I discovered an interesting point (pun intended) while figuring out the best way to redeem my wife’s 51k ThankYou points from her Citigold account as I’m looking to close the account soon. As you may remember, it was a huge mess earlier this year fighting for my wife’s 50k ThankYou points for opening a Citibank Citigold Account that involved several rounds of messages, phone calls and finally a CFPB complaint. While I succeeded in having the points awarded to my wife’s account, I haven’t had a chance to use them for anything yet until I began looking to redeem them for a flight to St. Lucia next year for a wedding.

Historically, only Citi ThankYou points linked to a Citi Premier or Prestige could be transferred to airlines or hotels. However, with the news that JetBlue is now a transfer partner and no annual fee cards like the Preferred could transfer ThankYou points to JetBlue, I wondered if Citigold ThankYou points could be transferred as well. Alas, the answer is no but I did determine that Citigold ThankYou points are transferable into Sears Shop Your Way points.

I did a little digging into the terms & conditions and sure enough, only a ThankYou Rewards account is required to transfer points to Sears (the language is different for airline/hotel transfers).

The transfer ratio is 1 ThankYou point to 12 Sears Shop Your Way (SYW) points but before you get all excited, that is a value of just 1.2 cents in value per ThankYou point and you are stuck shopping for all the “fine” merchandise at Sears. Unless you an extreme Sears shopper, a reseller who understands the SYW program or looking to top off your SYW account if you are close to some free merchandise, I can’t recommend this transfer option. That said, I still think it’s a positive sign Citibank is adding new partners and hopefully they continue to improve the ThankYou points program.