2022.8 Update: The new welcome offer is $200! This is the best offer on this card.
2022.3 Update: This card now earns ThankYou Points (TYP) instead of cashback. Since you can always choose to redeem TYP at a fixed ratio 1 cent/point towards cash, no minimum, and there are more redemption choices, so this change is a pure plus.
Application Link
Benefits
- 20k offer: Earn 20,000 ThankYou Points (TYP) after spending $1,500 in the first 6 months. This is the best offer on this card.
- Earn 2x TYP on everything: earn 1x TYP on every purchase you make, and an additional 1x TYP when you pay at least the minimum due.
- Although this card is advertised as a cash back card, it actually earns ThankYou Points (TYP). We estimate that ThankYou Points (TYP) are worth about 1.6 cents/point, see below for a brief introduction. Even if you don’t want to spend time to study the redemption of points and miles, you can choose to redeem TYP at a fixed ratio 1.0 cent/point towards cash.
- No annual fee.
Disadvantages
- It has foreign transaction fee, so it’s not a good choice outside the US.
Introduction to TYP
- You can earn TYP with Citi Premier, Citi Rewards+, Citi Custom Cash, Citi Double Cash, etc.
- You can add all these cards into the same thankyou.com account, and points that are about to expire will be redeemed first in the order in which they expire automatically.
- In most cases, TYP never expire. But closing account, product change, or receiving points from other people may cause TYP on that account to expire.
- If you have Citi Prestige or Citi Premier, TYP can be transferred to some airline miles. The best way to use TYP is to 1:1 transfer them to Asia Miles (Oneworld) or Avianca (AV) miles (Star Alliance). Other good options are: Singapore Airlines (SQ) (Star Alliance), Flying Blue (SkyTeam), Virgin Atlantic (VS) (Non-alliance), etc. If you use TYP in this way, the value is about 1.6 cents/point.
- If you have Citi Prestige, you can redeem your TYP at a fixed rate 1.25 cents/point towards air tickets on thankyou.com. This is a common way to use TYP. Points+cash is available when redeeming for air tickets, so no need to worry if you do not have enough TYP.
- If you have Citi Prestige or Citi Premier or Citi Custom Cash or Citi Double Cash, you can redeem your TYP at a fixed rate 1 cents/point towards cash.
- If you have Citi Rewards+, you can get 10% back when redeeming TYP, up to 100k TYP per year. This feature further boosts the value of TYP.
- In summary, we estimate that TYP are worth about 1.6 cents/point.
- For more information about TYP, see Maximize the Credit Card Points Values (overview), and Introduction to TYP: How to Earn & Introduction to TYP: How to Use (very detailed).
Recommended Application Time
- [8/65 Rule] You can apply for at most 1 Citi cards every 8 days, and at most 2 Citi cards every 65 days, no matter approved or not.
- Citi values the number of recent hard pulls a lot, we recommend you apply when there’s less than 6 hard pulls in the past 6 months.
- We recommend you apply for this card after you have a credit history of at least one year.
Summary
This card was already a no-brainer for most people when it offered only 2% cashback. Now that you have the option to convert cashback to ThankYou Points (TYP), the DC has become the most valuable no-annual fee card on the market in my opinion. You should use this card for all transactions that don’t have 2%+ reward rate. There’s no standard sign-up bonus on this card, so instead of applying for this card directly, we recommend you the DC by downgrading other Citi cards once you receive the signup bonus. According to Citi’s policy, all the accounts older than 12 months can be downgraded to this card. If you just want to get a good cash back card and don’t want to spend time doing research, you should just apply for it directly.