There two new kids on the block! Citibank has had the Citibank Strata Premier card for quite a while, and this is a rather underrated card. It has been thought for a while that Citibank may want to expand the lineup of Strata-branded cards, and that moment has finally come! Recently Strata released for applications two new Strata cards: the Strata, and the Strata Elite, which complement the existing Strata Premier. Let’s look at all three cards and get a sense of what their value propositions are, and whether they make sense for you.

Separately I also posted about us (my husband) getting the Citibank Strata Elite and explaining why, and noting that there’s an in-branch elevated welcome bonus that you may want to check out…

1. Introduction to the Strata credit card family
2. The Citibank Strata card
3. The Citibank Strata Premier card
4. The Citibank Strata Elite card
5. Which card should you get?
6. One big reason you may want to get any of these cards…
7. Summary

Introduction to the Strata credit card family

Every major credit card issuer these days has their family of premium rewards credit cards. Chase has the well-regarded Sapphire family, Capital One has the Venture family, and Amex… well, who doesn’t know about the Platinum and Gold cards? This is where Citibak has been lagging behind, as they didn’t have a true family of cards. That has now changed, with the launch of two additional Strata cards, to make a 3-card family:

• The Strata card is the entry-level, no annual fee card of the family.
• The Strata Premier is the oldest fmaily member, and may be compared with the Chase Sapphire Preferred. A well-rounded card with some very useful bonuis categories, this could be an excellent card for your portfolio for a modest cost.
• Perhaps most anticipated, the Strata Elite is (ironically) the premier (premium) card of the family. The $595 is hefty, and is one of the more niche cards in its segment. Its bonus categories may not be the most appealing but the annual fee could be offset if you manage to get good use out of the various credits that the card offers.

Now let’s have a deeper dive into each of these cards.

The Citibank Strata card

Welcome bonus: 30.000 ThankYou points after spending $1000 in 3 months. This is an excellent bonus for a no-annual-fee card.

Annual fee: $0 – that’s right, this card does not have an annual fee.

Bonus categories: This card is interesting, and could potentially be very valuable:

• 5x points on hotels, car rentals and attractions booked through Citi travel.
• 3x points at supermarkets.
• 3x points for select transit, gas and EV charging.
• 3x points on a self-select category (choose between Fitness Clubs, Select Streaming Services, Live Entertainment, Cosmetic Stores/Barber Shops/Hair Salons and Pet Supply Stores)
• 2x points at restaurants.
• 1x points for everything else.

For a no-annual fee card, these categories are industry-leading I think, and covers a good chunk of every-day spending at a fantastic 3x points/dollar rate, such as groceries and travel, whether by local transit or gas. What’s specifically nice is the self-select category, where you can choose an additional category that would be most meaningful to you. And, on top of that, you also still get 2x at restaurants. While definitely not the best rate out there, for a no-annual-fee card, this collection of bonus categories is quite awesome!

Additional benefits: This card is also somewhat special in its segment in that you can transfer points to a limited set of transfer partners: JetBlue, Choice Hotels and Wyndham Rewards. However, if you have the Strata Premier or Elite, you can pool the points and transfer to a much greater collection of partners.

Additional credits: There are no additional credits with this card.

This card may be right for you if: Honestly, this card is a no-brainer. After all, without an annual fee there is no upfront cost and the bonus categories are likely useful to most anybody. With the current welcome bonus, this would be an especially appealing time to apply for this card outright, but it may also make sense to apply for the Premier or Elite and ‘keep’ the Strata as potential future downgrade option. Unless you foresee spending a lot on the special self-select categories, since these are not directly covered by the other Strata cards (but may be covered by another card that you already have).

The Citibank Strata Premier card

Welcome bonus: Currently 60.000 ThankYou points after spending $4000 in 3 months. This is normal for a card in this segment, and I’ve previously already seen a bonus of 75.000 points rolled out. I’d wait for that to come back.

Annual fee: $95, similar to other mid-tier cards from other issuers, such as the Chase Sapphire Preferred and Capital One Venture. Authorized users are free.

Bonus categories: This card has a variety of excellent bonus categories, making it appealing to virtually anybody:

• 10x points on hotels, car rentals and attractions booked through Citi travel.
• 3x points on air travel and hotels booked through other means.
• 3x points on restaurant purchases.
• 3x points at supermarkets.
• 3x points for gas and EV charging.
• 1x points for everything else.

