Earn points on Bank Transfers

[Legoman]

Calendar

 

[SOPOOR]

Nope, that's not what's going on. Citibank's archaic systems block you from doing anything new for 24hrs after you've cancelled a payment. Call it an anti-spam flooding measure if you like. It's undocumented and you won't get any acknowledgement of it existing from their CSR either, but it exists. This is why the advice is that if you want to cancel any scheduled payments, then make those cancellations the very LAST thing you do after you've set up the new ones, because once you cancel, you'll be locked out of doing anything more until tomorrow.

There are other 1 day lock outs for doing other things too. For example I transferred some money into my credit card to lift the available credit to an amount that would enable me to execute an FPO cash out to get a cheap eGift card. Doing that locked me out of starting that FPO until the next day too. Citibank's systems need to do a reconciliation 'reset' overnight before a lot of things will be allowed, but unless you work for the Citibank back office or are their IT person, you won't ever find a documented list of what all these triggers are. You only find out about them when you accidentally trigger one and suffer the 1 day lock out yourself.

Another particularly annoying lock-out trigger they have is the addition of a new payee. To any normal way of thinking, the only time anyone would want to add a new payee is when they actually want to USE that payee to pay money to immediately. Unfortunately Citibank's batsh!t systems are so utterly cough that adding a new payee will lock you out from using that new payee until the next day with an "error" that says FG1441. When you interrogate their CSR to explain what FG1441 means, they just feed you some BS scripted cough about fraud and security and health & safety and privacy and inclusiveness and climate change and same-sex marriage and whatever other wokist cause-du-jour they can come up with to deflect from the fact their systems are too cough to deal with more than one request every 24 hours.

You can sometimes reset the lock-out by logging out and back in again, but this doesn't work more often than it does. You can also force them to reset it if you can get transferred to the Security & Fraud Team who seem to hold the keys to this lock-out system, but it's actually impossible to talk to anyone in the fraud team directly. No CSR will ever put you through to this mysterious team. If you really ramp up the agro to DEFCON 11 and threaten a case with AFCA, someone will eventually clear to lock-out and clear the path forward… but, be warned, it will take at least an hour on chat or the phone before you can get to this.

Can confirm this

Cancelled and tried to reinstate a plan, it didn't work
Waited a week, and it worked fine today

 

[Legoman]

Not even threatening AFCA will get Citibank to act often times. Last Wednesday very early morning I had reason to contact Citibank online chat about something. When the CSR had agreed that my argument was valid and apologised endlessly, as is their wont, he told he would get a case manager to call me to resolve the issue. He said this would happen in 2-3 days, because literally everything takes Citibank at least 2-3 days to organise. Helpfully I said that's fine and in that case, could we count Wednesday as day 1 and that therefore I should expect a response before CoB on Friday, as that would be the end of day 3. He duly agreed that would be the case. I said fine, I will patiently wait until the end of Friday, but if no-one called me, I would then write the AFCA case claim on Saturday. You would think that sort of a comment would prompt a reaction wouldn't you? Nup.

Of course no one called, I never imagined for a minute they would, so the AFCA claim got lodged this morning. I then helpfully opened a chat with Citibank again and gave them the lnk to the case for them to get a head start on it before it comes direct from AFCA. That too prompted much apologising and more promises for a case manager to call me urgently… to no avail whatsoever. Citibank are utterly hopeless and beyond redemption. They deserve to be taken for all they're worth by everyone hammering them for all these offers as hard as they can.

 

[Pele]

Not even threatening AFCA will get Citibank to act often times. Last Wednesday very early morning I had reason to contact Citibank online chat about something. When the CSR had agreed that my argument was valid and apologised endlessly, as is their wont, he told he would get a case manager to call me to resolve the issue. He said this would happen in 2-3 days, because literally everything takes Citibank at least 2-3 days to organise. Helpfully I said that's fine and in that case, could we count Wednesday as day 1 and that therefore I should expect a response before CoB on Friday, as that would be the end of day 3. He duly agreed that would be the case. I said fine, I will patiently wait until the end of Friday, but if no-one called me, I would then write the AFCA case claim on Saturday. You would think that sort of a comment would prompt a reaction wouldn't you? Nup.

Of course no one called, I never imagined for a minute they would, so the AFCA claim got lodged this morning. I then helpfully opened a chat with Citibank again and gave them the lnk to the case for them to get a head start on it before it comes direct from AFCA. That too prompted much apologising and more promises for a case manager to call me urgently… to no avail whatsoever. Citibank are utterly hopeless and beyond redemption. They deserve to be taken for all they're worth by everyone hammering them for all these offers as hard as they can.

