Citi Rewards cards have an unusual points expiry policy, and it requires some advance planning as you approach your five-year card anniversary!
If you hold multiple miles-earning credit cards in Singapore – as many of our readers do – keeping track of points expiry dates is essential, to ensure your hard-earned rewards are converted into miles before they disappear from your account.
In Singapore, expiry of your credit card points typically falls into one of two categories:
- Points never expire as long as your card account remains open; or
- Points expire at the end of a fixed period following the month they were earned (typically, two or three years later)
Citi cards
If you’re holding the Citi PremierMiles, Citi ULTIMA or Citi Prestige cards, there are no concerns here. Any miles or points earned with those three cards are ‘evergreen’ – they won’t expire as long as you keep each card account active.
Other cards with non-expiring miles in Singapore include the DBS Altitude, OCBC Voyage and Standard Chartered Visa Infinite.
There’s one exception in the Citi lineup though, which is the Citi Rewards cards.
Like the Citi Prestige card, these earn Citi ThankYou Points, which transfer into a host of frequent flyer programmes at a 2.5:1 ratio.
The difference here is that ThankYou Points earned on the Rewards card, which don’t pool with those from the Prestige card and sit in their own separate balance per card account, do expire.
The (strange) Citi Rewards expiry policy
Citi says ThankYou Points earned on its Rewards cards “are valid for a period of 60 months”. That’s five years, which sounds very generous, but it’s not as simple as the bank makes out.
In fact you have to accrue and redeem your points in fixed five-year periods, which Citi calls ‘Points Validity Periods’, and it turns out that’s not the same thing at all.
During each Points Validity Period, the cardmember will receive Points based on the amount of retail purchases made during that Points Validity Period and the cardmember may use the Points in their account to redeem any Rewards at any time during that Points Validity Period.
Citi Rewards Terms and Conditions
It means your points will not expire at a fixed period after earning, but at the end of a fixed window, based on your card opening date.
In other words, validity of your Rewards points (Citi ThankYou Points) is a maximum of five years.
How it works
For example, let’s say you opened your Citi Rewards Mastercard account on 20th May 2020.
Your first 60-month Points Validity Period will end on 19th May 2025.
All remaining points accrued on that date are then set to expire – no matter whether you earned them five years previously, or in the second week of May 2025!
Citi gives you three months to use any unredeemed points from that 60-month period before wiping them from your account, meaning you need to transfer them to miles by 19th August 2025 at the latest, as illustrated below.
In the worst case, that means the points from a purchase you made in the last couple of weeks will disappear from your account on 20th August 2025, if not redeemed (yes, that’s three months later – not five years later!).
Example for a new card
There’s currently a 16,000 miles sign-up bonus for the Citi Rewards card, if you’re new to Citi cards, and you only have to spend S$800 in the first two months of card membership to unlock it.
That might tempt you to take the plunge with this product, which offers 4 mpd on the first S$1,000 of monthly spend in specific categories, including most online transactions.
Here’s an example of how the strange expiry policy would affect your points if you were to sign up now (in May 2025).
- New Citi Rewards card approved on 20th May 2025.
- Any ThankYou points you earn between 20th May 2025 and your May 2030 card statement will expire on the date of your August 2030 card statement (60 months + 3 months grace period).
- Any ThankYou points subsequently earned from your June 2030 statement onwards will accrue in a fresh new five-year Points Validity Period.
- Any ThankYou points you earn between your June 2030 card statement and your May 2035 card statement will then expire on the date of your August 2035 card statement (a further 60 months + 3 months grace period).
- The exact date your points expire depends on your statement date (e.g. if your statement is on 20th of the month, the points will expire on 19th August 2030 and 19th August 2035 respectively in the above examples).
Checking your expiry
A few years ago, it was relatively easy to check when the ThankYou Points earned on your Citi Rewards Cards were expiring, by logging on to your Citi ThankYou Rewards Portal via the desktop site.
Unfortunately, this portal was decommissioned in early 2024, eliminating a key method for tracking the expiry of ThankYou Points earned on your cards.
While there were hopes that similar functionality would be integrated into the Citi mobile app, that has yet to materialise over a year later – leaving cardholders with no visibility on when their points will expire.
Nonetheless, it is still possible to determine your expiry date.
Citi Rewards cards are valid for five years from their date of issue, and so you can use your card expiry date to determine when your points will vanish from your account.
If you don’t have your physical card to hand, log on to the Citi SG mobile app and click the “Manage” button on your Rewards card.
This will then show you the expiry date.
In my example, my Citi Rewards Visa card expires on 31st May 2029, so my ThankYou points will expire in August 2029. That’s 60 months (five years) since the card was issued, plus the 3-month grace period to redeem.
Citi does indicate upcoming points expiry in your monthly statements, but only with three months’ notice – often too short a window to plan your spending, hit a transfer block threshold, and therefore convert your points efficiently without forfeiting any along the way.
For example, my last Citi Rewards five-year validity window ended in May 2024, and here’s how my statements looked leading up to the previous points expiry date in August 2024.
April 2024
No mention of points expiry in April 2024 – not very helpful Citi!
May 2024
By May 2024, all the points I had accrued as of 12th May (my monthly statement date) are now set to expire in three months – on 11th August 2024.
June 2024
By June I had transferred 100,000 ThankYou points into miles, leaving me with 5,555 still expiring on 11th August 2024.
The new points I had earned in this statement period were now being accrued in a new five-year points validity period – they are not expiring until August 2029.
July 2024
In July 2024 more points are being accrued into the new five-year points validity period, with 5,555 still set to expire the following month.
August 2024
Finally in August 2024, the 5,555 unredeemed points expired.
