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Citi Forward Credit Card Review: Rewarding Responsibility
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Citi recently debuted a new credit card designed to reward customers for being responsible with credit. I think Citi saw the writing on the wall, given the recent consumer backlash towards punitive credit card company behavior and Congress’ actions to restrict a company’s ability to play games, and decided to strike while the iron was hot and introduce a credit card and appeared to be on the side of the American consumer.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter why a company does what it does. It only matters how consumers can take advantage so they can buy the things they need and keep more money in their pocket. I may be a bit cynical in saying this but credit card companies aren’t altruistic when they offer rich cash back reward credit cards, it’s just business.
So how does the Citi Forward card reward responsible behavior?
- You get 100 ThankYou points per billing cycle if you stay under your credit limit and pay your bill on time. It’s worth about $1.
- Your purchase APR is lowered by 0.25% if you make purchases, avoid exceeding your credit line, and make on-time payments for three billing cycles. This happens every three months (to a maximum of a 2% reduction), so the longer you maintain good behavior, the lower your APR will be.
Here are some other benefits:
- 5,000 ThankYou points for opting to receive paperless statements within the first three months, worth about $50.
- 6,000 bonus points when you make your first $250 in purchases within the first 3 months.
- You earn 5 points per $1 spent on books, movies, music, and restaurants, 1 point her $1 spent on anything else. This is your typical 5% cashback on specialty categories and 1% cashback on everything, this is very much like the Citi mtvU card cashback groups.
- 0% APR on purchases and balance transfers for six months, which has become the standard 0% balance transfer offer nowadays.
- No annual fee.
In addition to those benefits, they’ve unveiled a little spend tracker tool that looks a lot like popular money management tools Mint, Quicken Online, and Wesabe. I haven’t looked at it too closely but I imagine its utility will be pretty low because most people keen on the idea of tracking your spending online will have all their information put into one of the older money management tools.
If you are a college student, they have a Citi Forward for Students as well but I can’t tell any difference between the two other than the name.
What do you think of the card? Gimmicky? Or good? Or does gimmicky not matter at all? Rewarding responsibility is rewarding responsibility, regardless of the intent right? What say you?
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Jim,
I think you meant to say 5,000 points is worth $50 and 6,000 points is worth $60. And I thought that the 6,000 points was awarded after $50 in purchases were made.
Anyway, I have the card and along with my Driver’s Edge Card they seem to really increase my Thank You points in a hurry.
Yikes, you’re right, I made the corrections.
How do you figure that 5000 ThankYou points is worth $50? Ard you looking at redeming the points for products? Cash rewards are less. The ThankYou.com website says that cash rewards are $50 statement credit for 7500 points. Or $50 straight cash is 8000 points.
I can convert them into student loan payments at that rate so that’s how I arrived at that number.
OK thats good if you’ve got student loans. But I don’t have any loans. I browsed around the site and I see that you can also get $100 gift cards for 10,000 points. So thats equivalent exchange. But its limited to certain retailers.
5 points for restaurants is a very high reward rate for that category. So thats a good benefit of this card if you eat out much.
Jim, how do you convert the points to student loan payments? Does that work with any other cards?
As long as it’s a ThankYou rewards card, just call (in fact, you are required to call) and they will send you a check.
Sounds similar to my mtvU card already…doesn’t it Jim?
Sounds just like it, except there are a bunch of little added enticements.
I am in pay down the CC Debt mode, but will be looking for a card afterwards. These seems like a good option – good rewards and perks for just doing what I should do (pay every month).
If CCs pick up on this trend I bet their earnings will increase – although Visa had no problems with earnings yesterday lol
Does the Thank You Rewards Network frequently change? It didn’t look like the student loans for a 100 to 1 relationship in terms points to dollars – only decent gift card I saw was the Chili’s ones. Does anyone have any comments on how this rewards network changes?