I agree 100% with the theme of this comment. I have also had bad experiences with them that were totally citibanks fault. Never apologised. Throughout my dealings with them I realised their systems were utterly useless and now when i spot a loophole with them I go for gold with not a shred of guilt. I actually find it motivating.

Pele.

 

[Legoman]

The only reason anyone puts up with Citibank is the ridiculously generous offers you can pillage with abandon exercising the loopholes like a maniac. If they were a generic bank like all the others with the same vanilla offers, their utter lack of anything even vaguely recognisable as customer service would see them kicked to the kerb in world record time by any rational, right thinking person with a modicum of common sense.

I especially enjoy putting the PayAll funds back into a Citibank Online Saver account and making Citibank pay me interest on their own money too.

 

[SOPOOR]

i was just doing the maths, well trying to

doesnt the day you do schedule not matter for maximum interest free days, since you are going to take the cash out and put it back to your credit card so that the next months transaction can go through? ie you will always have the cash in your accounts except for the few days you transfer?

 

[Legoman]

Depends entirely on the individual's card credit limit

 

[Happy Dude]

I tried to amend a payall payment by a few days, cancelling the one in place. Now it won't allow me to add a new payment:

" ! Payment Unsuccessful - You have reached the maximum monthly limit allowed for the selected category"

Doesn't seem to matter what category or payee I use, same message. I'm doing only two payments per month totalling $13k on a $15k limit card, so I'm well within all the transfer and category rules.

Hard not to conclude that they're blocking the set up of obviously fabricated payments.

Turns out I was exceeding my monthly limit because I was trying to set up new payments for months that I had already set up max payments. Just a mix up of the dates that resulted in overlapping payments. All good from now until 2031.

 

[Legoman]

Can't figure out how you get to 2031. When I set mine up the latest start date available for any scheduled payment was in 2025 and the longest term you could choose to run it for was 2 years, hence the furthest forward any payment scheme could go was 2025+ 2 years = 2027.

All academic though of course because when NAB take over next year, this scheme is all going to be shut down.

 

[Happy Dude]

I have payments set up to commence in 2029. Just had a look and I can set up payments starting 6 Dec 2031. But as you say it's academic.

 

[theblank]

If done only for the Coles gift cards, may I ask why you went for the 12 month payout instead of 6? Unless I'm mistaken in how the scheme works, it does seem like the fee for 6 month payoff is a lot less than for 12 month

You are right, I actually did do 6 months. I am clearly not paying attention, and i now have $9600 in this instalment scheme, and combined with a flurry of Payall transfers yesterday I am now $1500 over my limit. Its messy, but it all looks after itself

I have also lost track of the $100 vouchers to be received, but in november i did receive 2 on the same day. Citi do seem trustable that they send them and customer service can very quickly answer whether the gift card was sent and for which promotion date it was.

 

[Legoman]

I set calendar reminders for when to chase the gift cards based on the 16 week period they say it takes to send them from the date of Quick Cash payment. 16 weeks is such a ridiculous time frame, I knew right from the getgo it would require calendar reminders to chase when they inevitably don't turn up. The time is so long they're clearly budgeting on people forgetting about them and not chasing.

 

[SydneySwan]

I set calendar reminders for when to chase the gift cards based on the 16 week period they say it takes to send them from the date of Quick Cash payment. 16 weeks is such a ridiculous time frame, I knew right from the getgo it would require calendar reminders to chase when they inevitably don't turn up. The time is so long they're clearly budgeting on people forgetting about them and not chasing.

I also setup calendar reminders for 16 weeks. I have found the GCs usually turn up in the 14 - 15 week time range.

 

[Jstar]

Has anyone else had issues with PayAll payments to the ATO not being received by the ATO? It has recently happened to both myself and someone else I know.

I've previously made payments to the ATO without problem. I had setup a recurring payment to the ATO with the first to occur on 28 October 2021. It deducted from my Citibank Signature and shows as a transaction but the ATO has no record of it. In the PayAll details in the app there is no log of the payment under the "Completed" tab but the recurring payment does show up in the "Active" tab. I'm not sure if this is normal?

Also when I select the recurring payment in the "Active" tab it has the Recipient Details correct (Bank name and Account number with the first 4 digits blanked out) but there is no "Remarks" section, which does show up on all my other completed PayAll transactions and a new recurring payment I set up for testing. And when setting up the transaction, I did make sure the correct Remarks was put for the ATO payment.

