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The Citi Double Cash® Card is a no-frills, no annual fee cash back card that doesn’t offer any big impressive benefits or headline-grabbing earning rates in a select spending category, but is still one of the very best cash back cards that you can hold.
For the miles & points enthusiast as well as for someone just looking for a good cash back card, this is a card that offers a compelling proposition, and a relatively recent change to the Citi ThankYou transfer partner lineup has made it considerably more interesting than it used to be.
The Citi Double Cash® card (in brief)
The Citi Double Cash® card earns a flat 2 ThankYou Points on every purchase with no annual fee and no spending caps, and because those ThankYou points can be redeemed for a statement credit at 1 cent/point, this is, effectively, a 2% cashback card on all eligible spending.
It is, however, a little more complicated than that as those same points can also be transferred to a variety of other programs that Citi partners with, so used in the right way (and this article will show you how), those points can be worth more than the cash back suggests.
Annual fee: $0 (terms apply)
Current welcome offer (at the time of writing): Earn 20,000 ThankYou Points after spending $1,500 in purchases within the first 6 months of account opening (terms apply)
Note: This welcome offer isn’t available to you if you have received a new account bonus for a Citi Double Cash® card account in the past 48 months or if you converted another Citi credit card account on which you earned a new account bonus in the last 48 months into a Citi Double Cash account.
Earning rates:
- 2 points/dollar on all eligible purchases (no cap on earnings), paid out as 1 point/dollar when an eligible purchase posts to your statement and a further 1 point/dollar once you pay at least the minimum amount due
- 5 points/dollar on hotel, car rentals and attractions booked with Citi Travel.
Link to Citi Double Cash® Card (not an affiliate link)
The Citi Double Cash® card (in detail)
How the card’s earnings work
It’s worth being precise about what this card actually earns, since Citi’s own marketing blurs the line a little.
The Citi Double Cash® card is promoted as a 2% cash back card (1% cash back when you buy, plus an additional 1% when you pay your statement), but it doesn’t earn cash back directly. It earns ThankYou Points.
These points can be converted into a statement credit at a fixed rate of 1 point for 1 cent, and it’s that conversion that produces the advertised 2% return.
The distinction matters because these points don’t have to be cashed out at all, they can just as easily be transferred to one of Citi’s airline and hotel partners instead, which is where the real value of this card is usually to found for anyone willing to put in a bit of effort (these will be discussed a little later).
The welcome offer (terms apply)
The same blurring as discussed above shows up in the welcome offer.
Citi advertises the welcome offer as “$200 Cash Back after you spend $1500
on purchases in the first 6 months of account opening” but what you’re actually earning is 20,000 ThankYou Points, which only becomes $200 once redeemed as cash (1 cent per point).
So, redeemed for cash, those 20,000 points are worth the advertised $200, but we value Citi ThankYou Points at 1.5 cents each (based on the value we know we can get out of them without much effort) and that values the welcome offer at $300.
Better yet, with 6 months in which to hit the welcome bonus spending target, the requirement should be relatively easy for most to meet and if you can’t of if this will be tricky, this isn’t a card you should be considering.
Redeeming ThankYou points for cash
Redeeming ThankYou Points for cash is straightforward – every point is worth a flat 1 cent, whether you take it as a statement credit (which typically posts within two to three days) or a direct deposit to a bank account.
There’s no minimum redemption amount required. Points can also be put toward Amazon purchases or gift cards, but neither of those routes beats 1 cent per point, so there’s little reason to use them over a straight cash redemption.
Interestingly, the Citi Double Cash® Card actually redeems for cash at a better rate than some of Citi’s own premium cards.
The Citi Strata Premier® Card only redeems points for 0.75 cents each in cash back, while the Double Cash gets the full 1 cent. Since ThankYou Points can be pooled across accounts, it’s worth redeeming through the Double Cash specifically if cash is what you’re after, even if the points were actually earned on a different Citi card.
Transferring to airline and hotel partners
This is where the Citi Double Cash® Card’s earnings can become considerably more valuable than the flat 2% headline rate suggests. ThankYou Points can be transferred to 19 travel partners in total – 14 airlines and 5 hotel programs – and holders of the Citi Double Cash® Card can transfer their points to all of them … but there’s a catch.
The Citi ThankYou program is a 2-tier program, and what this means is that holders of the more premium Citi ThankYou cards (i.e. the cards that charge an annual fee) have access to better transfer rates than the holders of the less premium ThankYou cards (e.g. the Citi Double Cash® Card).
