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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 ^[3], it’s just business.

So how does the Citi Forward card ^[4] reward responsible behavior?

• $100 in gift cards – When you redeem the 10,000 bonus ThankYou® Points received after you make $650 in purchases and sign up for paperless statements within the first 3 months
• 0% intro APR for 12 months on balance transfers and for 7 months on purchases. After that, 12.99% – 22.99% variable
• 5 points for every $1 spent at restaurants and on books, movies and music. 1 point for every $1 you spend on all other purchases
• APR reduction on purchases when using credit wisely
• 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 ^[5] 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 ^[6] 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?