Los Angeles — If you have ever found yourself accumulating enough rewards points on your credit card to let you actually do something with them, Citibank has come up with an interesting option for you. Citi today announced the Citi ThankYou Point Sharing App, a Facebook app that allows users to “pool” their credit card reward points collectively, and use their points’ collective value towards a shared goal, such as a charitable donation or a reward from thankyou.com.
The ThankYou Point Sharing App, which is currently only available in the US, builds on a service unleashed last year that lets customers transfer points to each other on the bank’s homepage.
Now, the company is allowing its ThankYou members rewards program users to pool their points together, via Facebook to make a charitable donation, or choose from a range of rewards on www.thankyou.com. For instance, if the kids want to fly mom and dad to Key West for their anniversary, it is now easier to do that with just points.
Citi is branding it as “the first Facebook app from a loyalty program that is both a rewarding and social experience.”
In order to harvest the app’s beta launch, Citi is offering 10 million ThankYou points to qualifying ThankYou members on Facebook. Initially, the 4,000 ThankYou members to link the ThankYou Point Sharing App to their personal Facebook page before 11:59 PM EST on February 3, 2012 will receive 2,500 ThankYou points within 72 hours.
The program, according to Citi’s Ralph Andretta, empowers the bank to reach customers where they “are every day”. In fact, to get started, you will need to go through Citi’s Facebook page, rather than the bank’s site itself. Once you have finished that, you can start a “rewards pool” by telling who it is for and explaining why the points are being collected. Caveat emptor, however, as the person that you name (again, via Facebook) will have all control over the points.
Moreover, Citibank customers can now team up online to pool their reward points for a wide range of categories, including gift, personal goal, charity, or whatever purpose they choose. Citibank, which said it is the first bank ever to offer such a pooling service online, decided to build on its transfer points program and move it into the world of social media after getting positive feedback from its customers.
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Here is how to use the Citi ThankYou Point Sharing App:
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Visit the Citibank Facebook Page and view the ThankYou Point Sharing tab to link the app to your ThankYou account. ThankYou members will be prompted to enter their username and password to log in to their accounts.
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Start a pool of points for an individual, group, or cause, and set a goal. For example, the goal could be for a large group donation to a charitable organization, or points required for a specific reward from the ThankYou catalog. The app also enables members to highlight a desired item on their ThankYou Wishlist when setting a goal for the pool.
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Members can select a specific amount of ThankYou points they would like to contribute to the pool.
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They can invite any number of Facebook friends who are ThankYou members to join the pool. All participants in a point pool must have the Facebook app linked to their ThankYou account.
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They also have the option to share a Facebook wall post after creating a point pool to encourage friends and family to join and contribute.
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Members can track progress towards the goal for their points pool on the app, which displays a percentage of each goal reached.
“As our ThankYou members imagine all the ways to use their points this year, this app extends the possibilities,” said Andretta. He added, the new program will give customers much more flexibility in the way they control their points, whether it is to partner with another customer to get a big ticket item or help a friend travel home from college.
At the time of wrapping up this story, the Citibank US Facebook Page has almost 185,714 Likes while the Citi Facebook Page has 150,947 Likes.