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Citi’s ‘PayAll’ facility is back with another of its bonus miles earning offers for eligible cardholders over the next few months, allowing you to settle a range of bills or invoices with your Citi credit card and ‘buy’ miles for 1.49 cents each, though this is less generous than recent deals.

Nonetheless, these promotions can still make sense for expenses where the merchant or service provider does not necessarily accept credit cards as a payment method, and like similar offers before it this latest one covers all payment types.

Citi has a range of options for its PayAll programme, including tax, insurance, charity and transport payments, not to mention payments to friends or family members for ‘services rendered’, given that the bank doesn’t request evidence of your payment.

1.75 mpd bonus offer

Between 7th October 2024 and 28th February 2025, Citi is offering eligible cardholders the option to earn 1.75 mpd for up to S$150,000 spend using PayAll.

Your minimum aggregate total spend using the service during the period (regardless of the number of transactions) must be at least S$5,000 on a single eligible card, to trigger the enhanced earn rate on all S$1 – S$150,000 processed, again on a single eligible card.

Eligible cards are:

• Citi ULTIMA Card
• Citi Prestige Card
• Citi PremierMiles Card
• Citi Rewards 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 1.75 mpd instead of your card’s usual earn rate for any PayAll payment made between now and 28th February 2025, subject to your total payments on a single card across the four months of the offer being more than S$5,000.

There’s no need to set up recurring payments or meet a minimum / maximum number of transactions. Provided you hit S$5,000+ total spend across multiple payments on a single card – you’re included.

The upper limit for bonus miles earning is a generous S$150,000 spend per customer.

Even if you already participated in recent Citi PayAll promotions, such as the one earlier this year, you’re eligible once again for this new deal.

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

Card	Earn rate	Cost per mile (2.6% fee)
Citi ULTIMA	1.6 mpd 1.75 mpd	1.49¢
Citi Prestige APPLY	1.3 mpd 1.75 mpd
Citi PremierMiles APPLY	1.2 mpd 1.75 mpd
Citi Rewards APPLY	0.4 mpd 1.75 mpd

Note that to qualify for the promotion, your Citi PayAll Payment set-up date(s) must fall within the promotion period of 7th October 2024 to 28th February 2025. The successful charge date must be on or before 6th March 2025.

Since April 2024, a 2.6% fee is now in effect for all PayAll transactions.

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 1.75 mpd deal itself.

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

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$150,000 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, by clicking the ‘Payments’ icon.

Do note that the bonus rate will not reflect at the confirmation stage, since those miles / points will come in later than the base points (and are subject to the minimum aggregate spend condition).

Is it a good deal?

This could be a good way to settle large expenses at a cost per mile of 1.49 cents, though do be aware this doesn’t always beat rates offered by card payment providers like CardUp and ipaymy.

For example, if you have a DBS Vantage card earning 1.5 mpd you can pay bills, taxes or other invoices via CardUp or ipaymy at a cost per mile of 1.47 cents, at a 2.25% fee.

Those with a Citi ULTIMA card can get an even better rate of 1.39 cents per mile with these providers, so as long as you have a legitimate expense (since an invoice is required), you’re better off with these options, even during the PayAll promotion.

In last year’s offer, PayAll was offering a 1.8 mpd earn rate for these cards, which combined with its lower 2.2% fee meant buying miles at a much more competitive 1.22 cents each.

This time round it’s potentially a more marginal proposition.

Just use one card during this promotion

Remember only PayAll spend on a single card counts for bonus points or bonus miles earning during this promotion.

For example, if you make S$10,000 of PayAll payments using your Citi PremierMiles card and S$9,000 of PayAll payments using your Citi Prestige card during the promotion, only the card with the most accumulated spend will benefit from the 1.75 mpd offer, in this case the PremierMiles card, despite the minimum spend having been met on both cards.

It’s therefore important to choose (and stick to) a single card for PayAll payments from now until the end of February 2025, if you’re participating in this promotion.

Remember that if you’re using a Citi ULTIMA, Prestige or PremierMiles card, the ThankYou Points or Citi Miles accrued will never expire, whereas if you use a Citi Rewards card the ThankYou Points accrued will fall under a (complex!) expiry system.

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 1.75 mpd (either in equivalent ThankYou points or Citi Miles) will be credited within 12 weeks from the end of the promotion period, which is by 23rd May 2025.

That’s a heck of a long wait for the bonus miles – over 7 months from now – and is the major downside of this promotion!

On the plus side Citi has speeded this up a little – the wait was 16 weeks during recent promotions.

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 you may wish to consider this PayAll deal between now and the end of February 2025 if you have sufficient spend to make, including the likes of a large tax or insurance bill.

Unfortunately 1.49 cents per mile isn’t as attractive as last year’s offer, but it’s still a competitive rate to buy miles, the promotion mechanics are relatively simple, and the upper cap at S$150,000 is generous.

Nonetheless you may achieve a lower cost per mile with the likes of CardUp and ipaymy, even with some Citi cards, depending on the fee promotion applicable to your payment.

Unfortunately a minimum spend of S$5,000 applies to trigger this PayAll bonus rate, but if you have enough aggregate payments to make over the next few months that may be achievable. Just remember to use a single card for all PayAll transactions, and be patient – the bonus miles won’t credit until May next year!

(Cover Photo: Shutterstock)