Citi PayAll offering up to S$200 cashback on recurring payments

Citi has been pushing out some seriously competitive promotions for its PayAll service over the last year or so, including a hiked earn rate of 2.5 mpd when using its cards to make any series of payments, though that generous offer unfortunately came to an end on 31st August 2021.

There’s usually a PayAll offer or two just around the corner though, so no surprise that the bank is back with another competitive deal for those making recurring payments using the service.

New offer – S$120 cashback on recurring payments

Citi has now launched a new offer running from 8th September 2021 to 31st December 2021 for those setting up a recurring PayAll payment for at least six consecutive months, with a flat S$120 cashback awarded, provided each monthly instalment is a least S$1,500.

That’s not quite as attractive as a recent S$100 cashback deal for six or more recurring payments of just S$500 or above, but you can still generate competitive miles purchase rates under this new deal too.

No registration is required and the promotion is available to all Citi customers, whether they have used PayAll before or not, holding one of the following cards:

* Note that Citi PayAll transactions are now excluded from the minimum S$800 spend per statement month to earn bonus bash back for the Citi Cash Back cards. Previously PayAll transactions were counted towards that total.

To benefit from the cashback, you’ll have to set up your six-month recurring payment and ensure both the setup date and the first charge date falls within the promotion period (8th September 2021 to 31st December 2021).

The subsequent 5+ charge dates can all be outside the promotion window if you wish.

Note: If you have an existing recurring payment scheduled through PayAll which was first set up on or before 7th September 2021, you’ll have to cancel that and set it up again to benefit from this offer.

You’ll then receive S$120 cashback in the form of an account credit within 12 weeks from the end of the promotional period.

For example, if you set up the first of six monthly payments, each of S$1,500+, on 20th November 2021, you’ll receive the cash credit by 25th March 2022 (12 weeks after 31st December 2021).

Note that if any of the recurring payments under this promotion are cancelled, reversed, refunded, rejected or otherwise unsuccessful, you will not be entitled to the cashback.

If the cashback has already been awarded, Citi reserves the right to claw it back or debit the value from your account.

Example

Here’s an example of how this can halve the effective 2% fee for recurring PayAll payments.

Citi PayAll recurring payment offer example

Month	Payment	Fee (2%)
Sep 2021	S$1,500	S$30
Oct 2021	S$1,500	S$30
Nov 2021	S$1,500	S$30
Dec 2021	S$1,500	S$30
Jan 2022	S$1,500	S$30
Feb 2022	S$1,500	S$30
Normal Total	S$6,000	S$180
Cashback		(S$120)
Offer Total	S$6,000	S$60
Equivalent fee		1%

In this case a recurring payment of S$1,500 per month for six months is costing you only 1% in PayAll fees (usually 2%).

Card	Earn rate	Cost per mile 2% fee 1% fee
Citi ULTIMA	1.6 mpd	1.25¢ 0.63¢
Citi Prestige	1.3 mpd	1.54¢ 0.77¢
Citi PremierMiles	1.2 mpd	1.67¢ 0.83¢
Citi Rewards	0.4 mpd	5.00¢ 2.50¢

Using a Citi PremierMiles card, which earns 1.2 mpd for PayAll payments, would net you 7,200 miles (S$6,000 x 1.2) for a S$60 fee in this case, an equivalent cost per mile of 0.83 cents.

However, do bear in mind that since the cashback of S$120 is a fixed amount the S$1,500 per month minimum payment as used in this example is the ‘sweet spot’ with this offer.

The higher your monthly instalment (over S$1,500), the higher the effective rate becomes, and therefore the cost per mile rises.

If your monthly payment is S$5,000 over six months using the Citi PremierMiles card, for example, the S$120 cashback will give you a less attractive cost per mile of 1.33 cents.

Make sure you do the maths before committing.

It doesn’t work for GIRO income tax payments

There’s already a host of great offers for earning miles with your income tax payments in Singapore this year, but this Citi promotion would be a great way to do so while earning extra miles… if the bank allowed recurring payments to IRAS!

That would mean those paying by GIRO could take advantage by scheduling payments to replace the GIRO debit at least five working days before its deduction date, but unfortunately PayAll does not support recurring payments to IRAS, only one-time transactions.

There’s nothing to stop you making a PayAll payment to replace your monthly GIRO deduction, but you would have to do so manually each month, therefore you can’t benefit from the S$120 cashback offer in this case.

Recurring payments using the PayAll service are restricted to:

New customers: Extra S$80 cashback

If you haven’t made a Citi PayAll transaction before the start date of this promotion (8th September 2021), you’ll also get S$80 cashback credited to your card account, simply for making any payment through the platform during the promotion period.

Note that this one doesn’t need to be a recurring transaction – you can also pick up the bonus with a one-time payment too.

You’ll receive this account credit in the same timeframe as the bonus miles – within 10 weeks after the promotion period ends.

Terms and conditions

Full terms and conditions for this bonus miles offer are available here:

 Citi PayAll S$120 cashback for recurring payments

Do note that his promotion doesn’t stack with the ongoing Citi PayAll bonus cashback for recurring payments promotion running from 1st June 2021 to 30th September 2021.

Citi Miles / TYP are very flexible

We say it all the time, but Citi’s reward points are by far the most flexible in Singapore when it comes to the sheer range of transfer partners compared with other bank loyalty points.

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

Singapore credit card to FFP transfers

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

Our comprehensive guide here also gives examples of some of the alliance and partner airline redemptions you can achieve that you might not have considered before.

We’ve personally transferred Citi Miles into British Airways Avios (for good value intra-Asia Cathay Pacific redemptions) and Asia Miles (for the Qatar Airways Qsuite to Europe), but Turkish Airlines and the newly revalued Qatar Airways Privilege Club are also great options.

Citi has been rolling out some fantastic offers to get people using its PayAll service lately, and this latest one is a nice deal with enough rebate to halve usual 2% fee for payments of exactly S$1,500 per month.

This offer could work nicely for things like rental payments to your landlord, or a monthly insurance premium.

Even if you don’t need the miles for flights given the high balances you may have accrued during the last year, buying miles at this rates may be be very justifiable.

(Cover Photo: Shutterstock)