Act fast: Get 8 mpd on your Citi Rewards card or 4 mpd on your PremierMiles card until 30 June

Citi has launched an ‘Accelerated Rewards’ programme offering up to 8 miles per dollar for specific spend categories using its Citi Rewards cards and up to 4 miles per dollar with the Citi PremierMiles cards, capped at the first S$1,000 of eligible spend per card and open to the first 10,000 applicants.

The offer includes some popular online daily spend categories during the circuit breaker period, including food delivery and pharmacies, plus a range of online and in-store grocery purchases.

How to register

The first thing you’ll want to do is register all your applicable Citi miles-earning cards for the promotion.

Citi Rewards

SMS to 72484: RWONLINE[space]Last 4 digits of your card

Citi PremierMiles

SMS to 72484: PMONLINE[space]Last 4 digits of your card

If you’re currently overseas (we know a few readers who are stuck as far away as South Africa!), the number to SMS to is +65 96572484.

Remember to enrol for as many cards as you hold, for example if like us you have both the Citi Rewards Visa and Citi Rewards Mastercard, you’ll get a S$1,000 spend limit for each of those cards.

Provided you receive this SMS response, you have been successfully enrolled, as Citi states in the terms and conditions:

“Enrollment for this Promotion is subject to a cap of the first 10,000 Eligible Cardmembers. An Eligible Cardmember is only successfully enrolled if he received an SMS from Citibank confirming that his enrollment request has been received.“

The offer

Here’s how many additional miles you’ll get for each of these cards if you successfully register for the offer and spend in the relevant categories between now and 30th June 2020.

Citi Rewards Cards

With the Citi Rewards cards, you’ll get 10X rewards points (4 mpd) on top of your usual 10X rewards points (4 mpd) rate with food delivery, online pharmacies and online leisure merchants, for a total of 20X rewards points, equivalent to 8 mpd in total.

For online and in-store groceries its a 4X rewards points bonus. That’s on top of your usual:

• 10X rewards points (4 mpd) rate if you shop online, equivalent to 5.6 mpd in total, or
• 1X rewards points (0.4 mpd) rate if you shop in-store, equivalent to 2 mpd in total

Pro Tip: Remember this is capped at S$1,000 spend per eligible card. If you have two Citi Rewards cards and manage to register them both, there’s a total S$2,000 cap for you here.

That means you can earn up to 8,000 miles per card (potentially 16,000 miles if you have two cards) during this promotion, instead of the usual 4,000 miles (8,000 miles for 2 cards) you would otherwise earn.

Full terms and conditions for the Citi Rewards promotion are available here.

Citi PremierMiles Cards

With the Citi PremierMiles cards, you’ll get 2.8 mpd on top of your usual 1.2 mpd rate with food delivery, online pharmacies and online leisure merchants, for a total of 4 mpd.

For online and in-store groceries its a 1.8 mpd points bonus on top of your usual 1.2 rate, equivalent to 3 mpd in total.

You can only hold one Citi PremierMiles card (probably a Visa, though it may be a MasterCard if you got one recently).

That means you’ll be subject to the spend cap of S$1,000 during this promotion, allowing you to earn up to 4,000 miles instead of the usual 1,200 miles you would otherwise accrue for these transactions.

Full terms and conditions for the Citi PremierMiles promotion are available here.

Citi Cash Back Card

If you have a Citi Cash Back Card, there’s also an offer for up to 10% cash back as part of this promotion. If you’re interested in that, you can find full details here.

Merchants must also match by MCC code

Citi told us that its list of eligible merchants for this promotion are as shown below, and your transaction must also fall under the designated Merchant Category Code (MCC), which is strange because that’s outside your control and Citi’s control (MCCs can change).

Effectively you have to hope that the transaction will code correctly by MCC in addition to being with one of these merchants.

Here’s how the selected retails are defined by MCC:

Shopee told us last week they process under MCC 5699, however Citi is listing them differently. Whether that means a Shopee transaction coding as MCC 5699 would not be eligible or still would we don’t know!

Pro Tip: Redmart purchases are now processed online through Lazada. Adding any Lazada item to your Redmart basket has been changing the MCC the entire transaction is processed under from the Redmart one (MCC 5411) to the Lazada one (MCC 5311) lately. Hopefully that’s still the case, as it gives you a better bonus earn rate with the transaction then considered under ‘Department Stores’.

Remember foodpanda is currently offering a small KrisFlyer miles boost of 18%, so you can stack your foodpanda orders with this Citi deal to earn over 9 miles per dollar subject to a minimum order of S$20. You’ll also get one entry in a prize draw to win 8,000 miles for every order placed over the next four weeks. See here for full details.

Summary of options

Here’s a summary table of what you’ll earn with the various eligible merchants by credit card under this promotion, for the first S$1,000 of spend between now and 30th June 2020.

Category	Citi Rewards		Citi PM
	Online	In- store	Online	In- store
Online retail merchants (e.g. foodpanda, Deliveroo, Lazada)	4 mpd 8 mpd	n/a	1.2 mpd 4 mpd	n/a
Grocery merchants (e.g. Redmart, Cold Storage, Amazon Prime)	4 mpd 5.6 mpd	0.4 mpd 2 mpd		1.2 mpd 3 mpd

As you can see, even if you have both cards, you’re better off using your Citi PremierMiles for in-store grocery transactions before using your Citi Rewards card in that category.

For all other eligible spend, you should be exhausting the superior Citi Rewards bonus first for the higher earn rate.

Citi ThankYou Points and Citi Miles are very flexible

One key benefit of accruing miles with your Citi cards is the wide range of frequent flyer programme transfer partners – the best selection in Singapore.

You can transfer your Citi miles into 11 different frequent flyer programmes and on the hotel side into IHG points.

Citi Points / Miles transfer to the following loyalty schemes:

As you can see from the table above, Citi gives you a wide range of flight redemption options including oneworld and SkyTeam carriers.

COVID-19: In the current climate, the future value of your frequent flyer miles is of some concern. Having a wide range of FFPs to transfer your credit card points to in future is therefore potentially a much bigger consideration than usual.

For a full list of which credit card loyalty points balances transfer into which frequent flyer programmes or hotel loyalty schemes in Singapore, check out our comprehensive guide here. It also gives examples of some of the alliance and partner airline redemptions you can achieve that you might not have considered before.

When will the miles be credited?

Initially you’ll earn your card’s usual rate for these transactions, with the bonus miles credited to your account within two months of the end of the promotion period, in other words by 31st August 2020.

Summary

A great offer from Citi to earn several thousand additional miles over the next few weeks on some online and essential spend.

Even if you only hold the Citi PremierMiles card, 4 mpd is a great rate for that card if you don’t currently have any 4 mpd earning options, though you should really have at least one of those at your disposal for online spend to maximise your annual miles total.

If you hold both cards, one option is to exhaust the spend cap on your Citi Rewards card(s) first, then still get up to 4 mpd on S$1,000 of additional spend with the PremierMiles card.

Remember to register all your eligible Citi cards for the promotion as soon as possible, since it is only open to the first 10,000 cardholders to do so.

Citi Rewards

SMS to 72484: RWONLINE[space]Last 4 digits of your card

Citi PremierMiles

SMS to 72484: PMONLINE[space]Last 4 digits of your card

(Cover Photo: Shutterstock)