Overview of Citi’s 24-Month Rule

For details, see Credit Card Application Churning Talk—Repeat Applications (churning).

Simply put, for Citi cards, after opening or closing a card, you cannot receive the signup bonus on the same card within 24 months. For the ThankYou family, the three cards share the same 24-month clock.

ThankYou family:

  • ThankYou Preferred
  • ThankYou Premier
  • ThankYou Prestige

Application Links Without the 24-Month Restriction

2.1  Thankyou Preferred 15,000 Application Link

AAdvantage 50,000 Application Link

AAdvantage Targeted Mail Offer

If you received a targeted AA mailer from Citi, congratulations: the application link opened with the code in that mailer is not subject to the 24-month restriction. Go ahead and apply. (However, the 8/65 rule still applies, as explained below.)

Application Strategy and Things to Watch

In general, unless you are trying to stay under Chase 5/24 or you expect to apply for an auto loan or mortgage soon, these AA offers are basically easy wins. That said, Citi’s recon is not very friendly compared with Chase and AMEX, so if you get an instant denial, it’s usually best to wait and let things cool off.

Also, Citi has the 8/65&90 rule: one personal card approval every 8 days, two personal card approvals every 65 days, and one business card approval every 90 days. (Roughly true, but YMMV.) So if you want to go after offers like these, keep Citi’s approval rules in mind.

Summary and Speculation

For that leaked AA link, many data points show that Citi honored the 50,000 bonus, so it is reasonable to believe Citi will handle similar links the same way and honor the bonus.

Citi has now leaked links for cards without 24mo restriction language twice in a row, and it has already honored the signup bonus once. So there is reason to believe Citi may “accidentally leak” more links in the future. If the old 100,000 AA EXEC link ever comes back, that would be quite a sight... stay tuned.