Planning ahead for your Citi ThankYou points
Lifetime transfer options and steps to take now for Citibank, N.A. points
Citi ThankYou Service Center
Citi Estate Servicing Center (deposit and credit card accounts); written ThankYou Points requests go to the ThankYou Service Center
Thank You Service Center, PO Box 6278, Sioux Falls, SD 57117 (the address Citi publishes on the Credit Cards panel of its Estate Servicing Center for ThankYou Points documents)
Citibank, N.A. does not guarantee transfer of points after death. Lifetime planning provides options for managing points and controlling who has access to them.
How to protect your Citi ThankYou points
8 steps for managing your Citi ThankYou points during your lifetime:
Family sharing
ThankYou Points can be pooled across the cardholder's own Citi ThankYou-earning accounts and transferred to airline and hotel partner loyalty programs, where the partner loyalty account must be in the cardholder's own name: "Points Transfer. You can redeem Points by transferring Points to participating travel loyalty programs. Eligibility depends on your Card Product." Citi's FAQs page lists the current roster, which includes Aeromexico Rewards, American Airlines, Avianca LifeMiles, Cathay Asia Miles, Emirates Skywards, Etihad Guest, EVA Air, Flying Blue, JetBlue TrueBlue, Qantas, Qatar Privilege Club, Singapore KrisFlyer, Thai Royal Orchid Plus, Turkish Miles&Smiles, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, ALL-Accor, Choice Privileges, Leaders Club, Preferred Hotels, Wyndham Rewards, and Shop Your Way. There is no person-to-person transfer any more. Citi ran a Points Sharing feature that let one member give up to 100,000 points a year to another member's ThankYou Account; the current agreement states "Effective May 17, 2026, Point Sharing will no longer be offered as a ThankYou Rewards redemption option," and the sharing clause itself no longer appears in the agreement. Citi's ThankYou FAQs article, dated October 2025, still lists "Sharing points with other ThankYou members" as a redemption option — that page is stale against the agreement. Either way, sharing was never a route around the death clause: it was a lifetime redemption option, and once the member dies the executor's only published route is the Cash Rewards request.
Should you save your passwords for your family?
Some people store account passwords so a family member can sign in later. The practice has three practical limits:
- Two-factor authentication often blocks it. Most accounts require a second factor — a code sent to a phone, an authenticator app, a passkey, or a physical key. A saved password alone frequently does not grant access, and the recovery codes that would are easy to lose or let go stale.
- It usually conflicts with the platform's terms. Most operators prohibit account sharing and signing in as another person, including after a death. Stored credentials are not the operator's recognized access path, and using them can violate the terms of service.
- Operators provide other paths. Where an operator offers a designation tool — Apple's Legacy Contact, Google's Inactive Account Manager, a beneficiary designation — that mechanism grants access the operator recognizes. A password manager's own emergency-access or legacy feature passes credentials through a controlled process. Digital assets named in a will or trust give a fiduciary authority under each state's Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA).
Frequently asked questions
Use them or move them while you are alive. Transferring points to an airline or hotel partner loyalty program in your own name takes them out of the ThankYou agreement and puts them under the partner program's rules, including its own death policy. Redeeming for travel, gift cards, statement credits, or cash draws the balance down. What you should not do is bank a large balance on the assumption your family will collect it: the only route your executor has is a discretionary, check-only redemption they must request in writing within a year, at a rate Citi does not publish.
Not any more. Citi ran a Points Sharing feature that let one member give points to another member's ThankYou Account, capped at 100,000 points shared and received per calendar year. The current Terms and Conditions state "Effective May 17, 2026, Point Sharing will no longer be offered as a ThankYou Rewards redemption option," and the sharing clause no longer appears in the agreement. Citi's ThankYou FAQs article, dated October 2025, still lists sharing points with other members; that page is stale against the agreement, so confirm with the ThankYou Service Center at 1-800-842-6596 before relying on it. Partner transfers to airline and hotel loyalty programs remain, but the partner loyalty account must be in your own name.
It depends on the account, and they are tied to it. Points earned with most Citi credit card accounts generally do not expire, but the agreement sets expirations for several legacy and business products and for Citibank checking accounts, where points expire three (3) years from December 31 of the year they were earned. Separately, the agreement ties loss of points to what happens to the account: if you voluntarily close your Citi Account, convert it to a non-participating account, or Citi closes it for inactivity, you have ninety (90) days to use the points; if Citi closes it for any other reason, you lose them immediately; if your ThankYou Account is closed for any reason, you lose them immediately; and if Citi cancels the ThankYou Program, you have ninety (90) days to redeem. Keeping an enrolled account open and in good standing is what keeps the balance alive.
An inventory listing the Citi ThankYou account lets a fiduciary identify it and act on it through the operator's official channels.
There is no beneficiary designation option for Citi ThankYou. This account type does not support naming a recipient the way bank or investment accounts do.
Sources
Data sourced from Citibank, N.A. primary sources (6 pages reviewed). How we research.
Citi ThankYou Service Center
Citi Estate Servicing Center (deposit and credit card accounts); written ThankYou Points requests go to the ThankYou Service Center
Thank You Service Center, PO Box 6278, Sioux Falls, SD 57117 (the address Citi publishes on the Credit Cards panel of its Estate Servicing Center for ThankYou Points documents)
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