New Citi Custom Cash Card
Today, Citi launched a new no annual fee credit card that rivals Chase Freedom and Discover it. The Citi Custom Cash card automatically adapts to cardmembers’ spending needs, rewarding them with 5% cash back on their top eligible spend category. The categories are set, but include popular options such as restaurants, grocery, gas stations, drugstores and more.
Each billing cycle you get 5% cash back up to the first $500 spent, and 1% cash back on all other purchases. There’s no need for cardmembers to manually select, enroll or change reward categories on a periodic basis.
The Citi Custom Cash card also comes with a decent welcome offer for a no fee card (comparable to the Chase Freedom Flex). You can earn $200 in cash, which is actually 20,000 ThankYou points. Let’s see more details about the bonus, earning rates and eligibility.
The Offer
- Earn $200 in cash back after you spend $750 on purchases in the first 3 months of account opening. (This offer will be fulfilled as 20,000 ThankYou points, which can be redeemed for $200 cash back.)
- Get 0% Intro APR for 15 months on purchases and balance transfers. After that, the variable APR will apply.
- No Annual Fee
Card Highlights
Earn 5X ThankYou points on purchases in your top eligible spend category each billing cycle, up to the first $500 spent (1X point thereafter).
- Eligible categories include:
- Restaurants
- Gas stations
- Grocery stores
- Select travel
- Select transit
- Select streaming services
- Drugstores
- Home improvement stores
- Fitness clubs
- Live entertainment
- Earn unlimited 1X ThankYou point on all other purchases.
The Citi Custom Cash earns ThankYou points. You can redeem your ThankYou points for cash back as a direct deposit, a statement credit or check. You can also redeem points for travel, gift cards and Shop with Points at Amazon.com.
Eligibility
- Citi will only issue one Citi Custom Cash Card account per person.
- You will qualify for the bonus offer only if you have not received a bonus offer for opening a new Citi Custom Cash Card in the past 48 months.
- Doesn’t seem to be any family of ThankYou points card restrictions.
There is also the standard Citi rules (our complete bank application rules guide)
Citi has very specific rules about how often you can apply for credit cards. There are separate rules for business and personal cards.
- 1 new card every 8 days
- 2 personal cards in 65 days
- 1 business card every 90 days
- More than 3 hard inquiries over the last 6 months will likely lead to a denial.
New Citi Custom Cash Card: Final Thoughts
Citi already offers the Dividend card that earn 5% on rotating categories, up to $300 annual cash back. However, that card is no longer available. Chase Freedom cards and the Discover it also offer 5% categories.
But the new Citi Custom Cash card is a bit different. Instead of rotating categories, you have set categories that are always available. There are options like grocery stores, gas stations, drugstores and more. So the card should be valuable for most people.
Instead of quarterly categories, Citi Custom Cash earn 5% cash back on the first $500 spent on the top category each statement period. So for example if your top spending category for June is groceries, you will earn $25 cash back or 2,500 ThankYou points if you spend $500 or more on groceries. That means that you have great categories to choose from every month, but you have to remember to maximize it monthly.
Besides the 5% categories, Citi Custom Cash also has a decent welcome offer for a no fee credit card. You can get $200 when spending $750 or more within 3 months. That’s actually 20,000 ThankYou points, which should be even more valuable.
This looks like a good product overall in my opinion, and gives you more spending bandwidth on popular categories. Let us know what you think!
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I’m interested. 5X on $500 @ grocery/month would be simple, (even if I had to “Category Shift” some of it via VGC’s at my local Safeway).
But I’m curious about the comment re: 3 hard inquires in the last 6 months.
I took out an auto loan 2 months ago and I know the dealer F&I shopped me around a bit, (but no Credit Unions, so all the inquires were for Auto-Fico scores which would only count as a max of 1 per bureau).
Any idea how Citi counts Inquiries?
Does having this card give you access to all of their transfer partners or would you still need the Premier or Prestige?
Thanks for the heads-up! I would have missed that one. I have been in need of a fee-free card for grocery rewards once I hit the $6,000 annual limit with the American Express Blue Cash Preferred. This is an ideal fit.
Do we know if the ThankYou points from this card can be transferred to airlines’ loyalty accounts?
Citi’s web page for ThankYou points transfer states “Eligibility and transfer exchange rates vary depending on your card – sign in to see which loyalty programs are available to you.” But what if you don’t have the card yet? How can we find out if its points will transfer *before* we get the card?
They said ThankYou points so I would assume so but I can update once I have the card in hand.
So, I have an AT&T Access card that I barely use. I was just late on the ability to PC to the Access More (which is why I initially got the card). I have not followed the PC change rule but since both the Access card and this new card earn TYP, what is the general thought about if my points would expire 60 days after PC?
Having the Sears Citi card I wonder if I’d be able to combine the points to one account…