Citi PayAll: Buy Miles at 0.8 Cents Each, Clock Spend For Promos and Limo Service

I have previously covered payment services CardUp and ipaymy when it comes to paying things like income tax. Citibank has its own service called Citi PayAll serving similar functions, and there is an ongoing promo now that makes it quite compelling.

Promo details

The usual earn rate depends on the Citi card you use, ranging from an abysmal 0.4 mpd with Citi Rewards to 1.2 mpd and 1.3 mpd with Citi PremierMiles and Citi Prestige respectively (or 1.6 mpd if you have the Citi ULTIMA card and somehow reading my very low SES website).

Until 31st July 2022, however, all Citi points cards used on Citi PayAll can earn an upsized 2.5 miles per dollar spent via the service. This is as long as a minimum of S$5,000 is transacted, and the higher rate is capped on S$120,000 of spend. That’s a possible 300,000 miles one can buy from this.

Given that the service fee is 2%, one would essentially be trading 2 cents for 2.5 miles, or buying each mile for 0.8 cents each. Mile blogs tend to value each mile at close to 2 cents each, and even if you take my more pessimistic valuation of miles which is between 1 to 1.5 cents, 0.8 cents is a great price to be buying your miles at. This promo is hence an excellent opportunity to make your upcoming flights much cheaper.

New users even get S$50 GrabFood vouchers to sweeten the deal.

What can I pay for?

Citi specifies the categories of payments you can make, and they are:

• Tax (income tax, property tax, other tax types and composition fees to IRAS)
• Insurance premium payments
• Rent
• Education Expense (school fees, enrichment fees, tuition fees, course fees)
• Condominium Management Fee
• Miscellaneous (Renovation, wedding expenses etc.)

It’s a broad range of items you can pay for, and “miscellaneous” acts as a catch-all for just about any transaction you might think of. PayAll does not require invoices and your recipients just need to have any local bank account, so it’s really flexible with who and what you want to pay for.

Unfortunately, unlike CardUp and ipaymy, you cannot pay for mortgage payments which I have found to be an excellent way to clock a significant amount of spend every month.

Works very well with Citi Prestige: clocking spending for promo and limousine

Citi Prestige currently has a sign-up promo where you need to spend $800 to get 40,000 miles, and Citi PayAll transactions apparently count. Additionally, a helpful Telegram chat member said that PayAll spending would also count towards the spending requirement for the free limousine service that Citi Prestige offers. Checking around the terms and conditions confirms this:

This dramatically boosts the utility of Citi PayAll for Citi Prestige cardholders: buy miles for cheap, get your sign-up gift, and enjoy being ferried in a limousine. It’s a great deal, and coupled with your Citi Prestige card perks would make your next holiday very comfortable.

300,000 miles is a lot

For everyone else, 0.8 cents per mile is still 0.8 cents per mile. If your valuation of a mile is anywhere higher than that – and I think it should be – it’s kinda like buying USD for S$1 each…

300,000 miles can take one to many places. On Singapore Air, you can get a return flight to Japan for 94,000 miles, US for little under 200,000 miles, and 240,000 miles gets you a round-the-world ticket. All these are business class flights, mind you, and you won’t jostle with the great unwashed (ie, me) taking economy.

Citi has the widest range of airline partners too, so you are free to transfer your Citi points for miles on other airlines should those give you a better deal.

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