Review: Citi Custom Cash Credit Card

Citi has just introduced its newest credit card, the Citi Custom Cash Card.

It’s a cash back/ThankYou Points earning card that offers 5% earning on purchases in your top eligible spend category each billing cycle.

It’s important to understand, you will only earn the 5% in one category each billing cycle…the category in which you spend the most that billing cycle.

There is no enrollment or picking of categories. This makes it a bit easier to max out your earnings each and every month.

And this easy 5% cash back earning comes on a card with no annual fee.

Here’s an overview of the card and details on how the card works.

Citi Custom Cash Card

Introductory sign-up bonus: Earn $200 cash back after spending $750 within the first 3 months from card approval. The bonus is provided as 20,000 ThankYou Points which can be redeemed for $200 cash back.

Ongoing Earnings:

5% cash back on purchases in your top eligible spend category each billing cycle on up to $500 of spend.

Eligible categories include:

• Restaurants
• Gas Stations
• Grocery Stores
• Select Travel
• Select Transit
• Select Streaming Services
• Drugstores
• Home Improvement Stores
• Fitness Clubs
• Live Entertainment

Whichever of the above categories you spend the most on each billing cycle will automatically earn the 5% cash back (earned in the form of ThankYou Points). The 5% cash back earning is capped at $500 of spend each billing cycle.

ThankYou Points can then be redeemed as a direct deposit, a statement credit or check. Or, use the points for gift cards, travel and/or Shop with Points at Amazon.com (which can sometimes yield good savings opportunities on your Amazon purchases.

All other purchases will earn 1% cash back.

Annual Fee:

No annual fee

Details and Thoughts

The Citi Custom Cash Card allows you to fairly easily earn $25 cash back each billing cycle if you spend the full $500 during that period in one category.

For most, that would likely be Grocery Stores.

For some, it could be Restaurants. Or maybe Gas Stations if you drive a lot.

But let’s stick to Grocery Stores for this example.

If you spend at least $500 per month at grocery stores, you’d earn $300 cash back each year, or 30,000 ThankYou Points.

Here are the details of each bonus category from the Citi Custom Cash Card document.

Restaurants
Includes purchases at cafes, bars, lounges and fast food restaurants. Excludes purchases at bakeries, caterers, restaurants located inside another business (such as hotels, stores, stadiums, grocery stores, or warehouse clubs) and third party dining delivery services.

Gas Stations
Excludes gasoline purchases at warehouse clubs, discount stores, convenience stores or other merchants that do not use the gas station merchant category code.

Grocery Stores
Includes purchases at supermarkets, meat/seafood stores, dairy stores, bakeries, and miscellaneous food/convenience stores. Excludes purchases at general merchandise/discount superstores; wholesale/warehouse clubs; candy, nut and confectionery stores. Purchases made at online supermarkets or with grocery delivery services also do not qualify if the merchant does not classify itself as a supermarket by using the supermarket merchant category code.

Select Travel 
Includes airline, hotel, cruise line and travel agency purchases. Excludes timeshares, boat leases and rentals, campgrounds and trailer parks, and real estate agencies.

Select Transit
Includes car rentals, ferries, commuter railways, subways, taxis/limousines/car services, passenger railways, bridge and road tolls, parking lots/garages, bus lines, and motor home and recreational vehicle rentals. Excludes bike/scooter rentals, auto clubs and insurance companies

Select Streaming Services
Includes the following cable, satellite, and streaming providers: Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music, Apple Music, CBS All Access, Disney+, AT&T TV NOW, ESPN+, fuboTV, HBO Max, NBA League Pass, Netflix, Pandora, Showtime, Sling TV, Spotify, Starz, SiriusXM, Vudu, YouTube Red, YouTube TV, and Tidal.

The above names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The owners of the above marks do not endorse Citibank N.A.’s services, and are not otherwise affiliated with Citibank, N.A. or any of its related entities.

Drugstores
Includes purchases made at pharmacies in grocery stores, general merchandise/discount superstores, and wholesale/warehouse clubs if those merchants submit purchases made in their pharmacy with the drug store and pharmacy merchant category code.