This is what that disparity looks like:
The airlines
The hotels
There is, however, a little bit of good news.
If you hold the Citi Double Cash® Card on its own, you’re stuck with the lower transfer ratios, but if you hold it alongside one of the more premium ThankYou cards, you can enjoy the better transfer ratio.
We’ll discuss that a little more in the next section, so for now, the key thing to recognise is that a cardholder who transfers ThankYou Points to one or more of Citi’s airline partners, who’s prepared to put in a bit of work, and who exercises a bit of patience, can often extract considerably more than 1.5 cents out of each ThankYou point used (usually by booking premium cabin awards).
This is what makes the Citi® Double Cash Card’s earnings considerably more valuable than the headline 2 points/2% rate would suggest.
Create a great pairing
As already mentioned, the Citi Double Cash® Card is a great standalone card because it allows a cardholder to earn a minimum of 2% cash back wherever they shop, but the card gets even better when paired with one of Citi’s more premium offerings.
We’ve already noted that when you combine a Citi Double Cash® Card with a premium ThankYou card the Double Cash card is no longer restricted to the lower partner transfer ratios … and that’s great. The better the transfer ratio, the better the possible return for the cardholder. But what could one of these 2-card packages look like?
Well, here’s what a cardholder would have access to if they held the Citi Double Cash® Card alongside the Citi Strata Premier® Card (which comes with a $95 annual fee):
- 10 points/dollar – Hotels, rental cars, and attractions booked through the Citi Travel portal
- 3 points/dollar – Dining
- 3 points/dollar – Supermarkets
- 3 points/dollar – Gas stations and EV charging
- 3 points/dollar – Air travel & hotels
- 2% cash back or 2 points/dollar – Spending in all other categories
Based on our valuation of Citi ThankYou Points (1.5 cents each), the earning rates listed above represent effective rebates of between 3% and 4.5% on all of a cardholder’s spending.
That’s fantastic for an annual outlay of just $95, particularly given that the Citi Strata Premier® Card will earn a card holder a $100 rebate on a hotel stay (costing a minimum of $500) when booking through the ThankYou travel portal.
Used wisely, that benefit alone could cover the annual fee on its own.
For anyone wanting to go further still, Citi’s $595 annual fee Strata Elite℠ Card is a heavier-duty alternative to the Strata Premier, and its lounge access and broader set of credits can be worth the extra outlay for the right cardholder, but you don’t need to pay a high annual fee if all you want is a great 2-card pairing.
Double Cash + Strata Premium = an excellent combination
Some practicalities
A few practical details about how Citi and Citi ThankYou Points actually work are worth noting, especially as they don’t get much attention but can catch cardholders out.
Firstly, if you close a Citi ThankYou card, any points sitting on that account expire after just 60 days, even if you hold another ThankYou card.
That’s considerably more restrictive than how Amex, Chase, or Capital One handle points on card closure, so always combine or transfer your points to another ThankYou account before closing a card down.
Secondly, up until recently, Citi allowed ThankYou members to share up to 100,000 points a year with another ThankYou member, with the same 100,000 annual cap applying on the receiving end too. Unfortunately, as of mid-May 2026, Citi has put a stop to these transfers so this is no longer an option.
Thirdly, be aware that the Citi Double Cash® Card will charge you a foreign transaction fee if you use it abroad, so this isn’t a card to take on vacation with you (unless you’re vacationing in the US!).
Finally, before applying for a Citi card, keep in mind that Citi generally limits approvals to one new card every 8 days and two new cards every 65 days, on a rolling basis. That probably won’t catch out too many readers, but it’s worth knowing if you were planning to add the Double Cash alongside a premium card in the same application cycle.
Bottom line
The Citi® Double Cash Card has always been a strong cash back card, but ever since Citi started allowing the cashback it earns to be converted to ThankYou points, it’s been one of the best cash back cards on the market. The addition of American AAdvantage as a transfer partner only strengthens that case.
On its own, this is an excellent card to have in your arsenal and we’ve long considered this to be one of the truly great cards in the miles and points game (what’s not to like about no annual fee + 2% back everywhere + the option of transfers to 19 different partners?), but paired with the Citi Strata Premier® Card it gets even better because it forms a genuinely fantastic credit card pairing which, in our opinion, is one of the strongest low-cost setups available.
