Citi’s ‘PayAll’ facility has been a bit quiet on the promotion front recently, but has at last returned with another miles earning offer, allowing you to settle a range of bills or invoices with your Citi credit card even when the merchant does not necessarily accept credit cards as a payment method.
PayAll is effectively Citi’s way of muscling in on the alternative credit card payment methods, including ipaymy, CardUp and direct bank options such as the UOB Payment Facility and OCBC’s Voyage Payment Facility.
Citi has a range of options for its PayAll programme, including insurance, charity and transport payments, not to mention payments to friends or family members for ‘services rendered’, given that Citi does not actually request evidence of your payment.
Between 21st October 2022 and 31st January 2023, Citi is offering eligible cardholders the option to earn 1.8 mpd for S$5,000 to S$80,000 of total spend using PayAll across all your eligible cards, with an additional S$50 in GrabFood vouchers for those who’ve never made a PayAll transaction before.
Eligible cards are:
- Citi ULTIMA Card
- Citi Prestige Card
- Citi PremierMiles Card
- Citi Rewards Card
1.8 mpd bonus offer
If you’re a Citi credit card holder with one of the eligible cards listed above, you’ll be entitled to earn 1.8 mpd instead of your card’s usual earn rate for all PayAll payments made between 21st October 2022 and 31st January 2023, provided you make a minimum total accrued spend of S$5,000 during the promotion.
The bonus rate is capped at S$80,000 total spend using the PayAll facility.
Bonus points / miles are capped across all eligible Citi cards you hold, so you can’t make PayAll payments totalling S$80,000 on your Citi Prestige and S$80,000 on your Citi Rewards, for example, then benefit from 1.8 mpd for both; it’s only the first S$80,000 combined spend that will count.
Bonus miles and the new cost per mile are as follows for each eligible card in the promotion:
| Card | Earn rate | Cost per mile (2% fee) |
 Citi ULTIMA |
1.8 mpd |
1.11¢ |
 Citi Prestige |
1.8 mpd |
|
 Citi PremierMiles |
1.8 mpd |
|
 Citi Rewards |
1.8 mpd |
You’ll also have to ensure your payment setup dates and charged dates fall within the promotion period, which may mean cancelling a recurring payment and setting it up again if you wish to benefit for those transactions.
“Note that in order to qualify for the promotion, the Citi PayAll payment set-up dates and payment charged dates must both fall within the promotion period.
For the avoidance of doubt, the Citi PayAll payment setup date is the date on which the payment is set up and the Citi PayAll payment charged date is the date where Citi charges the payment to your card, which will be later than the date on which the payment is set up.”
Citi
Terms and conditions for this promotion can be found here.
When are the bonus miles credited?
Initially you’ll earn the regular earn rate for your eligible Citi card when making PayAll transactions during the promotion period.
The bonus miles, making up the applicable difference to 1.8 mpd (either in equivalent ThankYou points or Citi Miles) will be credited within 16 weeks from the end of the promotion period, which is by 23rd May 2023.
Note that this wait is four weeks longer than the most recent PayAll promotions, and Citi tends to wait right to the deadline when making bonus miles credits. This is not a fast miles bonus opportunity, sadly.
New customers: S$50 GrabFood vouchers
If you have never made a Citi PayAll transaction before the start date of this promotion period (i.e. between 1st November 2018 and 20th October 2022), you’ll also get S$50 GrabFood vouchers credited to your card account.
You must also meet the minimum Citi PayAll spend of S$5,000 during the promotion period to qualify, but remember you’ll still enjoy the enhanced 1.8 mpd bonus earn rate for the payments if you hit the threshold.
The gift is awarded as:
- S$50 GrabFood vouchers: 2 x S$25 denomination
You’ll receive a notification by SMS and / or email with redemption details for these S$50 GrabFood vouchers within 16 weeks from the end of the promotion period, which is by 23rd May 2023.
When using the voucher codes, if your purchase is less than the value of voucher (e.g. S$22 using a S$25 voucher), no refund of the unused portion of the code will be made to you, so make sure you use each code for a transaction equal to or greater than your order total, to extract the full value.
For GrabFood transactions greater than the voucher value, you’ll simply settle the excess cost directly (e.g. for a S$27 purchase using a S$25 voucher, you’ll pay the remaining S$2).
You can only apply one Grab voucher per transaction, so bear in mind you’re on the hook for two separate delivery fees when utilising the gift in this case, unless you opt for self pick-up.
GrabFood vouchers are valid for six months from date of issue.
Is it worth it?
Yes! Being able to generate such a large quantity of miles at 1.11 cents each is a very nice offer, as quarantine-free travel is back not just to and from Singapore but between most other countries too, most recently including Taiwan and Japan.
Do remember though, you’ll need to have at least S$3,000 of total accrued PayAll spend to make between now and 31st January 2023 to pick up the enhanced earn rate.
At the top end, if you managed to max out the deal with S$80,000 of PayAll transactions during the promotion, you’d be generating 144,000 miles, enough for a one-way First Class or Suites trip from Singapore to Europe on SIA at saver award rates, for a total fee of S$1,600.
Remember you can use PayAll to settle a range of bills and invoices, with insurance and miscellaneous payments the latest two categories to be added.
Citi Miles / TYP are very flexible
We say it all the time, but it’s always worth remembering that 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 10 different frequent flyer programmes and on the hotel side into IHG points.
Singapore credit card to FFP transfers
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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.
Are new cardholders eligible?
If you’re not a primary Citi credit card customer yet, or haven’t been for over a year, there are a range of bonus miles sign-up offers currently available:
- Citi Prestige: 48,000 miles for S$800 spend
- Citi PremierMiles: 30,000 miles for S$800 spend
- Citi Rewards: 16,000 miles for S$800 spend
The minimum spend for these offers can be met using PayAll, but beware – we don’t think Citi will consider those who opened their card account after the promotion started (21st October 2022) eligible for the 1.8 mpd deal or the Grab Vouchers offer.
Why? Because the terms and conditions only permit those who have held their card “as a main cardholder during the Promotion Period” to be eligible for these latest two PayAll offers.
“During” can mean “throughout the course or duration of (a period of time)” or “at a particular point in the course of…”, so yes – it’s ambiguous.
Citi could have worded this so much better (what’s new?), but let’s play it safe here and assume new cardholders signing up now won’t be eligible.
Summary
If you’re a Citi customer with one of the eligible cards for this promotion, and you have S$5,000+ invoice / supplier spend to make in the next three months, then you should definitely consider capitalising on this PayAll deal between now and the end of January 2023.
Not only is 1.11 cents per mile a very competitive rate to buy, the promotion mechanics are relatively simple and the upper cap is generous.
There’s an extra sweetener for those who’ve never made a PayAll transaction before in the form of S$50 in GrabFood vouchers for meeting the same S$5,000+ spend criteria during the promotion period, equivalent to completely cancelling any fee charged for the first S$2,500 of payments, provided you place ‘face value’ on this gift.
Even if you don’t need the miles for flights given the high balances you may have accrued during the last couple of years, buying miles at this rate may still be justifiable given the low cost.
Heck at 1.11 cpm rate, you’d almost get your money back – if you needed to – by making a (poor value, but highly flexible) SIA cash ticket redemption!
(Cover Photo: Konektus Photo / Shutterstock)