As you can see, you get 3x points with essentially all major bonus categories, from travel, to dining to even groceries, making this an incredibly useful and versatile card to accumulate points, even for every-day spending.

Additional benefits: The only benefit the card provides are the lack of foreign transaction fees. Otherwise, ThankYou points can be transferred to a wide variety of partners, most importantly American Airlines, but also including useful programs such as Air Canada Aeroplan, Air France-KLM Flying Blue, and many others.

Additional credits: The card is light on credits, which makes sense given the versatile bonus categories. The only credit is a $100 hotel credit which can be used annually on a single hotel visit of $500 or more booked through Citi travel. The best way to maximize that would be to book a multi-night stay with a reasonable per-night cost to redeem the full value of this credit.

This card may be right for you if: The truth is that this card could be very valuable to most anybody. I highly appreciate the extreme flexibility of potential uses, thanks to industry-leading collection of 3x bonus categories that cover essentially all major categories, from air travel to hotels to dining to groceries and gas/EV charging. I don’t think there’s anoher credit card out there that is this flexible in terms of bonus categories. So let me phrase this the opposite way: I think that only people that already have the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Reserve AND the Amex Gold, would find NO use in this card, unless they’d be looking to earn American Airlines miles specifically (see below).

The Citibank Strata Elite card

Welcome bonus: currently 80.000 ThankYou points after spending $4000 in 3 months. This is a very good bonus for a card like this, though not the best we have seen. Still, this is marketed as a limited time offer so down the line it may decrease to a lower value.

Annual fee: at $595, this is the most expensive card and it’s certainly a hefty sum. With that, Chase Sapphire Reserve’s newly elevated $795 annual fee, the Amex Platinum at $695 and the Capital One Venture X at $395, $595 is actually in the lower half of the lineup. Authorized users cost $75, which is on the cheap side, believe it or not.

Bonus categories: This card has an interesting set of bonus categories that’s not necessarily unique for premier rewards cards, but the implementation is:

• 12x points on hotels, car rentals and attractions booked through Citi travel.
• 6x points on air travel booked through Citi travel.
• 6x points for restaurant purchases made between 6PM-6AM on Friday and Saturday (termed ‘CitiNight purchases’)
• 3x points on restaurant purchases at all other times of day.
• 1.5x points for everything else.

As you can see, for a premium card such as this, these categories are underwhelming. The only interesting categories are potentially the 12x on hotels and car rental if you’re okay booking through citi travel, and the 6x on restaurants on Friday and Saturday night is a very interesting idea. That said, if you don’t regularly go out for dinner on those nights, there’s little use to it, and I’d say that it you have tha Amex Gold with its 4x points for dining, the non-Friday/Saturday dining purchases more than make up for the lower rate on those nights.

Additional benefits: This card does come with some useful benefits:

• 4 American Airlines Admirals Club Lounge passes, for the primary card holder, only to be used by the primary card holder and their trip companions when traveling on American Airlines or a oneworld partner.
• A Priority Pass membership, which gives access to 1300+ lounges worldwide.

Additional credits: Like all premium credit cards these days, the Strata Elite has a bunch of credits that will help offset the annual fee, with varying usability depending on your spending patterns:

• $300 hotel credit: annual credit for a hotel stay booked through Citi travel, for stays of 2+ nights. This should be very easy to use, and is basically a $300 discount on a hotel stay.
• $200 ‘splurge’ credit: annual credit that can be used on 2 out of 5 selectable merchants (1stDibs, American Airlines, Best Buy, Future Personal Training, and Live Nation). I would recommend using this with American Airlines when booking a flight, and then this is basically a $200 discount on flights. Should be easy to use.
• $200 Blacklane credit: 2 semi-annual $100 credits with Blacklane, which is reservable chauffeur service. This strikes me as an expensive service where $100 discount may not be worth it, so personally I can’t really imagine using this at all.
• $120 TSA PreCheck/Global Entry credit: credit applied for an application for TSA PreCheck or Global Entry once every four years.