My Citi statement date is the 12th of each month, so in my case the points expired at the end of the three-month grace period on 11th August, the last day before August statement publication.
Set a calendar reminder
Rather than waiting for Citi to start giving you notice about expiring ThankYou points on your statement, just three months before that will happen, we recommend checking your expiry month and setting a calendar reminder six months in advance.
That will allow you time to plan accordingly, to avoid the next trap…
Redemption blocks can mean orphan points
Around three months before your points validity period ends, which is six months before their actual expiry date, you need to take a look at your balance and start making some plans.
Why? Well since Citi only offers 25,000-point transfer thresholds to its partner frequent flyer programmes, there’s a risk of orphan points when you fall short of a rounded redemption block size, with points that are set to expire.
Effectively, you’ll want to make a rounded transfer of your expiring points with as little excess ‘waste’ as possible.
Six months before your expiry date, if it looks like you can achieve the next redemption threshold from your total points balance at the time (expiring + non-expiring), then that’s something to aim towards.
(Photo: MainlyMiles)
An example
Let’s say you have 211,000 Citi ThankYou Points on your Rewards card in May, with your expiry coming up at your August statement.
You’ll need to spend S$1,400 in the 10X rewards (4 mpd) spend categories by the expiry date to have enough to transfer the next full ‘block’ of 225,000 Points into airline miles.
- If that seems achievable, make sure you achieve it!
- If it doesn’t, you may want to stop spending on the card until you are earning in the next ‘fresh’ 5-year Points Validity Window again (June statement onwards).
Remember, even if your expiring balance has become ‘locked’ and you are now earning in a new five-year Points Validity Window for your spend (as I was with my CRMC account in the example above last year), you can still increase your total points balance to the next redemption threshold then make a transfer before the expiring miles vanish.
In this case you are transferring a mix of expiring and non-expiring points to miles, but that’s irrelevant. Points that are about to expire will be redeemed first, but can be mixed with those not imminently expiring in a larger single redemption transaction.
What if you can’t reach a miles redemption threshold?
Until October 2021, if you no longer had time or sufficient spending plans to reach a suitable 25,000 points redemption threshold with your Citi Rewards card, it was probably a case of cashing out the excess points once you had transferred the maximum quantity possible to miles.
That was bad news, of course, since Citi offers a terrible rate of just 0.57 cents per mile as a statement rebate or pay with points transaction.
However, since October 2021 there’s been a much better option – thanks to Kris+.
This method allows you to make instant fee-free transfers into KrisFlyer miles (via KrisPay miles) in smaller blocks of 10,000 ThankYou Points, albeit at a 15% poorer transfer ratio compared to a direct conversion.
That means you may be able to transfer some or all of your orphan points into KrisFlyer miles at a reasonable rate (albeit not the best rate possible for larger transfers).
It may also be more practical to hit a 10,000 ThankYou Points threshold through your upcoming spending on the Rewards card prior to expiry, then transfer the final ‘block’ over to KrisFlyer via Kris+ once you’ve achieved it.
If you still have leftover expiring points after using the Kris+ method, you’ll want to be looking at Citi’s cash out options – poor value but better than no value.
Citi allows this through two methods; Cash Rebate and Pay with Points. Both will give you the same rate, and the easiest way to do this is through the Citi App on your phone.
For example, let’s say you still have 8,000 expiring ThankYou Points left over, and you don’t think you can round this up to 10,000 in order to use the Kris+ transfer to KrisFlyer method outlined above.
The 8,000 points you’ll have left over, which would normally be equivalent to 3,200 miles but sadly can’t be converted in that quantity, can instead be redeemed at a (terrible) 0.227 cents per point (equivalent to 0.57 cents per mile).
Cash rebate can be applied in S$10 intervals up to S$50 rebate, so with 8,000 Points left over you could use 4,400 of them for a S$10 rebate as shown below (you can’t achieve a S$20 rebate in this case as 8,800 Points would be required).
That will still leave you with 3,600 Points (8,000 – 4,400) left over, so it’s time to take a look at Citi’s ‘Pay with Points’ option, which allows you to use your points to offset a transaction made on your card in the last two months.
In the example above, looking at my CRV card, a S$7.50 Gojek ride earlier the previous month was the best fit, using up 3,256 excess expiring points.
While they couldn’t realistically be converted to miles at this late stage, in total the 8,000 excess expiring Citi ThankYou Points in this example have at least earned you S$17.50.
Do be sure to ‘clear out’ as many remaining expiring points this way once you’ve maximised your transfer to frequent flyer miles and the Kris+ transfer option, for some value at least.
On the face of it, Citi’s five-year validity for ThankYou Points accrued on the Rewards cards is quite generous, and in many ways it is, but you have to be careful not to get caught out as you approach the end of each points validity period.
Indeed points earned in the last week of your five-year window could expire as little as three months after earning if not redeemed, which seems incredibly unfair, but is just the way it is with these cards.
The important thing is not to let your Citi ThankYouPoints expire before you’ve had a chance to convert them to miles.
We recommend setting a calendar alert three months before the end of your points validity period (card expiry), which is six months before the actual expiry, enough time to also allow you to decide how to ‘optimise’ your card spending to reach one of the 25,000-point redemption thresholds as closely as possible, thereby avoiding orphan points or any need to cash out at a poorer (Kris+) or very poor (cash out) rate.
We recommend setting a calendar reminder three months before your points validity period ends / card expires (i.e. six months before your points expire).
That gives you plenty of time to plan and optimise your spending to hit a 25,000-point redemption threshold – helping you avoid orphan points or the need to cash out at a less favourable rate, like via Kris+ or, worse, a direct cash redemption.
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