My friend who the same thing happened to, had done a single once off payment.

Not sure if somehow the payment just didn't go through or if it was sent to ATO without the correct Remarks/Reference number.

I've contacted Citibank who have not been so helpful constantly refering to the reference number for the transaction on my credit card statement. It seems they really don't know how this PayAll thing works.

Thanks.

 

[Legoman]

It's for this very reason that I never set up any payments to mission critical payees. With no website access and all managed via mobile phone app only, this whole PayAll scheme has "dodgy" written all over it. Sure it works most of the time, but when it fails you've got minimal evidence gathering opportunities and as you've experienced, the normal Citibank website CSR staff appear to know nothing about PayAll and only suggest that it's handled by some other offshoot team of theirs whom you have no access to for information or transaction receipts. Basically, when it goes bad, Citibank abandon you and you're on your own to try and prove to the payee that they've got your money.

This was instantly obvious to me when first looking at the scheme and seeing that it had no built in way of contacting the management team behind it. By being app-only, it is designed to be completely self-managed with minimal to no human intervention required. This was confirmed when I made my one and only inquiry about how it works and what the restrictions/thresholds are and got absolutely nowhere with the Citibank CSR staff. It is abundantly obvious that they have no idea either and have received no training on it at all. I could clearly see that as soon as a payment failed, you'd be in a huge fight with ghosts to find out where your money went and be left with virtually no comeback against anyone.

I only do payments to payees that I control. So effectively just shuffling money around between self-managed accounts in various different names, so that when a payment fails it only has two places to fall and be retrieved - both of which are controlled by me. I've had a few payments fail for various reasons (overdrawn credit limit on card; weird rules interpretation by Citibank as to when a month starts/stops; inadvertently exceeding published limits during time period caused by weird interpretation of what constitutes a "month" by Citibank etc.), but in all cases the money only ever went or stayed where I effectively still had it, so there was never a need to contact and complain to the utterly useless Citibank robo-staff and their pre-prepared scripts to try and find it again. Just bank the experience into the "learning about Citibank" folder and move on knowing not to repeat the mistake in future.

Unfortunately with Citibank, this is the only way you can learn about what they will and will not do. Their published rules and terms are so rubbery and open to interpretation that you can never know exactly what will happen in every possible situation and their staff won't clear the confusion up for you either, but rather add to it. The best advice with Citibank is to stay right in the middle of the road all the time. Never stray too close to the edge or the white line. Because if you do, Citibank will be sure to bite you.

In a nutshell, if something is only accessible via a mobile phone app and has no real website support behind it… be very, very wary. Xinja neobank is the classic example of that, but also all the other neobanks like 86400, Volt etc. Very, very dodgy.

 

[Jstar]

Agree, the app only management should have rung some bells. Hopefully somewhere there is a record of the PayAll transaction and some CSR actually knows how to access it...

 

[Danger]

I do transfer weekly to bank account, and BPay it back as soon as the money into my bank account. Up to $35000 per month.

Is this still working for you? What purpose or reason are you telling Citi for the transactions (e.g. education expenses, tax etc.)?

Except for this:

Uncapped points for Citi PayAll payments.

Source:
Citi Premier CC(www1.citibank.com.au)
Citi Premier Qantas CC(www1.citibank.com.au)
Check "Others ways to earn Citi reward Points when you spend" on both above links

Perhaps the links have been updated but I couldn't find anything on the QF Premier page that says PayAll payments are uncapped. With the exception of your experience, do we know if the PayAll earning is in fact uncapped? I have the Citi

Just received Oct statement which reveals I have been credited my 210,000th point since Apr this year when I started on this gravy train. 210,000 points in 6 and a bit months confirms there is no 200K ceiling cap on bonus points earn via PayAll in a calendar year.

Has there been any change to this (i.e. are you still earning in excess of 200K a year)? I have the Citi Premier Qantas which seems to have a stated max of 100K points were year.

 

[Legoman]

Has there been any change to this (i.e. are you still earning in excess of 200K a year)? I have the Citi Premier Qantas which seems to have a stated max of 100K points were year.

No change that I can see. Points earned through PayAll now sitting up somewhere around ~340K

 

[Catweazle]

Can you earn points through bank transfers with AMEX somehow? If so, what's the process?

 

[AIRwin]

Can you earn points through bank transfers with AMEX somehow? If so, what's the process?

Interested to know as well...