This card may be right for you if: The value proposition of this card is frankly more difficult to justify than either the Strata or Strata Premier, because the bonus categories are somewhat niche. That is, the bonus categories are most useful if you like going out for dinner Friday/Saturday. Outside of that, there’s other cards that are better, such as the Amex Gold. If you don’t put the bulk of your spending on a card like this, the additional benefits and credits will need to justify the annual fee on their own. With that said:

• The $300 hotel credit is easy to use for nearly everybody…
• The $200 Splurge credit can be easily leveraged by buying flights on American Airlines.
• The $120 TSA PreCheck/Global Entry is certainly useful, so per year that’s a $30 win.
• The Admirals Club Lounge passes can be very valuable.
• Priority Pass Membership is all-around useful and can help you get lounge access in many places, globally.

All combined, If you book a vacation for two people for a long weekend and fly American Airlines, you can use all perks and credits in one fell swoop and redeem the full cost of the annual fee. So, it’s certainly not hard to get your return on investment, and you’d have TSA PreCheck/Global Entry as well as a Priority Membership that would be useful year-round. Is that enough to hold on to this card? For those that get these perks through another card, I’d say no. If you don’t have priority pass yet, then yes. After all, keep in mind that you pay nearly $600 in annual fees, so if all you do is barely break even after maximizing the credits that are useful to you and there’s little value beyond that, then what’s the point of holding onto the card?

Spoiler alert: we did actually get this card just recently, and I also explain why in a separate post.

Which card should you get?

Now then, the million dollar question: if you can only get 1 card, which one should you get?

• The Citibank Strata is an all-around excellent no-annual-fee card that everybody should get. However, you may not want to get this card first, unless you don’t want to spend more money on paying for annual fees. Of specific interest is the 3x for select local transit, and the 3x self-select category.
• The Citibank Strata Premier is an awesome card with great bonus categories. I think anybody would benefit from having this card. Frankly, I think this card may beat the Chase Sapphire Preferred through its bonus categories, though it doesn’t offer the same level of travel protections. So, my suggestion is to go for this card if you don’t have a card that gives equal or better bonus categories for hotels, dining and groceries. I’m not excited about the $100 hotel credit, quite frankly, but maximizing that does mean you can recoup your annual fee completely.
• The Citibank Strata Elite is a bit of a mixed bag, and in terms of bonus categories I think it’s only useful for those that like eating out, specifically Friday/Saturday nights. The thing is, the Amex Gold gives 4x on dining all the time, more than making up for the lack of 6x Friday/Saturday night by the 1 extra point you’d get at all other times. For the credits, I can see you’d be able to break even without difficulty, and you’d also get a priority pass membership and Admirals Club passes. That may be worth it, but only if you don’t get the Priority Pass through other means. After all, keep in mind that you pay nearly $600 in annual fees, so if all you do is barely break even on credits and there’s little value beyond that, then what’s the point of the card? As such, it’s hard for me to recommend the Strata Elite, but for those that love eating out, don’t have the Amex Gold, and/or don’t have Priority Pass, this card could be worth it.

One big reason you may want to get any of these cards…

My above assessments aside, there is one big reason that I want to explicitly mention for picking up any of these cards, or, quite frankly, any other Citibank card that earns Citi ThankYou points: the ThankYou ecosystem just added American Airlines AAdvantage as a new transfer partner.

This is super exciting, because:

1. American Airlines miles are probably the most valuable miles currency in the USA. Definitely more valuable than Delta and United, and consistently better priced than Alaska Airlines.
2. Beyond the relatively low miles cost for flights, the taxes and fees are also quite low.
3. American Airlines continues to have good availability compared to Alaska Airlines on its own planes and for partner airlines, with seats being available a good amount of time on some highly sought-after itineraries, such as New York to Tokyo.
4. American Airlines has some fantastic partners. Since American is part of the oneworld alliance, you can use American Airlines miles for redemptions on great airlines such as Japan Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Qatar Airways and Oman Air.

Summary

So there you have it. In this post I give a breakdown of the full Citibank Strata credit card family, now that the original entrant (the Strata Premier) has been complemented by the no-annual fee Strata and the premium Strata Elite. Overall, this is a very compelling lineup of cards and I can wholeheartedly recommend the Strata and Strata Premier. The Strata Elite is a harder sell since it feels like there isn’t much outsized value that you can get beyond the Priority Pass membership.

Did you apply for any of the new cards, or do you have the Strata Premier? I’m curious how you like them! Let me know in the comments…