Citi Strata Premier

The Strata Premier is Citi's mid tier travel card, and its distinguishing feature is breadth rather than depth. For $95 a year it pays 3x ThankYou points across air travel, hotels, restaurants, supermarkets and gas or EV charging, plus 10x on hotels, car rentals and attractions booked through CitiTravel, and 1x on everything else. Most cards at this price ask you to concentrate spending in two or three categories; this one covers both the trip and the weekly shop, which suits households whose spending is spread out rather than spiked. Citi looks for good to excellent credit, roughly 700 or higher, and it is a World Elite Mastercard. The 3x on supermarkets is what quietly does the work. A household spending across groceries, fuel, restaurants and a few flights a year can put a large share of its budget on one card at 3x, without the category juggling cheaper cards demand. The 10x CitiTravel rate is real but conditional: it applies only to Citi's own booking portal, which means checking the portal price against booking direct and accepting the weaker cancellation and loyalty treatment that portal bookings usually carry. The welcome offer is 60,000 ThankYou points after $4,000 in the first three months, which is the bulk of the card's first year value. On cost, the honest framing is that $95 has to come back every year, not just in year one. Valuing points conservatively at a cent each, the fee needs roughly 9,500 points a year of earning you would not otherwise get, which a household running a few thousand dollars through the 3x categories clears comfortably and a light spender does not. There is no intro APR offer here and the regular APR is 20.24% to 28.24% variable, so this is a pay in full card by design. One genuine plus for a travel product: it charges no foreign transaction fee, so it functions properly abroad. It is the wrong card if you rarely travel, since the 3x categories alone rarely justify the fee for a light spender, and a poor fit if you want cash back rather than a points currency you have to learn to redeem well. Anyone who expects to carry a balance should choose a no-fee card with an intro APR instead, because interest at these rates dwarfs 3x on anything you could buy.