[Updated 2023.4] Citi recently updated a batch of application links on its official website. Its own links for cards like the Premier and Rewards+ now both have a once-every-48-months welcome bonus restriction. However, third-party application links still appear to use the old 24-month same-family restriction, so you can choose the link that best fits your own situation.

About the 24/48-Month Restriction

To limit repeated welcome bonus churning, Citi introduced 24/48-month bonus restrictions. The basic idea is that within the same card family, you may only be eligible for one card’s welcome bonus, and closing a card can also affect your eligibility. For example, the ThankYou Points family, including the Citi Premier, has this kind of rule: if you received a bonus on a related card or closed one of those cards within the past 24 months, you will not be eligible for the welcome bonus.

Bonus ThankYou® Points are not available if you received a new cardmember bonus for Citi Rewards+®, Citi ThankYou® Preferred, Citi ThankYou® Premier/Citi Premier® or Citi Prestige®, or if you have closed any of these accounts, in the past 24 months.

Different Citi cards have different restrictions in this area. Some cards have this rule, while others are even stricter with a 48-month window, so this article summarizes these Citi application restrictions.

If you apply anyway while being within the 24/48-month restriction window, your application may still be approved, but you may very well not receive the welcome bonus. The annoying part with Citi is that it usually does not tell you during the application process. (AMEX may show a popup, while Chase may simply deny the application.) You often only find out after completing the required spending whether you will actually receive the welcome bonus.

Citi Personal Cards

Citi Premier

The official welcome bonus is now up to 75,000 points, and through June 30, 24, hotel and car rental bookings through Citi travel earn 10x points. However, the bonus eligibility rule has changed: you now must not have received a welcome bonus on this card in the past 48 months. While the waiting period is longer, the rule is much simpler to evaluate: you just need to have gone 4 years without receiving this card’s welcome bonus. Yes, four years...

Bonus ThankYou® Points are not available if you have received a new account bonus for a Citi Premier account in the past 48 months.
It appears that third-party partner application links are still under the 24-month rule, but the restriction is that you must not have opened or closed a related ThankYou card within the past 24 months. The welcome bonus there is only 60,000, though. My guess is that these links may also be changed to the 48-month restriction in a few days.
Bonus ThankYou® Points are not available if you received a new cardmember bonus for Citi Rewards+®, Citi ThankYou® Preferred, Citi ThankYou® Premier/Citi Premier® or Citi Prestige®, or if you have closed any of these accounts, in the past 24 months.

This restriction covers these cards: Citi Rewards+, Citi ThankYou Preferred, Citi ThankYou Premier/Citi Premier, and Citi Prestige. The rule has two parts:

  • Welcome bonuses received within the past 24 months: You can check your TYP statement to see when you received the bonus on any of these cards, or ask customer service to look it up for you. Note that the relevant date is when you received the bonus, not when you opened the card.
  • Cards closed within the past 24 months: This is based on the date you closed the card. You can ask customer service to confirm the exact date. Note that product changes can be more complicated, and we will discuss that separately below.

For example:

  • Applied for the Premier in March 2021 and received the welcome bonus on May 1
  • Then from May 1, 2021 to May 1, 2023, if you apply for a second Premier, you will not receive the welcome bonus
  • Closed the Citi Premier card in March 2022
  • Then from March 2022 to March 2024, applying for a Premier would not qualify for the welcome bonus

Rewards+

The welcome bonus on the Citi Rewards+ card on Citi’s official website is now increased to 25,000. But a 48-month restriction has also been added. This restriction applies only to the Rewards+ itself: you must not have received a welcome bonus on this card in the past 48 months.

Bonus ThankYou® Points are not available if you have received a new account bonus for a Citi Rewards+® account in the past 48 months.
However, the third-party promotional link still uses the old terms: if within the past 24 months you opened or closed a Citi Rewards+, Thank You Preferred, Premier, or Prestige, you would not be eligible for this card’s welcome bonus.
 Bonus ThankYou Points are not available if you received a new cardmember bonus for Citi Rewards+, Citi ThankYou   , or if you have closed any of these accounts, in the past 24 months.

AA Cards

The Citi AA card lineup includes the following three airline co-branded cards, and they all follow the same rule:

Their rule is simple: only that specific card matters. If you received a bonus on that same card within the past 48 months, you will not be eligible for the welcome bonus again. For example, the AA Platinum restriction means that if you received that card’s bonus within the past 48 months, you cannot get it again.

American Airlines AAdvantage® bonus miles are not available if you have received a new account bonus for a Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® account in the past 48 months.

This rule does not involve opening or closing accounts, so you only need to remember when you last received the bonus. Closing the card or product changing it does not matter. A 48-month restriction is still pretty brutal—4 years... Probably because the AA cards were among the most heavily churned back in the day, and eventually AA even started reviewing accounts more broadly.

Custom Cash

The rule for Citi Custom Cash is similar to the AA cards: only its own previous welcome bonus matters, and closing the card does not.

You will qualify for the bonus offer only if you have not received a bonus offer for opening a new Citi Custom CashSM Card in the past 48 months.

No Restriction

Recently, Citi Rewards+ changed its welcome bonus terms so that it is no longer subject to the 24- or 48-month restriction, and welcome bonuses from other cards also do not affect it. However, it still affects eligibility for the Premier welcome bonus.

