Citi Rewards+ Card Review

What the Citi Rewards+ Card actually is

This is a no-annual-fee rewards card built around one genuinely unusual gimmick: it rounds the points on every single purchase up to the nearest 10. Spend $2 on coffee and you don't earn 2 or 4 points. You earn 10. The math sounds trivial until you realize how many small transactions the average person racks up in a month.

The second trick is a 10% points rebate on the first 100,000 points you redeem each year. Cash out 50,000 points and you get 5,000 back. It's a quiet way to stretch a stash you'd be spending anyway, and it stacks neatly with the round-up on the earning side.

How it performs day to day

The round-up shines for people who pay for lots of cheap things individually. Vending machines, parking, a single soda, app subscriptions, the dollar-store run. Each of those tiny swipes gets bumped to 10 points, so a $1.50 purchase earns the equivalent of a 600%-plus return in points. That's absurd, and it's the whole appeal.

Pile a bunch of large purchases on it, though, and the magic fades fast. A $400 transaction rounds from, say, 800 points up to 800 (or 810). The bump is a rounding error on big tickets. This card wants volume, not size. Owners who split purchases into separate small transactions to game the round-up get the most out of it, and Citi clearly knows people do this.

Base earning is modest: roughly 2x on supermarkets and gas (up to an annual spending cap), 1x everywhere else. Those rates won't impress next to a flat 2% cashback card. The Rewards+ isn't trying to win on raw multipliers. It's trying to win on the fractions everyone else throws away.

Pros and cons

On the plus side: no annual fee, a round-up that genuinely rewards small spenders, and that 10% redemption rebate that effectively boosts the value of every point you cash out. It also plays well as a supplement to a heavier-hitting Citi card, since you can pool ThankYou points across your account.

The downsides are real. The 2x categories are capped, the points are worth about a cent each toward most redemptions, and the whole proposition collapses if your spending skews toward big purchases. It's also a card that rewards a slightly fiddly behavior. If splitting your grocery run into five transactions sounds exhausting, you'll leave value on the table.

Who should get it and who should skip it

Get the Citi Rewards+ if you make a lot of small, frequent purchases and you already hold or plan to hold another Citi ThankYou card to maximize point value. It's a smart no-fee companion card and a fine first card for a light spender who buys cheap stuff often.

Skip it if you want simplicity or your spending runs to fewer, larger transactions. A flat 2% card like the Citi Double Cash or Wells Fargo Active Cash will out-earn this for most ordinary spenders, with zero mental gymnastics. The Rewards+ is a niche tool that's excellent in its niche and forgettable outside it.

The verdict

The Citi Rewards+ is one of the more interesting no-fee cards out there, and for the right person it quietly outperforms cards that look better on paper. The round-up is real value, the rebate is a nice kicker, and the price is right. Just go in knowing it rewards a specific kind of spending and a specific kind of patience.

Frequently asked questions

How does the Citi Rewards+ round-up actually work?

Every purchase rounds its points earnings up to the nearest 10. A $2 purchase that would earn 2 points instead earns 10. The smaller and more frequent your purchases, the more you gain from it.

Is the Citi Rewards+ Card worth it with no annual fee?

Yes, if you make lots of small transactions or pair it with another Citi ThankYou card to boost point value. For big, infrequent purchases, a flat 2% cashback card will earn you more.

What is the 10% points rebate?

When you redeem points, Citi refunds 10% of them, up to the first 100,000 points redeemed each year. Cash out 50,000 points and you get 5,000 back to use again.