A few years ago, American Express offered an amazing 25,000 Membership Rewards points bonus promotion to new Amex Premier Rewards Gold Card accountholders. I was one of many who took advantage of the amazing promotion since 25,000 Membership Rewards are worth around $250 in gift cards.

To qualify for the promotion, you just have to spend $1,000 in the first three months of card membership… that’s it.

Some other fancy schmancy bullet points:

• Get 25,000 Membership Rewards(R) bonus points when you spend $1,000 in your first 3 months of Card membership.
• 3-2-1 Points: Get Membership Rewards points up to three times as fast: You can get 3X points on airfare, 2X points on gas and groceries, and 1X points on everything else.
• No annual fee for your first year, a savings of $175.

I have The Gold Card from American Express as my business credit card and have always had difficulty finding things to spend the points on. I’m not a huge fan of gift cards but fortunately AMEX doesn’t play the game of diluting point values at lower gift card prices. For example, Citi’s ThankYou Network turns 6,000 points into a $50 gift card, diluting the value of a point by a small percentage. $100 gift cards are 10,000 points though, giving you a true “penny a point” conversion. Anyway, with AMEX’s Membership Rewards I’ve just converted them into either Home Depot cards or Roy’s Restaurant cards (Roy’s is a Hawaiian fusion restaurant that my wife and I absolutely love).

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I guess offering 25,000 points is becoming the norm for a lot of the annual fee type cards these days and Citi has thrown its hat into the ring for a share of your wallet. If you apply for their Citi PremierPass Elite Level credit card and make a purchase within the first two months, they’ll credit you with 25,000 points worth a round trip ticket or $250 in gift cards.

It’s not as sizzling hot as the $250 American Express Business Gold card promotion (since that card waives the annual fee) or the now expired $250 Chase Freedom card promotion, but it’s still better than nothing, right?

I don’t know how long the promotion will last since I pulled it from the Citi homepage but there probably isn’t much a rush.