Citi Is First To Offer Banking Customers The Option To Use Rewards Points For Online Bill Payments

NEW YORK, May 8, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Citi has long offered checking account customers the ability to pay bills online and now for the first time they can use ThankYou® Points for their bill payments. Citi ThankYou® Rewards members can earn ThankYou Points across their Citi banking and credit card relationship and use these points to pay virtually any bill online including phone, cable and electricity. To learn more about this new way to use ThankYou Points and start using Online Bill Pay with Points today, visit www.thankyou.com/onlinebillpayment.

"We want our members to have the choice of using their points when and how they want," said Mary Hines Droesch, Head of ThankYou Rewards at Citi. "Whether you want to pay this month's cell phone or utility bill due next week, ThankYou Rewards lets you decide how you use your points."  

With just a few clicks, Citi ThankYou Rewards members can use their ThankYou Points – and their ThankYou enrolled consumer checking account – to pay bills online. Here's how Online Bill Pay with Points works:

1. Log on to citibank.com.
2. Go to Pay Bills, and select Make a One-Time Payment and a payee.
3. Select the ThankYou Rewards Account and enter the dollar amount of the payment that you'd like to cover using ThankYou Points. For example, enter $50 and the ThankYou Points needed to cover that amount – 7,692 – will be automatically calculated.
4. To use both points and cash to pay a bill, enter the dollar amount you want to cover using points and the remaining cash amount from your checking account.
5. Choose a Citibank checking account and select a date to schedule the payment. On the day of the scheduled payment, points will be redeemed for cash and deposited into the customer's checking account.  The full bill payment will then be paid from the checking account on that day. 

About Citi ThankYou Rewards
Citi ThankYou Rewards offers members the ability to combine points earned from their Citi banking relationship and Citi credit card purchases and redeem for thousands of rewards. Here are some examples of how Citi is helping members to use ThankYou Your Way(SM):

• Redeem rewards from the merchandise catalog on thankyou.com, from gift cards for popular retailers and restaurants to sporting goods, electronics and travel.
• Shop with Points for concert tickets on LiveNation.com. ThankYou members with a participating Citi credit card also can Shop with Points for millions of items on Amazon.com.
• With a Rewards Account Number, members with an eligible Citi credit card can use points to cover purchases with account credits anywhere Visa and MasterCard are accepted.
• With ThankYou Select and Credit, use points for statement credits to cover eligible credit card purchases (dining, entertainment, utility bills, gas, grocery and drug store purchases) recently made with a Citi credit card enrolled in ThankYou Rewards.
• Use Donate with Points to make cash donations to a variety of charities via PointWorthy.
• Use the ThankYou Point Sharing App on Facebook to pool points together towards a common cause, from a charitable donation to a birthday gift for a friend or family member.

For more information on Citi ThankYou Rewards, visit www.thankyou.com.

About Citi
Citi, the leading global bank, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services, and wealth management.

Additional information may be found at www.citigroup.com | Twitter: @Citi | YouTube: www.youtube.com/citi | Blog: http://new.citi.com | Facebook: www.facebook.com/citi | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/citi

Media Contact:       
Emily Collins, Citi, 718.248.3901, [email protected]
Monique McKenzie, Citi, 718.248.3004, [email protected]       

SOURCE Citi