It’s back! Citi PayAll offering 2.2 mpd earn rate – buy miles from 1 cent each

EXPIRED This article relates to an offer or promotion which has now expired.
 

For the last two years Citi’s ‘PayAll’ facility, which allows you to settle a range of bills or invoices with your Citi credit card even when the merchant does not necessarily accept that as a payment method, has featured a fantastic offer with 2.5 mpd available across all payment types on its miles-earning cards.

Good news is that the deal is back again in 2023 – just in time for income tax season!

Unfortunately it’s not quite as sweet as previous years, with 2.2 mpd on offer this time round, plus PayAll has increased its regular fee from 2% to 2.2%. but that still results in a very competitive cost per mile of 1 cent each.

Even if you don’t have an income tax bill to settle yet, 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 request evidence of your payment.

2.2 mpd bonus offer

Between 20th April and 20th August 2023, Citi is offering eligible cardholders the option to earn 2.2 mpd for up to S$120,000 spend using PayAll, with an additional S$50 in GrabGift vouchers for those who’ve never made a PayAll transaction before.

Your minimum aggregate total spend using the service during the period (regardless of the number of transactions) must be at least S$8,000 on a single eligible card, to trigger the enhanced earn rate on all S$1 – S$120,000 processed.

Eligible cards are:

• Citi ULTIMA Card
• Citi Prestige Card
• Citi PremierMiles Card
• Citi Rewards Card
• Citi Lazada Card

Offer details

If you’re a Citi credit card holder with one of the eligible cards listed above, you’ll be entitled to earn 2.2 mpd instead of your card’s usual earn rate for any PayAll payment made between now and 20th August 2023, subject to your total payments on a single card across the four months of the offer being more than S$8,000.

That’s right, no need to set up recurring payments or meet a minimum / maximum number of transactions. Provided you hit S$8,000+ total spend – you’re included.

The upper limit for bonus miles earning is a generous S$120,000 spend per customer.

Your aggregate spend, for both the minimum S$8,000 level and the maximum S$120,000 level, can be made across any number of eligible Citi credit cards you hold, but you must charge at least S$8,000 on a single card to unlock the bonus.

Bonus miles and the new cost per mile are as follows for the most popular miles-earning eligible cards in the promotion:

Card	Earn rate	Cost per mile (2.2% fee)
Citi ULTIMA	1.6 mpd 2.2 mpd	1.00¢
Citi Prestige APPLY	1.3 mpd 2.2 mpd
Citi PremierMiles APPLY	1.2 mpd 2.2 mpd
Citi Rewards APPLY	0.4 mpd 2.2 mpd

Note that to qualify for the promotion, your Citi PayAll Payment set-up date(s) must fall within the promotion period of 20th April 2023 to 20th August 2023. The charge date must be on or before 24th August 2023.

As you can see, a 2.2% fee is now in effect for all PayAll transactions.

“For payments set-up from 20 April 2023, 10:00AM Singapore Local Time onwards, there has been an increase in PayAll service fee.”

Citi

If you set up any payments recently that haven’t been processed yet, but which will fall in the promotion window, you’ll need to cancel them and set them up again for the amount to qualify towards the minimum spend, and for the 2.2 mpd deal itself.

Full terms and conditions for this promotion, which includes some payment illustrations, can be found here.

This could be a great way to settle your income tax payment this year at a cost per mile of just 1 cent, which is likely to beat the card payment providers and other bank offers hands-down, as it did over the last two years.

If you’re planning to be a big spender on PayAll during this promotion and you hold more than one Citi card (for example the PremierMiles and a Citi Rewards card), do also note that the S$120,000 total transaction limit is per customer, not per card, so unfortunately you can’t double your cap.

You can set up PayAll payments via the Citi Mobile App, though the bonus rate will not reflect at the confirmation stage, since those miles / points will come in later.

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 (e.g. 1 ThankYou point per S$1 for the Citi Rewards Cards).

The bonus miles, making up the applicable difference to 2.2 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 10th December 2023.

That’s a heck of a long wait for the bonus miles – the major downside of this promotion!

New customers: S$50 GrabGift vouchers

If you haven’t made a Citi PayAll transaction in the 24 months before the start date of this promotion (i.e. since 20th April 2021), you’ll also get S$50 GrabGift vouchers credited to your card account, simply for making total payments of S$8,000+ through the platform during the promotion period.

That’s in addition to enjoying the enhanced 2.2 mpd bonus earn rate for the payment, which will also be triggered in this case.

Vouchers can be used on one the following Grab services:

• GrabTransport (except GrabHitch and GrabShuttle)
• GrabFood
• GrabMart
• GrabExpress

The vouchers are also credited within 16 weeks of the end of the promotion period for those eligible – by 10th December 2023.

Is it worth it?

Absolutely! Being able to generate such a large quantity of miles at 1 cent, while not quite as good as the 0.8 cents offered over the last couple of years, is still a fantastic offer.

At the top end, if you managed to max out the deal with S$120,000 of PayAll transactions during the promotion, you’d be generating 264,000 miles.

For the upcoming income tax season in particular, Citi cardholders are once again being really spoiled here.

PayAll also now supports income tax payment by instalment, so you potentially can spread the cost of your tax bill over this promotion.

Remember you can use PayAll to settle a range of bills and invoices, including Education Fees, Taxes, Rent and Insurance Premiums.

The full list as of April 2023 includes:

• Education Fees
• Taxes
• Rent
• Insurance Premiums
• Renovation Fees
• Property Agent Fees
• Wedding Expenses
• Condo Management Fees
• Child Care Services
• Domestic Helper Service Fees
• Donation or Charity Payment
• Electricity Bills

• Event Management Fees
• Membership Fees
• Maintenance Fees
• Medical Services
• Payment for Retail Goods and Services
• Parking
• Professional Services Fees
• Storage
• Travel Exprenses
• Transport Fees
• Utilities

If your income tax payment is less than S$8,000, or you don’t hold a Citi card, don’t worry. There should still be some good offers from the card payment providers and other banks for settling this bill in the weeks ahead.

Citi Miles / TYP are very flexible

One of the best things about Citi Miles (and Citi ThankYou points like you earn with the Prestige or Rewards card) in Singapore is the wide 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.

Here’s how Citi compares to other banks in Singapore.

Singapore credit card to FFP transfers

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

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

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 Qatar Privilege Club are also great options.

If you’re a Citi customer with one of the eligible cards for this promotion, then there’s no doubt about it – you should definitely be looking to capitalise on this deal between now and the late August if you have sufficient spend to make, like an income tax bill.

Unfortunately a minimum spend of S$8,000 applies this year to trigger the bonus rate (there was no minimum spend when the same offer came around in 2021, and it was only S$5,000 last year), but if you have an IRAS income tax bill to pay as part of the total, it likely won’t be an issue.

Not only is 1 cent per mile a very competitive rate to buy miles, the promotion mechanics are relatively simple and the upper cap at S$120,000 is very generous, though many will lament the days of 0.8 cents per mile being available in 2021 and 2022!

There’s an extra sweetener for those who’ve never made a PayAll transaction before in the form of a S$50 GrabGift voucher for making S$8,000+ in payments during the promotion period, equivalent to completely cancelling any fee charged for the first S$2,270 of payments, if you put ‘face value’ on the reward.

This could well be the perfect income tax settlement method for many of our readers this year, and is definitely how I’ll now personally be paying mine!

(Cover Photo: mimisim / Shutterstock)