Citibank launched a Citi PayAll promotion in April 2023.
For every dollar spent via Citi PayAll from 20 April 2023 to 20 August 2023, customers who pay a fee will enable the amount spent to be eligible to earn miles/points + bonus miles/points.
What is Citi PayAll?
Citi PayAll is a service offered by Citibank in Singapore that allows Citibank credit cardholders to make payments to various recipients using their credit cards.
It enables customers to pay for expenses such as rent, education fees, taxes, and insurance premiums, which are typically not payable by credit card.
The service is free to use to pay for these items.
However, for a small fee, customers can earn rewards, cashback, or air miles on these credit card transactions that they wouldn't have been able to earn otherwise.
It essentially provides customers with the convenience of using their credit cards for a broader range of payments, thus maximizing their credit card benefits.
The fee is currently 2.2%, however, it may differ for each individual.
Is it Worthwhile to Pay a Fee for Miles?
It depends on your circumstances.
Let's say you need to pay $5,000 for your annual insurance.
If you don't want to earn any rewards via your credit card, you can pay it via any means you like (PayNow, Giro, etc).
However, if you pay using Citi PayAll + Citi PayAll fees of 2.2%, the fees work out to be $110.00.
So you will end up paying $5,110.00, and in return, you will earn 6000 Citi air miles (1.2mile/$1 spent), or 1.83¢/mile.
However, Citibank is currently having a promotion where every Citi PayAll transaction earns 2.2 miles instead of 1.2 miles.
So your $110.00 fees paid will earn you an extra 5000 Citi air miles, which works out to 1¢/mile.
Recommended Read: Why You Should Max Your CPF Retirement Sum Early
Is 1.x ¢/mile Worthwhile?
We did some math, and you can judge it for yourself.
For a more detailed explanation, you can refer to our previous article HERE.
The lowest cost/mile is a two-way trip to Tokyo on Economy, and it costs 1.4¢/mile.
If you paid 1¢/mile, the two-way trip to Tokyo on Economy would cost $900.00, add in all the other taxes etc, it will cost about $1,000.00.
You could save almost 40% on that trip just by using miles instead of paying for the flight itself.
But the savings are most significant when you fly business class, where the savings could be almost 70%, as shown below.
Alternative Airlines/Transfer Partners?
We converted the Citi air miles into Kris Flyer air miles and checked how worthwhile it would be to be buying miles in order to use them to redeem for flights.
However, we found that Citi has 11 other airline partners you can transfer your miles, and some of them will offer better conversion rates than SIA - aka fewer miles to the same destination.
Recommended Read: Why is CPF Ordinary Account Interest Not Rising?
Conclusion
It is up to individuals to determine if it is worthwhile or not for them to pay to accumulate miles or not.
For myself, I'm currently in the process of accumulating miles for a return business ticket to Paris, and I calculated that it is worthwhile for me to do this -> $2.7k (to buy miles) vs $7.7k (cost of the tix).
But, if you are interested in paying for miles but have no huge expenses coming up for you to spend to earn the miles while the promo last, fret not!
At InvestmentStab, we are always here to help our readers maximise the tricks and tips that we are working on.
So to help our readers who want to buy miles but have no major expenses coming up, we have launched a new concierge service called CardPerks.
We connect you with business expenses to pay using your credit cards, then reimburse you the amount less our fees.
For more detail, refer to the link above or here.
Promos & Referrals
We are starting to build a list of Promos and Referrals for our readers.
Click here to view the full list of Promos and Referrals we have.
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