American Categorical Membership Rewards vs. Citi ThankYou Factors: Which is Higher? 

The easiest way to earn airline rewards out of your bank card is to make use of one that offers you factors that may be transferred to miles with a number of airways. This technique provides you the pliability to decide on the correct miles for the award you want. Since every frequent flyer program has its personal distinctive advantages and disadvantages, with the ability to transfer your rewards to a number of packages provides you entry to the perfect options from every.

Let’s take a more in-depth take a look at these packages and see which one could be greatest to your wants.

American Categorical Membership Rewards

American Categorical’s Membership Rewards program has been round for much longer than Citi’s ThankYou program, and each card issuers have labored arduous to maintain their rewards aggressive. Membership Rewards presently means that you can switch your factors to miles with 19 totally different frequent flyer packages, together with Air Canada, Air France/KLM, Delta, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Qantas, Singapore, and Virgin Atlantic. You can even switch your rewards to factors with Marriott, Hilton, and Selection Lodges.

What’s nice in regards to the Membership Rewards program is that it recurrently provides switch bonuses that may help you obtain multiple frequent flyer mile per level redeemed. You can even select from quite a few Amex playing cards that offer you Membership Rewards factors to your spending. For instance, the American Categorical® Gold Card provides you an incredible 4x factors on as much as $25,000 spent every year at US supermarkets (then 1x), and 4x factors at eating places worldwide.  For small enterprise house owners, the Blue Enterprise® Plus Credit score Card from American Categorical options 2x factors in your first $50,000 spent every year (1 level thereafter). . And the well-known Platinum Card® from American Categorical provides you 5x factors on flights booked instantly with airways or with American Categorical Journey, and 5x factors on pay as you go inns booked on amextravel.com.

The downsides of this program embody comparatively few home airline switch companions and the truth that you solely get a minimal one cent per level when redeeming your factors for many journey reservations. Exceptions embody getting 35% of your factors again once you use your Enterprise Platinum® Card to e-book flights from a qualifying airline, and 25% of your factors again once you use your Enterprise Gold Card to do the identical.

Citi ThankYou Rewards

Citi’s ThankYou rewards program presently provides 15 airline switch companions, plus the Sears Store Your Manner program. Nevertheless, almost all of those airways are overseas carriers, and lots of of these don’t supply a lot worth. Among the many higher choices are JetBlue, Singapore, Virgin Atlantic, Air France/KLM, and Turkish.

The ThankYou rewards program additionally has many bank cards that help you earn rewards. The commonest are the Citi Premier Card and Citi Status Card. But additionally, the Citi® Double Money Card now means that you can earn as much as 2x ThankYou factors per greenback spent, which you’ll be able to switch to airline miles you probably have one other card that enables it. You earn one level per greenback spent once you make a purchase order, and as second level once you pay to your purchases, for a complete of as much as 2x factors per greenback. The Citi Rewards+℠ Card and the Citi Rewards+℠ Pupil Card additionally help you earn ThankYou factors, which you’ll be able to switch to airline miles you probably have one other card that enables it.

Backside line

American Categorical Membership Rewards and Citi ThankYou Rewards are each nice packages for incomes and redeeming journey rewards. To search out the correct one to your wants, you need to carefully study the playing cards that provide these factors, in addition to the airline and resort companions the place these rewards could be transfered. And remember the fact that in lots of circumstances, award journey fans select to earn factors with multiple program.

Keep on high of breaking gross sales, fare drops, and extra! Observe us on Twitter @Airfarewatchdog. And ensure to enroll in FREE airfare alerts to be notified when costs drop.