According to MtM, City National Bank will be lowering the sign up bonus on the City National Bank Visa Infinite credit card to 30,000 points after $5,000 in spend within the first 90 days. The current bonus is 50,000 points after $5,000 in spend. Earlier this year the bonus was 75,000 points and we’ve seen bonuses of 100,000 points as well. Normally I’d recommend just waiting for the sign up bonus to increase to 75,000 or 100,000 points, but it might be worth getting the card at only 50,000 points and that’s because the card benefits are so useful.
Card Details
- Unlimited Priority Pass Select lounge access for two and their guests (e.g. one primary and one authorized user card + guests)
- $250 airline credit for eligible incidental charges per card per calendar year; each authorized user also gets the $250 benefit separately, up to three AUs (looks like you can do up to 4). View what does/doesn’t trigger the credit here
- $100 companion fair discount, this can be repeated
- $100 Global Entry Credit
- Crystal Card Concierge service
- Visa Infinite Benefits
- 12 free Gogo passes annually
- Available to U.S. Citizens only (resident was successful here)
- Bonus Points offer is limited to City National Bank clients and colleagues who do not currently have, and have not had within the 24 months prior to the date of application, a City National Bank Visa personal credit card account (this comes directly from an e-mail they sent announcing the offer).
- Read the full review here.
Final Thoughts
The real card benefit that is great is the $250 airline credit and that’s because authorized users also get that and you can have up to 3/4 of those authorized users. Obviously a 75,000 or 100,000 bonus would be better but it might make sense to grab the offer at only 50,000 points.
Is the first year AF still free? Then $400 per year?
And for the authorized users, do I need to provide SSN for them?
yes you need to provide SSN
Can someone provide recent datapoints if airline GC trigger the credit? Is it manual or automatic?
Automatic. $250 AA GC gets me a $250 statement credit within a few days.
What is MtM?
Also… Since the bonus is waaay lower than before, I noticed that you didn’t mention anything about the annual fee… Is that because it’d waived due to the lower bonus?
I have had this card before in the past. It would be nice to note that YOU DON’T GET a 1 point = 1 cent valuation. It’s more like 0.833 cents.
That valuation is definitely not true…when redeemed for airfare you get a MINIMUM of 1.02cpp and up to 1.31 cpp for more expensive tickets. A fair valuation is 1.25 which is what you’d get for a $300 flight.
Frequent Miler has an fantastic article on this: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/the-exact-value-of-cnb-crystal-visa-infinite-points/
miles to memories, you can get more than 1¢ per point. https://www.doctorofcredit.com/maximizing-city-national-bank-crystal-visa-infinite-points-1-3%c2%a2-in-real-value/