Citi Visa Platinum Select Cards To Be Product Changed To Mastercard & Why You Should Care

Via miles4more. If you have a Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® Visa® then you should have received (or will receive) a letter letting you know this product will be automatically converted to a Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite MasterCard. 

The Change

The only change is that this card will run on the MasterCard payment network, instead of the Visa payment network. It’ll also come with MasterCard World Elite benefits, rather than the standard Visa benefits. This is a bit surprising given Citi’s new partnership with Visa for the Costco card (the new Double Cash card is a Mastercard though), but all new American Airlines cards are being issued as Mastercard’s anyway so it’s not a big shock.

Why It Matters

The reason this matters is because you can get the sign up bonus on the same Citi card multiple times, but there are some strict rules you need to follow. If we look at the fine print on the Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select we will see the following fine print (emphasis mine):

American Airlines AAdvantage bonus miles not available if you have had a Citi / AAdvantage Platinum Select MasterCard opened or closed in the past 18 months.

Obviously if you have the Visa card open and it gets product changed to a Mastercard, this 18 month clock will reset. Now I think Citi is aware of this, because often the fine print doesn’t state whether the card was a Visa or Mastercard it just states any Citi / AAdvantage Platinum Select disqualifies you.

That being said, if you’re planning on getting the Platinum Select bonus again soon and were relying on this loophole and keeping this Visa card open – you might want to considering converting this to a different product. Personally I think your best bet is the Citi Dividend (rotating 5% cash back categories, up to $6,000 in spend per year – no quarterly limit) or the Citi Double Cash card (1% cash back on all purchases and another 1% cash back after you pay your bill. Although I do think the American Express Fidelity card is better).

Neither of these cards has sign up bonuses (it’s not possible to apply for the Citi Dividend directly anymore and the Citi Double Cash card never had a sign up bonus, although it was possible to briefly get in on a targeted offered). I also think the new Barclaycard Aviator products are better than their Citi counterparts (e.g Platinum Select vs Aviator Red), so keeping the Platinum Select doesn’t make any sense long term especially now that we know the 10% rebate does not stack.

Final Thoughts

This probably won’t help a lot of you and I suspect Citi will crack down on the Visa vs Mastercard difference in terms of getting the sign up bonus pretty soon (already it doesn’t mention the payment network on the marketing pages, only on the final application page) but it could be useful for some.

If you do want to keep the card, you could use this change as a bargaining chip to get a better retention offer or even ask for compensation (more merchants accept Visa than Mastercard, I hate carrying Mastercard’s because of this. Is there anything Citi can do? Bang, spending bonus)