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Citi Strata Elite Card Launches, Ending Citi’s 4-Year Absence From Premium Credit Card Market

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Ryan Smith
Edited by: Stella Shon
& Jestan Mendame
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Citi has officially launched its new premium card, the Citi Strata Elite℠ Card, bringing it back into the premium credit card space for the first time in 4 years. That’s when applications and product transfers to the Citi Prestige® Card closed — which, despite the rumors, isn’t affected by the launch of this new card.

Now, the Citi Strata Elite card is available for applicants. The card boasts numerous benefits in exchange for its $595 annual fee, including lounge access and several spending credits, and cardholders can earn a ton of points quickly on their purchases.

Doing so requires spending at the right time or booking through the Citi Travel portal, though, and this will be a turnoff for some customers. However, the partnership with American Airlines and the fact that spending credits aren’t unnecessarily complex are positive elements.

This card was designed “without the hassle of keeping track of a coupon book of benefits that customers are not likely to use,” said Pam Habner, head of U.S. branded cards and lending at Citi. “You shouldn’t need a math degree and a spreadsheet to track your credit card benefits.”

Is this new card worth adding to your wallet? Here’s what the Citi Strata Elite card offers to help you make a decision.

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Citi Strata Elite Card Benefits

The Citi Strata Elite card has a $595 annual fee, and adding authorized users to your account costs $75 each. To justify this annual fee, the card offers the following perks.

Citi Strata Elite Card Travel Hotel Bed Upgraded Points LLC
Image Credit: Upgraded Points LLC

$300 Annual Hotel Credit

Available once per calendar year, this credit applies to hotel stays of 2+ nights booked in the Citi Travel portal. To qualify, you must prepay for your trip using your card, points, or a combination of the 2.

If your stay costs less than $300, you can use the remaining credit later. This reservation must be booked by the primary cardholder to qualify. Package bookings, like a flight and hotel or hotel and rental car, don’t qualify, but any hotel available in the portal is eligible.

Hot Tip:

It’s also worth noting that those with both the Citi Prestige card and the Citi Strata Elite card can’t combine the hotel perks on those cards to get both a $300 credit and fourth night free.

$200 Splurge Credit

You can receive up to $200 in statement credits each calendar year with merchants you activate, though you can change the merchants as often as you’d like. You can only have 2 merchants activated at a time, and purchases by both authorized users and the primary account holder trigger this credit.

Eligible merchants include 1stDibs, American Airlines, Best Buy, Future Personal Training, and Live Nation. However, only the primary account holder can change merchants by calling 833-888-2168 or going to citi.com/splurgecredit.

$200 Blacklane Credit

You can receive up to $100 in statement credits from January to June and up to $100 more from July to December for a total of $200 annually for Blacklane — a prebooked global chauffeur service.

Blacklane Chauffeur
Image Credit: Blacklane

This applies to Blacklane purchases online or in the mobile app for luxury car rides and transfers.

Global Entry or TSA PreCheck Credit

You can receive up to $120 to cover your Global Entry or TSA PreCheck application fee once every 4 years.

Priority Pass Lounge Membership

After enrolling for the Priority Pass benefit, you’ll have access to over 1,500 lounges. You can bring up to 2 guests into a lounge at no charge and pay $35 for additional guests, subject to each lounge’s constraints.

Unfortunately, this membership doesn’t include access to Priority Pass-affiliated restaurants, cafes, or markets. It’s also worth highlighting that you don’t need to spend any money on your card to unlock guest privileges at lounges — something other card issuers have instituted recently.

Authorized users on the card will also get their own Priority Pass membership.

Hot Tip:

The fact this card’s Priority Pass membership doesn’t cover the affiliated restaurants is disappointing but not surprising. Chase removed this perk recently, and some Capital One cardholders lost it in 2023. Amex cardholders lost this benefit back in 2019.

4 Admirals Club Lounge Passes

Each calendar year, you can receive 4 passes to visit the American Airlines Admirals Club lounge. The primary cardholder must be present to redeem passes, and additional passes can be used to bring in guests — though you can bring up to 3 children under 18 at no charge and without using a pass.

Admirals Club JFK Terminal 8
Admirals Club at New York’s JFK Terminal 8. Image Credit: Katie Corrigan Seemann

You must have a same-day boarding pass for arrival or departure on American Airlines or a Oneworld airline to enter, and any passes not used by the end of the calendar year will expire.

Access to Exclusive Programs

Cardholders have access to The Reserve by Citi Travel for luxury hotel bookings, Citi Entertainment for exclusive event access, and Fashioned for mixology content from Death & Co.

Travel and Purchase Protections

These include trip delay protection, enhanced trip cancellation and trip interruption protection, lost or damaged luggage protection, MasterRental coverage for rental cars, extended warranty, purchase assurance plus, and no foreign transaction fees.

