Citibank has announced an update to its rewards exclusion list, which takes effect from 26 July 2023.
In short, there’s nothing much to worry about here. For the vast majority of cardholders, it’ll be business-as-usual.
In a bit more detail, Citi is adding some exclusions in order to combat manufactured spending. This affects some Amaze transactions, but again, it’s unlikely to affect regular users.
Citi’s new rewards exclusion list
Below are links to Citi’s current and upcoming rewards exclusion lists:
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I’ve taken the liberty of putting the two documents side by side on Draftable for easy comparison.
Here’s the key changes to take note of.
Certain Amaze transactions excluded
Citi has added the following transactions to its exclusion list:
- AMAZE*AXS
- AMAZE*BUS/MRT
- AMAZE*EZ-Link
- AMAZE*TRANSIT
This basically means you’ll no longer be able to use the Amaze as a conduit to earn rewards on public transport rides (virtually all Citi cards don’t earn rewards for SimplyGo). Fortunately, there’s no shortage of alternatives for this category.
Don’t panic, because you can still earn Citi Miles or ThankYou points with all other Amaze transactions.
You can continue to pair Amaze with the following Citibank cards and earn rewards:
| Card | Earn Rate | Remarks |
 Citi Rewards Card |
4 mpd | Cap at S$1K per s. month. Excludes travel* |
 Citi Prestige |
1.3 mpd | No cap |
 Citi PremierMiles Card |
1.2 mpd | No cap |
| *Travel transactions include airlines, hotels, rental cars, tour agencies, cruises. Refer to T&Cs for full list of MCCs |
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The Citi Rewards Card is the pick of the lot, because Amaze converts all offline transactions into online ones that are eligible for 4 mpd (with the exclusion of travel and, need I say it, Citi’s regular rewards exclusions).
In short, this exclusion is meant to close a manufactured spending loophole. I won’t go into the details here, suffice to say it was already partially nerfed by Amaze back in February when they added a 2% fee for EZ-Link top-ups.
| ⚠️ UOB has something similar |
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If you’ve looked at the UOB rewards T&Cs, you’ll might have noticed they have a similar term: AMAZE*TRANSIT was excluded from 1 March 2022. Again, this does not constitute an exclusion of all Amaze transactions (so please stop emailing me about this!). These all continue to earn rewards as per normal. |
Additional exclusions
Citi has added the following clause to its T&Cs:
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Further, transactions bearing any of the abovementioned merchant descriptions including any combination, permutation or derivation of the abovementioned merchant descriptions, whether in whole or in part, will be excluded from rewards earn (for example, transactions bearing the merchant description of “[Company Name]*AXS”, “[Company Name]*BUS”, “[Company Name]*MRT”, “[Company Name]*EZ-link” and “[Company Name]*TRANSIT”, where [Company Name] could refer to any entity will be excluded from rewards earn). The Bank’s decision on this is final. |
The way I see it, this has been done in order to pre-empt any future Amaze-style product that adds a modifier to transactions which are meant to be excluded.
As you may already know, banks sometimes exclude merchants by name rather than MCC, in order to avoid collateral damage to “legitimate” transactions. However, transaction modifiers like Amaze end up circumventing these text-based filters, so this plugs the loophole.
Removed exclusions
Citi has removed the following transactions to its exclusion list:
- MB* MONEYBOOKERS.COM
- PAYPAL* PLUS500
- PAYPAL* OANDAASIAPA
- PAYPAL* BIZCONSULTA
- PAYPAL* CAPITALROYA
- SKR*SKRILL.COM
- SKR*xglobalmarkets.com
These are all trading companies which accept account top-ups through PayPal or a similar platform. Again, the idea behind these exclusions was to close a loophole for manufactured spending, without nuking all PayPal transactions (as Citi briefly considered in 2018!).
So why remove them? I can hardly believe they’re going to start awarding points on these; it’s probably because they’ve found another way of blocking them- perhaps under the MCC for quasi-cash transactions (if you have any insights, do chime in).
What are the other exclusions?
Citibank’s rewards exclusion list continues to feature many of the usual suspects:
- Charitable donations
- Government Agencies
- Insurance Premiums
- Prepaid Account Top-Ups
- Real Estate Agents and Managers- Rentals
- Schools & Educational Institutions
- Utilities
However, Citibank does not exclude hospital transactions– both private and public hospitals will continue to earn rewards.
Likewise, you can still earn rewards with CardUp, although it’s hard to see why you would when Citi PayAll offers a much more competitive rate.
Conclusion
Citibank has announced a new rewards exclusion list that takes effect from 26 July 2023. This will exclude some Amaze transactions, but frankly speaking, I’d much rather Citi exclude these than nuke Amaze altogether (as DBS did). It’s a much more surgical approach.
If you don’t have an Amaze Card yet, be sure to check out the details below.
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| Apply here |
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| 💳 tl;dr: Amaze Card |
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