cash® Card, Citi Custom Cash® Cardmembers
- 1,000 Citi ThankYou Rewards : 700 American Airlines AAdvantage miles
- Citi Strata EliteSM, Citi Strata Premier®, Citi Prestige® Cardmembers
Quick Thoughts
Citi surprised everyone when they added American Airlines AAdvantage as a transfer partner earlier than we expected last month. It wasn’t terribly surprising to us that you needed to have a more premium card like the Strata Premier or Strata Elite in order to take advantage of transfers to American Airlines AAdvantage.
Adding AA transfers from the most popular no-annual-fee ThankYou cards like the Double Cash and Custom Cash is a great enhancement. That said, you’ll still probably want to have a Citi Strata Premier or Strata Elite card in order to pool your points and take advantage of the better 1:1 transfer ratio.
That said, I find it very interesting that it is now possible to get just the Citi Double Cash and earn more American Airlines miles per dollar spent without any annual fee than you do on the suite of American Airlines credit cards (at least for unbonused purchases). The Double Cash and Custom Cash combination is becoming more and more of an interesting strategic choice for folks who want to maximize rewards without any annual fee. Again, I would rather maintain a Strata Premier or Elite for the better transfer ratio, but it is great to see American Airlines added as a partner for these other Citi cards.
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Is Citi the only bank where you can earn transferrable points with no AF cards?
No. Chase may be the only one that doesn’t. Here are some examples:
-Bilt
-Amex Blue Business Plus
-Capital One Venture One
-Wells Fargo Autograph
This has been possible for a while – at least a few weeks, maybe longer.
It has been possible from the Strata and Strata Elite since the Strata Elite card launched last month, and it has been possible from the no annual fee cards to many other transfer partners since that time as well, but initially, when they added the ability to transfer from the no annual fee cards to transfer partners, it was to partners other than American Airlines. The new add here specifically is the ability to transfer to American Airlines from those cards.
Nope. This was enabled for me with my Citi Double Cash card exactly when it was enabled for my Strata/Strata Elite, sometime in July. The day everyone was gushing about that, I checked, and it was enabled for both my Strata card – and also for my Double Cash card. I recall being surprised, then disappointed at the .7-to-1 ratio.
Don’t know anything about other no-annual-fee Citi cards (don’t have any), but the Double Cash card was able to do the same trick as soon as the Strata card could.
Huh. That seems weird. We published a post about this with a screen shot showing the eligible cards for transfers to AA on July 27th:
https://frequentmiler.com/citi-now-offers-transfers-to-american-airlines-from-strata-elite-prestige-strata-premier/
That post specifically noted how transfers were not available from the Double Cash / Strata to AA. In the 52 comments on that post, I don’t see anyone providing a data point that they were actually available on the Double Cash and Strata.
Then on July 28th, we posted about the ability to transfer from the Double Cash / Strata / etc to *most* airline partners at a 1,000:700 ratio, but not specifically not AA unless you had a Strata Premier, Elite, or Prestige card:
https://frequentmiler.com/now-transfer-from-most-citi-cards-to-most-thankyou-partners-even-from-custom-cash/
Again, no comments indicating a contrary experience. If it were available on those other cards, it surprises me that nobody else would have reported it.
I also see it widely reported on other blogs as well that the Double Cash and Strata did not have access to transfers to AA when transfers to AA launched last month.
If you somehow had them early, it looks like you were the only person — I’m just not seeing any other similar data points anywhere at all. Are you?
Not thrilled…AA is a good currency without the extra liquidity. Citi please don’t turn into biz card bonus churn land.
There is no need to churn biz card bonuses when you have the old Sears card.
Still can’t pool Custom Cash points, right?