Note that all insurance benefits are secondary, except for the MasterRental benefit — though that’s only primary coverage outside your country of residence.

Mastercard World Legend Benefits

As the first card at the Mastercard World Legend tier, enjoy elevated perks including the Mastercard Collection, a suite of travel and lifestyle benefits.

Benefits for Citigold Members

Citigold banking relationship members can enjoy extra perks.

Those with the Relationship Tier, which requires $200,000 of assets, get a $145 annual credit toward the Citi Strata Elite card’s annual fee.

Customers with the Private Client Relationship Tier, achieved with $1 million or more in assets, get the $145 annual credit in years 2 and beyond but get a $595 credit in the first year — fully covering the Citi Strata Elite card’s annual fee.

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Citi Strata Elite Card Earning Rates

Cardholders will earn Citi ThankYou Points at the following rates:

  • 12x points on hotels, rental cars, and attractions booked through the Citi Travel portal
  • 6x points on air travel booked in the Citi Travel portal
  • 6x points at restaurants, including delivery services, during Citi Nights — running from 6 p.m. ET on Friday to 6 a.m. ET on Saturday and then 6 p.m. ET on Saturday to 6 a.m. ET on Sunday.
  • 3x points at restaurants, including delivery services, outside Citi Nights
  • 1.5x points on other purchases

To be clear, the Citi Nights earning rates are based on when the purchase is authorized, not when it’s finalized on your card. Thus, if you pay for dinner at 7 p.m. ET on Saturday, but the transaction doesn’t finalize until Monday morning on your card, you’ll still qualify for earning 6 points per $1 spent at restaurants.

What qualifies for the restaurant category? A lot. It includes cafes, bars, lounges, fast food joints, restaurant delivery, and takeout. However, it doesn’t include bakeries, caterers, or restaurants inside another location — think stadiums and hotels.

For any hotel bookings in the travel portal, you won’t earn points on the portion of your payment covered by the $300 hotel credit.

American Airlines ERJ 175
Transfer your Citi ThankYou Points to AAdvantage. Image Credit: Ehsan Haque

Plus, cardholders will have access to the full range of Citi’s transfer partners, including today’s addition of transfers to American Airlines AAdvantage.

Citi Strata Elite Card Welcome Offer

New Citi Strata Elite card applicants will find a different welcome bonus offer depending on whether they apply online or in-person (you can find Citibank branches here).

Those who apply online can earn 80,000 ThankYou Points after spending $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. In a Citi branch, that welcome offer increases to 100,000 points after spending $4,000 on purchases in 3 months.

We value Citi ThankYou Points at 1.6 cents apiece, making this bonus offer worth $1,280 (online version) or $1,600 (in-branch version).

A spokesperson for Citi confirmed that it’s possible to hold multiple cards in the Strata card family, meaning you can apply for this card even if you have others. However, at least initially, the Citi Strata Elite card won’t be available for product changes from other cards.

Should You Get the Citi Strata Elite Card?

This card definitely has some interesting elements, but it also has drawbacks.

Many of these earning rates have restrictions. You only earn bonus points on travel when you book through Citi’s portal. The restaurant earning rate is just 3x for most of the week, outside the Citi Nights period. Other credit cards provide high earnings at restaurants and don’t come with these time-restricted elements.

And many travel rewards credit cards provide bonus earnings when you book directly with an airline, hotel, cruise company, etc. That’s advantageous if you encounter problems during your trip and don’t have to deal with a third party. Additionally, many travel providers guarantee you’ll get the best price when booking directly — not through an outside website.

The Admirals Club passes are a unique element that competitor cards from American Express, Capital One, and Chase don’t provide — though Amex does have something similar with Delta Sky Club lounges. Plus, the Citi Strata Elite card has a valuable hotel credit and a unique Blacklane credit that can help offset the $595 annual fee.

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Hot Tip:

Check out our comparison of the best premium credit cards to see what other cards offer in comparison to the new Citi Strata Elite card.

Final Thoughts

After a long wait, Citi is finally offering a premium credit card to applicants: the Citi Strata Elite card.

The Citi Strata Elite card has a unique setup that’s sure to have fans and detractors. On the one hand, its annual fee is lower than many other premium credit cards, and the annual spending credits aren’t cut into difficult-to-use bits. On the other hand, its earning rates require spending in specific ways that many people will find restrictive.

The premium credit card landscape has changed a lot this year and will continue to change, with Amex promising updates on its luxury card soon. Evaluate the new Citi Strata Elite card in this context to see if it offers a combination of perks and an annual fee that makes sense for your wallet.

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About Ryan Smith

Ryan completed his goal of visiting every country in the world in December of 2023 and is letting his wife choose their destinations, including revisiting some favorites. Over the years, he’s written about award travel for publications including AwardWallet, The Points Guy, USA Today Blueprint, CNBC Select, Tripadvisor, Point.me, and Forbes Advisor.

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