Citi ThankYou Rewards: Transfer partners & transfer times [2026 Edition]

Citi ThankYou points are one of the four big transferable currencies in the miles & points world so they are a critical part of any serious miles and points strategy. A key aspect of these points is that they can be transferred across to a variety of other travel loyalty programs, and that’s what we’re looking at in this article.

Citi ThankYou rewards program

At the time of writing, the Citi ThankYou program has 19 travel transfer partners – 14 airline partners and 5 hotel partners – which means that it has more transfer partners than Chase but slightly fewer than American Express and Capital One.

If you have the Citi Strata Elite℠ Card, the Citi Strata Premier® card, or the Citi Prestige® Card (which is no longer open to new applicants), you can transfer points to most ThankYou travel partners at a 1:1 ratio.

This is what those partners and the respective transfer ratios look like.

Airline transfer partners

Hotel transfer partners

If you have the Citi ThankYou® Preferred card, the Citi Strata℠ card, the Citi Double Cash® card, or the Citi Custom Cash® card, and you don’t hold one of the three cards mentioned earlier, you can transfer points to the same partners as listed above, but the transfer ratios to which you have access are a little worse.

This is what those transfer ratios look like.

Airline transfer partners

Hotel transfer partners

Thoughts on the Partners

The airlines

The list of Citi ThankYou airline transfer partners covers airlines across all three major alliances (which should keep most people happy) and includes favorites like Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer (useful for great quality premium cabin awards on its own aircraft), Etihad Guest, and Flying Blue (useful for discounted deals via Flying Blue’s monthly Promo Awards and, increasingly, for reasonably priced transatlantic Business Class awards).

The program also offers a number of transfer options that you won’t find offered by Chase or American Express and these include: American Airlines AAdvantage, Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles, EVA Air, and Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus, and it’s the partnership with American Airlines that really gives Citi an edge.

Not only does American have a huge domestic network on which AAdvantage miles can be put to good use, but it also offers some of the best value premium cabin partner awards, and being able to transfer points into AAdvantage from Citi makes it a lot easier to access those awards.

It’s also important to note that having access to the same frequent flyer programs that other transferable currencies have access to, can also be a bonus.

The programs linked to airlines like Air France/KLM, Cathay Pacific, Etihad, Qatar Airways, and Singapore Airlines (amongst others) all partner with at least one (often more) of the other major transferable currency programs (Amex Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards & Capital One Rewards) as well as with Citi’s ThankYou program, so this offers up a great opportunity for miles & points fans to pool points from more than one source to allow them to build up enough miles & points to book whatever great award they’ve found.

In addition, keep in mind that as Qatar Airways uses Avios as its currency and as Qatar Airways Avios can be moved, without charge, to other Avios-using programs, the likes of British Airways, Aer Lingus, Iberia and Finnair are all, effectively, Citi ThankYou Rewards transfer partners.

Overall, the value that each person gets from transferring ThankYou points to these airlines will vary depending on what the points are eventually used for (premium cabin awards mostly offer better value than Economy Class awards and some airlines add surcharges to their awards while others don’t), but Citi has more than enough great transfer partners to make it reasonably easy to find a good-value use for its ThankYou points.

Hotel Transfer Partners

The list of hotel partners can be seen as a weakness of the Citi ThankYou program as it doesn’t partner with any of the four major miles & points chains and the chains that it partners with aren’t usually high on the list of most miles & points fans.

It should be noted, however, that the addition of Leaders Club as a partner in late 2023 and the addition of Preferred Hotels & Resorts as a partner back in October 2024 made things considerably more interesting as both are home to a number of great properties around the world, and many of them have considerably more character than the cookie cutter buildings often associated with Marriott, IHG, Hilton, and Hyatt.

At TFM, we value the ThankYou points that we earn at 1.5 cents each (based on the value that we know we can get out of them with relative ease), and as we value the points issued by Accor, Choice, and Wyndham at less than that, Leaders Club and Preferred Hotels and Resorts are usually the two of Citi’s hotel partners to which we’re likely to transfer points.

Sure, some will be able to find value in transfers to Choice and Wyndham (especially if there’s a transfer bonus available), but the better options for our purposes are Leaders Club at 1,000 to 200 and Preferred Hotels at 1,000:2,000.

Transfer times

As far as transfer times go, the information you see in the tables above is a guideline only – some transfers can be reliably instantaneous while with others, the time taken to transfer ThankYou points can vary significantly

I generally avoid moving points across to an airline program that doesn’t reliably offer instantaneous transfers unless I can place the award(s) I want to book on hold – the last thing I want to happen is for award availability to disappear in the time between actioning a transfer and the points arriving in my airline loyalty account.

Transfer Fees

Unlike American Express, Citi, like Chase and Capital One, doesn’t charge a fee for transfers to any of its partners.

Transfers To Other People’s Loyalty Accounts

Citi prohibits users from transferring ThankYou points into loyalty accounts where the details on the recipient account don’t match with the details on the Citi ThankYou account.

Transfers To Other People’s ThankYou Accounts

Citi stopped allowing points between holders of ThankYou cards in May 2026.

Popular Cards That Earn ThankYou Points

• Citi Prestige® Card (5 points/dollar on dining & on air travel, 3 points/dollar with hotels and cruise lines) – no longer open to new applicants
• Citi Strata Premier® Card (3 points/dollar on groceries, dining, gas, EV charging, air travel & hotels and 10 points/dollar on hotels, rental cars, and attractions booked through the Citi Travel portal)
• Citi Double Cash® Card (No annual fee + 5 points/dollar on hotel, car rentals and attractions booked with Citi Travel and 2 points/dollar on all eligible purchases (review)

Bottom Line

Citi’s ThankYou program may not have the strongest lineup of transfer partners out of the four main transferable currency programs, but it still has a lot of very good uses, and with American Airlines in its stable as a unique transfer partner ThankYou points can be extremely useful and valuable.

With various ThankYou cards offering great earnings rates on travel, dining, and gas, it can be easy to build up an impressive balance of ThankYou points quite quickly, and with Citi occasionally offering transfer bonuses as well, it doesn’t have to take much effort to earn enough points for a valuable airline award.