Citi Prestige credit card holders in Singapore are no strangers to bonus miles promotions, with the bank enticing them twice over the last year with its “Spend and Get” deal, allowing them to accrue a stack of bonus miles for a specific spend target and a “reasonable fee”.
It’s been a way to boost your miles balance from as little as 1.15 cents each the last two times around, not a bad rate to speculatively accumulate your stash, despite the fact you may have been more than a little miffed at the bank’s 0.97 cents per mile offer for “lowly” PremierMiles customers in January!
Good news is this latest deal is a corker – allowing Citi Prestige cardholders with at least S$10,000 spend to make between now and the end of 2020 the opportunity to buy miles for an incredibly cheap 0.8 cents each.
That’s truly a “can’t lose out” deal in our book.
The offer
You should have received an email inviting you to take part in this latest bonus miles offer running between 22nd October 2020 and 31st December 2020.
Effectively it works like this:
- Spend S$10,000 – S$19,999: Earn 20,000 bonus miles for a S$160 fee (0.8 cents per mile); or
- Spend S$20,000+: Earn 42,000 bonus miles for a S$360 fee (0.86 cents per mile)
Curiously those with a higher spend between now and the end of 2020 then have to pay slightly more for their bonus on a per-mile basis, not the best thought-through promotion but still representing a competitive rate to buy miles nonetheless.
You’ll continue to earn your regular 1.3 miles per dollar on local transactions and 2 miles per dollar on overseas spend, in addition to the bonus miles.
Who is eligible?
To be eligible you must have received an invitation directly from Citi by SMS or email. The promotion does seem to be widely offered as we have both been targeted, despite only occasionally using our Citi Prestige cards these days, as have many of our readers.
Assuming you have been invited, you must also enrol for the promotion by sending an SMS to 72484 as follows:
| PRESTIGESPEND [space] Last 4 digits of your Citi Prestige card number
Example: Send “PRESTIGESPEND 1234” to 72484 |
If you are currently overseas and wish to enrol, you’ll need to send the SMS in the same format shown above to +65 9657 2484 instead.
The details
As usual, Citi advertises this as an “up to 170,000 Citi ThankYou Points” offer, not only quoting the maximum bonus level in its rewards points currency (2.5 Citi ThankYou Points = 1 mile), but also including the miles you’d earn anyway from the required minimum spend as part of the total.
Here’s how the deal is outlined for the lower (S$10,000 min. spend) offer:
Only the 50,000 ThankYou Points (20,000 miles) is the bonus. The rest you’d have earned anyway for pushing S$10k through this card, without any promotion running.
Here’s how the deal is outlined for the higher (S$20,000 min. spend) offer:
Same story here – only the 105,000 ThankYou Points (42,000 miles) is the bonus element.
Full terms and conditions for these offers are available at the Citi website here.
There’s no need to pick an offer
You can’t actually choose one of the two offers, provided you register successfully you’ll receive one of the following bonus levels based on your spend during the promo period:
| Spend | Bonus Miles | Fee |
| < S$10,000 | None | None |
| S$10,000 – S$19,999 | 20,000 | S$160 |
| S$20,000+ | 42,000 | S$360 |
Excluded transactions
If you are going to take part in this promotion, be aware that your S$10,000 (or S$20,000) spend includes eligible retail transactions charged in Singapore dollars or foreign currency, made online or in person, but excluding transactions in the following categories:
- Equal Payment Plan (EPP) purchases
- Refunded / disputed / unauthorised or fraudulent retail purchases
- Quick Cash / Ready Credit PayLite and other instalment loans
- PayLite / FlexiBill / cash advance / quasi-cash transactions / balance transfers / annual card membership fees / interest / goods and services taxes
- Bill payments made using the Eligible Card as a source of funds
- Late payment fees
- Any other form of service / miscellaneous fees
Citi PayAll is included, but not CardUp or ipaymy
Citi PayAll is explicitly mentioned as a valid transaction category for meeting the relevant minimum spend threshold under this promotion.
That means you can potentially channel a large amount of this spend requirement on rental payments, tax payments, education and other bills.
Recent PayAll category additions include Insurance and Miscellaneous fees.
Most private landlords in Singapore will also accept rent payments in advance if you wish to overpay, for example you could arrange to pay two or three months’ rent upfront using PayAll if it helps you meet the spend threshold.
Pro Tip: Be aware that you’ll be subject to Citi PayAll’s 2% fee, which you should take account of in addition to the processing fee to ‘buy’ miles through this promotion, unless you were going to make payments through the PayAll facility anyway.Do note that other credit card payment methods like CardUp and ipaymy are not eligible for the minimum spend under this offer. Citi advised us that they regard these as third-party bill payment facilities (see exclusions above).
When do you pay the fee and receive the bonus?
The programme fee (either S$160 or S$360, depending on the total amount of qualifying spend) will be automatically charged to within two months from the end of the promotion period, subject to successful enrolment.
That’s by 28th February 2021. No fee will be charged if less than S$10,000 in eligible spend was met.
Bonus points will be credited when payment of the programme fee is taken.
No bonus points will be credited if your Citi Prestige credit card account is closed, terminated or suspended before the programme fee is taken, so do bear in mind your card membership year end date in case it falls before 28th February 2021 and you were not intending to renew (at S$535!).
Citi ThankYou Points are very flexible
Citi has one of the widest range of frequent flyer programmes for you to transfer your points into, including British Airways, Etihad Guest, Turkish Airlines and Qantas, making these very flexible points to accrue.
Citi ThankYou Points earned on the Citi Prestige card never expire while they remain in your Citi rewards account.
See our full review of the Citi Prestige card for more details, including a full list of transfer partners.
| Citi Prestige Mastercard | ||
|
Sign-up Bonus: | 25,000 miles |
| Annual Fee: | S$535.00 | |
| Cost per mile: | 2.14¢ | |
| Min Spend: | None | |
| Min Income: | S$120,000/yr | |
| Citi ThankYou Points credit to the following programmes: | ||
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They also transfer to your preferred frequent flyer programme quickly compared to some other cards. In our experience of transferring Citi Miles or ThankYou Points to KrisFlyer, Avios and Asia Miles they usually credit at the loyalty programme side within 24 hours, with a maximum wait of 2 days.
Note: A couple of readers recently transferring from Citi into both Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer and British Airways Avios have advised us the process has slowed down a lot lately, with a wait of several days to a week before seeing the miles credit into your account. We’ll keep an eye on this and try it for ourselves soon.Summary
We generally use 1.9 cents per mile as our “upper limit to buy” when it comes to KrisFlyer miles and Asia Miles, the two most popular frequent flyer currencies in Singapore.
That said, there is no strict definition regarding the value of these miles, especially during COVID-19 times when your balance may well be accumulating fast, with few opportunities to spend.
We know people who are comfortable buying miles at much higher rates and likewise those who won’t consider buying at much more than 1 cent per mile, so the calculation is always personal when it comes to parting with your hard-earned cash, like you are in this instance.
One thing’s for sure though – you pretty much can’t lose out buying miles at 0.8 cents each!
That’s especially true for Citi, whose ThankYou Points transfer into a wide range of frequent flyer programmes.
If you’re a Citi Prestige cardholder with at least S$10,000 spend to make between now and the end of 2020, a period of around 10 weeks, we’d definitely recommend signing up for this promotion to accrue bonus miles at a very rare and highly competitive 0.8 cents each.
| Fast Facts
Annual fee: $535.00/yr |
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