Home Improvement Stores
Includes purchases at home supply warehouse stores, lumber and building materials stores, paint and wallpaper stores, hardware stores, nurseries – lawn and garden supply stores and paints, varnishes and supplies stores. Excludes florists and florists’ supply stores; nursery stock; wholesale construction stores; and glass stores.

Fitness Clubs
Includes membership fee and other purchases at athletic, sports and recreation facilities requiring membership such as health, tennis, and swimming clubs. Excludes fees associated with virtual services for home exercise equipment, personal monitoring devices, or fitness streaming classes.

Live Entertainment
Includes ticket purchases for live entertainment, including: concerts, live sporting events, live theatrical productions, amusement parks, and orchestras. Excludes: charitable organizations that provide live entertainment (benefits), sporting camps, sports complexes where you participate in the sport, public and private golf courses, country clubs (including membership fees), bowling alleys, movie theaters, tourist attractions, museums and art galleries.

ThankYou Points

ThankYou Points, as noted in the card overview, can be used in a variety of ways – redeeming for gift cards, Amazon purchases, etc.

But, if you have a Citi Premier or Citi Prestige credit card, then you’ll be able to combine your points to one of those cards and transfer points to travel partners.

Those who are savvy Miles and Points hobbyists may find value in Citi’s transfer partners, the majority of which are foreign airlines. Most partners transfer at a rate of 1:1 – one ThankYou Point to one airline mile. And once transferred, can be used for award flights on those foreign airlines, or to book partner awards on U.S. airlines when the award pricing makes sense.

There’s only one U.S. carrier that is a direct ThankYou Points transfer partner, and that is JetBlue Airways.

If you fly JetBlue often, the Citi Custom Cash Card, when coupled with the Prestige or Premier, can potentially earn you 30,000 JetBlue TrueBlue Points each year.

For most, though, the ThankYou Points likely will be best when redeemed for cash back or gift cards, especially when bonuses redemptions are offered on select gift cards.

O% Intro APR

Additionally, the Custom Cash Card is offering a 0% intro APR for 15 months on purchases and balance transfers. The balance transfer fee – 5% – is a bit on the high side, so this 0% offer is probably only good to consider if you have a large purchase to make in the the first 4 months from account opening and know you’ll be able to pay it off or move it elsewhere when that 15 month mark hits or else you’ll be paying an outlandish amount of interest.

Product Change

While the sign-up bonus is often the icing on top of the cake, some don’t want to bother adding another hard pull to their credit report for a lower-end bonus like this.

But they still want to take advantage of the earning perks the card offers.

Which is where a product change comes in.

If you already hold a Citi credit card, especially no annual fee options like the Citi Double Cash, Citi Rewards+, Citi Costco, etc., you should be able to product change to the Custom Cash Card soon.

I mention soon because reports indicate Citi is not allowing product changes at this point (June 11, 2021), but some customer service reps say they are coming. Potentially to be allowed at the end of June, but probably more likely in July/August 2021.

Thoughts

The Citi Custom Cash Card is a decent cash back earning card for those who don’t want to have to worry about bonus categories changing every quarter.

If you want to save a bit on your annual grocery bill, this card can do that. Although its earning amount is capped at $6,000 of spend each year. Depending on your annual grocery budget (or restaurants, or at gas stations, etc.) you might miss out on some savings that may be able to be found on other cards.

If you’re a credit card hobbyist, this could be a straight $200 savings on a $750 purchase. Or an additional card on which to build ThankYou Points to transfer – with the help of a Prestige or Premier card – to travel partners for free airline travel.

And all of this comes with no annual fee. Which is a definite perk.

So, is this a card that will fit a niche for you? Obviously, that’s for you to decide.

What I find most beneficial, is that it’s one more credit card option, with a somewhat unique earning structure, that will, hopefully, make the competition take notice and up their game and credit card offerings.

All to the benefit of savvy credit card customers like you.