Some other Citi cards do not have a welcome bonus to begin with, so naturally there is no such restriction.

Citi Business Cards

Citi business cards do not affect eligibility for personal card welcome bonuses. Common cards include:

How product changes affect 24/48

We previously introduced product changes (Product Change) as a useful credit card strategy. You can first earn a large welcome bonus, then in the second year convert the card to a no-annual-fee card to keep long term, or convert it to another card that offers better value for you. For Citi, the Premier has a relatively high welcome bonus, but it also has an annual fee. If you feel it is not worth keeping after earning the bonus, you can product change it to cards like Custom Cash or Rewards+ and keep those long term.

Citi’s 24/48 language does not mention how a product change affects welcome bonuses on other cards, or whether it resets the 24/28-month clock. For example, if you earned the Premier bonus, waited 12 months, and then downgraded that card to Preferred, would that affect your welcome bonus eligibility the next time you apply for Premier? At the moment, we can only rely on data points summarized by readers. The possible pattern is as follows:

  • Frequentmiler: A product change within the same family of cards does not reset the 24/28-month clock. For example, if you downgrade Premier to Preferred, the downgrade date does not affect the next time you can earn a Premier bonus after 24 months.
  • TPG: The information they received from Citi was that as long as the card number stays the same after the product change, it does not reset the 24/48 clock.

Because this 24/48 timeframe is so long, I still recommend the safer approach when applying again: apply first and earn the bonus, then downgrade via product change afterward. However, based on the current terms, only Citi Premier is tied to card closure; the other AA and Custom Cash cards are fine.

How to get around the 24/48 application restriction

Prequalify / targeted offers

In general, credit card applications follow the terms shown on the application page at the time you apply. If your application page does not mention this restriction, then it may be possible to bypass the time restriction, but you must read carefully, including the full terms. In the past, some targeted AA offers sent out did not include 24/48-month language, so they could bypass the restriction. However, abusing this method could still potentially get your card shut down.

If you receive a similar offer, it is usually not a big issue for normal personal use, but be sure to read the terms carefully.

A small application bug

You may have noticed that our earlier discussion assumes this sequence: first apply for a card, then earn the welcome bonus, and then ask whether you can earn another bonus if you apply again later. But what if you apply repeatedly before meeting the spending requirement?

Based on reader testing, this 24/48-month rule appears to have a small bug, and it has existed for quite a long time. For example, if you apply for Citi Premier repeatedly, but do not complete the required spending right away, and wait until all three Premier cards are in hand before starting the spending to earn the bonuses, then you may be able to receive the bonuses on all three Premier cards. Of course, you must also keep Citi’s own 7/65 rule in mind: at most one application in 7 days, and at most two applications in 65 days. So even in the best-case scenario, the maximum is only 3 Premier cards.

I do not recommend that credit card beginners try this method, since there is a real chance that the welcome bonuses could be clawed back, or even that all of your accounts could be shut down.

Application and holding strategy

For Citi Premier, since Prestige and Preferred can no longer be applied for, you only need to make sure to apply for it before Citi Rewards+. After all, Premier has the higher welcome bonus, while Rewards+ itself is not affected by the others, so it is fine to apply for it later. Since Premier is subject to a 24-month restriction, if you do a product change, prioritize downgrading to Preferred or Rewards+, and ideally keep the same card number if possible. Of course, you could also consider keeping it for one more year, wait until the 24 months are up, apply for another Premier, and then decide what to do with the old card. Honestly, Citi Premier is the most worthwhile Citi card to apply for right now.

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Citi Strata Premier Credit Card

One of the best all-around credit cards for both everyday spending and travel. Plus, get a $100 annual hotel benefit.

  • Welcome bonus: 60,000 ThankYou Points (Spend $4,000 in three months)
  • Rewards: 10x on hotels, car rentals, and attractions booked through Citi Travel; 3x at supermarkets, restaurants, gas stations, on airfare, hotels, and EV charging; 1x on all other purchases
  • Redemption: Points can be transferred 1:1 to airline and hotel loyalty programs, or redeemed for cash back
  • Annual fee: $95
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The AA cards are only affected by themselves, so once every 4 years is enough. You can consider getting Platinum first, then Executive, and then downgrade any cards you do not need to Double Cash or Custom Cash.

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Citi AA Platinum American Airlines Credit Card

No annual fee for the first year!

  • Welcome bonus: 80,000 AA miles (spend $3,500 in the first 4 months)
  • Rewards: 2X on AA website ticket purchases; 2x at restaurants and gas stations; 1x on all other purchases
  • Redemption: Best value when redeeming for flights between China and the U.S. or between the U.S. and Europe; business-class redemptions can also offer solid value.
  • Annual fee: $99（No annual fee for the first year）
  • Apply now>>

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Citi AAdvantage Executive Credit Card

Complimentary Admirals Club access plus up to $480 in annual statement credits; a premium AA credit card

  • Welcome bonus: 70,000 AA miles (spend $7,000 in three months)
  • Rewards: 4x on AA purchases; after $150k in annual spending, earn 5x; 1x on all other purchases
  • Redemption: Best value for redeeming flights between the U.S. and China or between the U.S. and Europe; business-class redemptions can offer solid value.
  • Annual fee: $595
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In addition, for more information on applying for and using other Citi cards, see: