Citi Dividend Platinum Select Card | Citi Dividend Card Review
Wednesday, June 19th 2013
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Citi® Dividend Platinum Select® Visa® - $100 Cash Back


Editor's Rating: 4.0/5.0
A card that has evolved through the years without rebranding. It's key features are the 5% quarterly rotating categories and it's shopping mall "Citi Bonus Cash Center". In this introduction, we'll broadly highlight it's key features and then go into greater detail in the next sections.
Intro Purchase APR Regular APR Intro Balance Transfer Annual Fee Issuer Credit Needed
0.00% 12 Months 12.99% to 22.99%* (variable) 0% for 12 Months $0* Citi Excellent
Feature Summary
  • $100 cash back after $500 in purchases within the first 3 months of account opening
  • 0% Intro APR on Balance Transfers and Purchases for 12 months. After that, the APR will be 12.99%-22.99% variable based on your creditworthiness*
  • Earn 5% cash back from Citi at Home Depot, Home furnishing stores and home and garden stores between 4/1/13 and 6/30/13, with enrollment
  • Enroll at no additional cost each quarter for new categories that earn additional cash back
  • Full 1% cash back on all other purchases and eligible cash advances.
  • No Annual Fee*

This card has been Citi's main cash back card for the last few years and has gone through several changes through the years. At present, this card can be described as a "rotating category cash back card". Here is how the card broadly works.

Dividend Cash Rebate Formula - If you are a cardholder, you will earn what Citi called "Dividend Dollars". You to earn 1% rebates for every purchase that you make on the card. You can redeem your cash rebates in $50 denominations. You have to request your rebate checks yourself. It also turns out that you can earn 1% rebates for cash advances and balance transfers (up to $1,500).

5% Quarterly Rotating Categories - Like, many modern cash back cards, they have a 5% quarterly rotating category feature. Every quarter, you will receive 5% rebates when you spend on selected categories. These categories change every quarter. You also need to enroll in the program - which you can do on the website or just calling them.

Online Shopping Portal - Like most cash back cards these days, Citi provides an online shopping portal. In fact, they were perhaps the first card to offer this way back in 20041. Back then, the portal was called Citi Dividend Merchant Network. The name was later changed to the Citi Bonus Cash Center2. We will explore this in more details later.

We recently did a study on online shopping portal3 and we found out that the Citi Bonus Cash Center had the most merchants among its competition4.

Caps On Rebates - One of the surprising things about this card is that you can capped to earning only $300 in annual cash rebates on the 5% rotating category and 1% regular purchases spending. Any purchases from Citi Bonus Cash Center are not capped.

References
1. 28th Oct 2004: Citi Launches Merchant Network for it's Citi Dividend Platinum Select Card - Increase Cash Back Benefits
2. Citi Bonus Cash Center
3. Ask Mr Credit Card: Online Shopping Portal Study
4. Citi Bonus Cash Center Review

Next: 5% Rotating Categories »