Citibank Credit Cards
Citibank offers some of the best prime credit cards today, in a wide range of categories. Below, you'll find a great selection of cards from Citi, which are available to those with good to excellent credit. Citibank, the consumer banking arm of Citigroup, has grown to be the third largest bank in the United States from its humble beginnings in 1812 as the City Bank of New York. It's second only to Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase respectively. Citibank operates in 100 countries across the globe and offers a variety of banking products beyond credit cards, such as deposit and credit accounts including savings, checking and installment loans as well as insurance and investment products.
Why Choose Citibank Credit Cards?
Who is Citibank? Citibank is one of the largest banks and credit card providers in the United States today. The company started out as the City Bank of New York, a financial center. With the establishment of the national banking system in America in 1863, the City Bank of New York joined the association as National City Bank and by 1868 the institution was considered one of the biggest banks in the U.S. By 1897, National City Bank was the first bank to develop a foreign department, establishing it as one of the first truly international banks.
Being a large financial institution has its perks. In the 1970s, Citibank was one of the first banking institutions to offer automated teller machines, or ATMs, which allowed their customers access to their funds 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It was also one of the first banks to develop and market its own credit card, the Everything Card, though a year later, the card became a joint venture with Mastercard. In 1984, Citibank became a founding member of the CHAPS clearing house in London. It was during this time and over the next 14 years that Citibank rose to become the largest bank in the Unites States as well as the largest issuer of credit cards in the world.
So, what does Citibank offer? Citibank, just like all other consumer banking institutions, offers a wide variety of products to its customers including deposit accounts such as checking and savings accounts, credit card accounts for a wide variety of individuals and businesses, installment loans for a variety of purposes including car loans, home loans, home equity lines of credit, and student loans, investment products such as CDs, savings bonds, and insurance products including life insurance and more.
With all of that being said, credit cards are the bread and butter of Citibank’s product offerings. Citibank has one of the most extensive portfolios of credit card products that cater to a wide demographic of credit card users including well established individuals as well as those just starting out. They offer cards for people with good credit, fair credit and no credit and host one of the largest product offerings of rewards based credit cards. Rewards range from cash back to air miles to hotel points and points that can be used to purchase items from a very extensive catalog of merchandise. Their rewards programs include the highly recognized ThankYou Points network.
So, why choose Citibank credit cards? There’s just something to be said about being a customer of one of the largest and oldest banks in the United States that also offers a presence in one of any number of countries you may choose to visit. And Citibank is just a small segment of Citigroup’s overall presence. Citigroup is recognized as one of the largest financial services companies in the world. Whatever your financial needs, Citibank and Citigroup have got you covered because Citi never sleeps.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I have two from the list and a family member has a third one. The Thank You Network isn’t as good as it used to be but still sufficient. I’ve been redeeming my points quickly and transitioning to my other cards.
This is great information, thanks!
I think I’m going for that Citi Forward card.
Just a note on the side, I’ve got that first Citi card, and when I went to redeem points a couple months ago, I realized Citi and Thank you network raised the total for redeeming points for gift cards. Used to be every 10,000 points got you a one hundred dollar gift card. Now you need 12,000 points.
Indeed. Credit card programs aren’t as sweet as they used to be… but I noticed that Citi has maintained some decent features, such as the thousand bonus points you receive on the Citi Forward cards — it’s hard to moan against Citi Forward, given that they are a new product by Citibank anyway; they just released this last year so there’s hardly a record there to compare against (although the ThankYou Points Network certainly does). I’m just thankful that there are still cards with no annual fees. I’m also noticing that more and more cards are gradually improving balance transfer offers again. The climate is improving slightly for the credit card industry, at least, compared to this time last year!
Noticed that Citi has released new credit cards. The credit card industry seems to be picking up business and starting to recover. Some of the cards look pretty good, imo.
Some of the Citi cards have enticing sign up bonuses too…They remain competitive with Chase and Discover cards, but some of these features change a lot, so you’ll want to watch out for healthy cash back, point rewards or favorable rates before you apply.