How To Transfer Citi Custom Cash Points To Travel Partners

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I recently changed my old Citi AT&T card to the new Citi Custom Cash. When doing this, the ThankYou Points in my account transferred to my new account but since my old card was closed, I only had 60 days to use the points before they’d expire.

When I checked my account, I didn’t have 60 days to use the points. I had three days before the stated expiration date. While I thought this was an error, I didn’t want to deal with Citi’s customer service to fix it. I’d use the points anyway, so I might as well get to it.

I gave some thought to just cashing the points out as a $4.63 statement credit but I decided I’d transfer them to one of Citi’s travel partners.

• Aeromexico
• Cathay Pacific Asia Miles
• Avianca LifeMiles
• Etihad Guest
• Emirates Skywards
• Eva Air
• Flying Blue (Air France/KLM)
• Intermiles
• JetBlue (fixed value program)
• Malaysia Airlines
• Qantas Frequent Flyer
• Qatar Privilege Club
• Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer
• Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus
• Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles
• Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
• Choice Privileges
• Wyndham Rewards
• Sears Shop Your Way (1 point = 10 SYW points)

I picked Virgin Atlantic since Virgin Points no longer expire and I’ll eventually need to add points to my account for an award redemption.

ThankYou Points in a Custom Cash account aren’t transferrable to travel partners. However, if you have either a Citi Premier or Citi Prestige, you can share points to that account and then transfer to a travel partner. At least that’s what I thought I could do.

When I went to the “More Ways To Redeem” section for my Custom Cash card, there was no option to share points with other Citi accounts. All I could do was transfer points to Sears or donate them to charity.

I did a quick search and found the Citi page about sharing ThankYou Points between accounts.

Points Sharing is a ThankYou® Rewards feature that allows you to give your qualifying Thank You points to another Thank You Member by sharing points from your Thank You Account to the recipient’s ThankYou Account. Points Sharing provides a flexible way to use your points. Shared points received are valid 90
days from the date received. Citi Custom Cash Card customers are not eligible to share points.

Oops! Right there it says that Custom Cash customers cannot share points. That puts a big hole in my plans for using these points and why I did a product change in the first place.

That’s when I thought of another option. Until now, I separated my Citi ThankYou accounts since it was so easy to share points. What would happen if I combined the Custom Cash with the Citi Premier? Might as well give it a try.

Citi’s website didn’t make this easy. I couldn’t add the Custom Cash to the Premier account but I could add the Premier to the Custom Cash, which was weird and a bit unnerving.

Citi gives this ominous warning when combining accounts.

When you combine your Thank You accounts, most redemption options available to each individual account will be available with the combined account. However, in some situations, you may lose access to certain redemption options if you combine ThankYou accounts.

I was mainly worried about the “losing access to certain redemption options” part. Since I was combining into the Custom Cash card account, would I lose the Premier’s ability to transfer points to travel partners?

Being this invested in the process, I decided to follow through to the end to see what happened.

I’m happy to report after combining the accounts, logging out of the Citi website, clearing my cookies and cache, and logging back in, all of the options to use points with the Premier card showed up on the combined account.

The points from the Custom Cash and Premier were combined and I was then able to transfer 1,000 points to Virgin Atlantic.

The only “mistake” I made was not adding my Citi Rewards+ to the combined account which would have earned me a 10% rebate when redeeming points.

Now that the accounts are combined, I can use all of the points earned with both cards as if they were all earned with the Citi Premier.

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