It's out with the old and in with the new: Say goodbye to the Citi Premier and hello to the new Citi Strata Premier℠ Card.
After halting applications for its popular $95 annual fee travel credit card last week, Citi has officially replaced and rebranded the Premier Card. But it's largely a change in name only: The “new” Citi Strata Premier comes with almost the exact same set of perks as its predecessor.
One exciting change? The refresh comes with a souped-up welcome offer bonus offer of 75,000 Citi ThankYou® Points after spending $4,000 in the first three months of card membership.
Either way, these new offers are much better than the 60,000-point bonus for the same spending requirement you'd often find on the old Citi Premier.
If you're in the market for a new travel card, that big bonus – and some lucrative (and unique) ways to use Citi ThankYou points – should officially launch the Strata Premier card into your orbit. Do you have an old Citi Premier Card in your wallet? Yours has already been automatically converted to the new Strata version … which means you may not be eligible for this bigger bonus.
Let's take a closer look at the new(ish) Citi Strata Premier℠ Card.
Citi Strata Premier℠ Card: Benefits Overview
- Welcome Offer: Earn 75,000 bonus ThankYou® Points after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months of account opening.
- Earn 3x Citi ThankYou Points for every dollar spent on air travel and hotels.
- Earn 3x Citi ThankYou Points for every dollar spent at restaurants, supermarkets, and gas stations (including EV charging).
- Earn 10x Citi ThankYou Points for every dollar spent on hotels and car rentals when you book through the Citi Travel portal
- Earn 1x Citi ThankYou Points for every dollar spent on all other purchases.
- Save $100 annually on a single hotel stay of $500 or more when you book through the Citi Travel portal.
- Trip delay and interruption, lost or damaged luggage, and MasterRental car insurance.
- No foreign transaction fees.
- Annual Fee: $95 (not waived)
All information about the Citi Strata Premier Card has been collected independently by Thrifty Traveler and has not be verified by the issuer.
Learn more about the Citi Strata Premier℠ Card (for full disclosure, this is not an affiliate link).
What's New With the Strata Premier Card?
Not much … and that's mostly a good thing. With the new Strata Premier, Citi left most of the old card's benefits unchanged – aside from a few minor updates.
First and most importantly, the annual fee isn't changing. It still costs $95 a year.
The Citi Premier card had long been a great way to earn bonus points at gas stations, and that's not changing. But with this new iteration, cardholders will now also earn 3x on EV charging in addition to the gas pump – something not previously offered with the Premier card.
The Citi Strata Premier also earns 10x points on hotels, car rentals, and attractions when booked through the Citi Travel portal. This was a temporary benefit offered on the Premier card, set to expire on June 30. The new Strata Premier card has cemented this perk by making it a permanent benefit of the card.
But here's perhaps the biggest change: The card now comes with various travel protections – a logical benefit for a travel rewards credit card.
As a cardholder, you'll now get trip delay, cancellation, and interruption coverage when using your card to purchase a common carrier ticket and your trip is cancelled, delayed, or cut short due to a covered reason. You'll also be covered for lost or damaged luggage and the card now includes secondary car rental insurance through MasterRental Coverage.
With the trip cancellation and interruption coverage, you may be eligible for reimbursement for the nonrefundable amounts (up to $5,000 per covered trip) if you or an eligible traveler experiences a sudden illness (including COVID-19) or injury. The trip delay coverage kicks in after delays of six hours for things like inclement weather or a common carrier's equipment failure. In these cases, you may be reimbursed up to $500 per trip for covered expenses including meals and accommodations during your delay.
The card's lost or damaged luggage benefit covers your bag and its contents up to $5,000 per trip ($2,000 per bag, per trip, for New York residents) when you use your card to pay for a common carrier ticket and it gets lost or damaged. This includes both carry-on and checked luggage.
MasterRental Coverage isn't much to get excited about as it's secondary coverage (though that levels up to primary coverage when traveling outside of your country of residence) and far inferior to the car rental insurance that comes with other top travel cards. In any case, it provides protection for damages (physical damage and theft) to a rental vehicle when you decline the car rental company’s full collision damage waiver insurance.
Who's Eligible to Apply for the Citi Strata Premier Card?
If you've received a new account bonus for a Citi Premier Card in the past 48 months (four years), you won't be eligible to earn the welcome offer bonus on the new Citi Strata Premier. Critically, that 48-month timeline starts when you received your new card bonus – not when you applied for the card.
Other than that restriction, earning welcome bonus offers on other Citi cards should not affect your eligibility to apply for this card.
New applicants can now apply for the card directly with Citi. Over the weekend, existing Citi Premier cardholders were automatically converted to the Strata Premier.
Read our master guide to credit card applications with all the rules you need to know bank by bank!
Bottom Line
Citi is out with a new(ish) travel card and a big welcome offer bonus to go with it. After abruptly pulling the Citi Premier Card last week, the bank has now launched the Citi Strata Premier℠ Card to replace it.
It may not be earth-shattering news, but we get the feeling this is the first of several big changes on deck for Citi's travel cards. Could a premium travel card to replace the (long since discontinued) Citi Prestige Card and compete with the likes of Chase and American Express be on deck next?
Stay tuned.
