Citi 48-month bonus cooldown

What it does

Most Citi cards (Strata Premier, Custom Cash, Double Cash, AAdvantage cards) carry a 48-month bonus cooldown: if you received the welcome bonus on a product within the last 48 months, you cannot earn it again. The clock starts when the previous bonus was received, not when you applied or when the account opened. Citi enforces this silently - the application can still be approved and the card still ships, but the bonus simply never posts.

How it works

• Each product is evaluated independently: a Strata Premier bonus does not block a Custom Cash bonus. There is no Citi-wide family aggregation.
• Renamed lineages share one clock: Premier and Strata Premier are the same product (Strata Premier replaced Premier in 2024), and the base Strata inherits Rewards+ history the same way.
• Conversions count: if you converted a card whose bonus you earned into a different product within the window, the new product inherits the disqualification.
• The rule is per-SSN, including for business cards - applying under a new business entity does not reset it.
• Closed accounts still count - the 48-month clock runs from the bonus-received date, not account status.
• Citi's velocity rules are separate from the bonus cooldown: 1 card per 8 days, 2 per 65 days on the personal side, and 1 business card per 95 days govern whether the application is approved at all.

What to do

• Don't reapply for the same Citi product inside 48 months - you'll get the card without the bonus, which makes any annual fee a pure loss.
• When timing a re-bonus, schedule the application at month 49 from when your last bonus was received (give a small buffer, since the exact bonus-posting date controls).
• Rotate across products: Strata Premier → Custom Cash → AAdvantage each run their own independent 48-month clock.