Citi has made a number of changes recently, most of which are bad. They’ve stripped the great travel protections on their suite of cards, as well as the ever-popular Citi Price Rewind and 90-day return protection. But there is one recent improvement: you can now convert Citi Double Cash cashback to ThankYou Points!
This change was rumored a couple weeks ago. I (along with everyone else, I imagine) held out hope that transfers would be at a 1:1 ratio. Turns out that is exactly the case. Given some amazing uses of Citi ThankYou Points, this really changes my estimation of the Double Cash card. It’s already a decent standard card, earning 2% cashback on all purchases. But the ability to convert Citi Double Cash Cashback to ThankYou Points is amazing.
How to Convert Citi Double Cash Cashback to ThankYou Points
Your DoubleCash card still earns cashback as the primary currency. That has not changed. You’ll see your total cash rewards balance in your account summary after logging in. But converting this cash to ThankYou points is easy. First, click on “View/Redeem Cash Rewards” on the Citi Double Cash card overview page. This will take you to the following screen.
You’ll see the new option in the right corner to convert cash rewards to ThankYou points. Click on that icon, and then click the “Get Started” button in the box that appears. This will pull up the following form:
The balance on the Citi Double Cash card I’m working with is just $27.65. As you can see, the cashback converts at a 1 cent per point ratio, which means I can convert these to 2,765 ThankYou points. To complete the transaction, you’ll just need to click the terms and conditions checkbox and then convert. It’s that easy. Remember, this is a one way transfer. You cannot get your cash back once you convert to points.
Using Your Converted Citi ThankYou Points
While it’s easy to convert Citi Double Cash cashback to ThankYou Points, I found it a bit difficult to manage them after this point. First, when I headed back to the account summary, I was still seeing $27.65 in cash back. Did my points convert? It took some navigating around the Citi site to determine that yes, they really had. If you navigate to Rewards & Benefits > ThankYou Rewards, you’ll be taken to the summary screen that shows your ThankYou points balances.
I figured it’d be a cinch to merge the ThankYou points from the two accounts, but that didn’t go as expected. Neither would pull up the other when I tried to merge the two. This makes it a bit of a problem, as I really want to use the ThankYou points to transfer to Citi’s travel partners. Using them for the few options you have as Citi Double Cash ThankYou points is not ideal. Guess I need to call Citi to sort things out.
Bottom line: converting Citi Double Cash cashback to ThankYou points is easy. As long as you can figure out how to move them to a higher tier product such as the Citi ThankYou Premier or Citi Prestige, you essentially have a 2x-earning card for everyday spend. It’s the Citi analog to the American Express Blue Business Plus, another card I really like.
