Jet Airways Citibank Silver
CancelThe free rung: a frequent-flyer account you did not have to fly to open.
a year at ₹40,000 a month, after the fee
Skip the arithmetic — the board, ranked → · nothing to sign up for
What it's worth to you, after the fee
Welcome: Automatic enrolment in JetPrivilege, Jet Airways' frequent-flyer programme, on card approval — the card was the membership
Priced on the everyday mix — 30% groceries · 10% utilities · 20% travel · 6% fuel · 34% everything else — with this card's published category rules applied. Plus milestones, minus the fee. No accelerator credit — the ranking model on /compare adds ~20% of spend at the card's best accelerator, so its ₹ for this card reads higher.
How these numbers are computed — and why the rankings show a bigger one →
Spend tiers, milestones and fee waivers included, at our house ₹/point. Portal and category multipliers can push higher — run your exact number →
Pays from the first rupee
At ₹1,000 a month — ₹12,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹0 gross (earn ₹0) against its ₹0 fee = ₹0 net — at or above ₹0 from the first rung we price. The ladder runs in ₹1,000 steps to ₹1,00,000 a month and ₹10,000 steps to ₹5,00,000; figures are rounded to the hundred, and the accelerator is never credited.
2 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · why it ranks #865
Why #865 The entry rung of India's first airline co-brand — a free card whose entire proposition was automatic frequent-flyer membership and miles on ordinary spend, at a time when neither was ordinary. Carried for the record; Citi withdrew the whole Jet programme on 16 July 2012.
The take
The Silver was the bottom of Citi's four-rung Jet Airways ladder and the most quietly radical of them, because of what it did rather than what it paid. It was free for life, and approval came with automatic membership of JetPrivilege — in the mid-2000s that was the point, when a frequent-flyer account was something you earned by flying and an Indian card that minted miles on groceries was a novelty. Beyond the accrual there was very little: no vouchers, no baggage allowance, no lounges, none of the upgrade certificates the Gold rung above it carried. What it did have was the JetPrivilege partner network on the other side of the points, which Citi listed on the page and which reads like a period map of Indian luxury travel: the Oberoi, the Leela, the Park, ITC Welcomgroup, Trident, Radisson, Hyatt and AVIS. It also carried a ceiling worth noting, printed on the page in bold: miles accrued only on spend up to your credit line in any month, so a heavy spender on a modest limit simply stopped earning. Citi and JetPrivilege separated in 2012 and the co-brand was withdrawn on 16 July that year. The 2 JPMiles per ₹100 it paid is priced here at the InterMiles house value of ₹0.20 a mile — 0.40%. That is what it PAID, not what a surviving balance is worth: JPMiles became InterMiles, and InterMiles withdrew full redemption in October 2023.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
This card is lifetime free. There is no fee due, no renewal to weigh, and nothing to cancel to save.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
nothing due at the anniversary · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹0 — lifetime free
At your spend
₹1,200 a year at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹2,400 a year at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹4,800 a year at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹14,400 a year at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹24,000 a year at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend
Everyday earn plus milestones, with no fee to subtract — the same model as the value panel above, so the two cannot disagree. run your exact spend →
The downgrade
Citibank publishes no document naming a card you can step down to, so we name none — an invented product change is a phone call you would waste. That leaves keep or cancel, and the numbers above are the whole of it.
If you call to cancel
What the bank offers to keep you is the one fact this desk cannot compute. We are collecting those reports — dated, and only in aggregate — before publishing any: an offer one reader was made is not one you are owed. Called about this card? Tell us what they offered →
The desk publishes subscribable .ics feeds for the dates it knows — offer deadlines, devaluations, expiry audits. Your renewal date is not one of them: only your statement knows it.
What's good
- Free for life — Citi published no joining fee and no renewal fee
- Automatic JetPrivilege membership on approval, at a time when a frequent-flyer account meant flying for one
- Redemptions ran across Jet Airways and its 20-plus airline partners
- Full waiver of the 2.5% fuel surcharge at IndianOil outlets
Watch out
- WITHDRAWN — Citi ended the Jet Airways co-brand on 16 July 2012 and moved holders to PremierMiles
- Miles accrued only on monthly spend up to your credit line — Citi printed the cap on the page
- Award redemption needed 10,000 JPMiles or ten flights before it opened at all
- No vouchers, no baggage allowance and no lounge access: those started at the Gold rung above it
- The 0.40% is what it PAID: JPMiles became InterMiles, which withdrew full redemption on 27 October 2023
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes InterMiles into a programme that publishes an award chart. These points buy catalogue and portal redemptions, not award seats — so this page has no flight to show you, and will not invent one.
what the cards that DO reach a chart can fly — 2,196 corridors priced →
Lounge access
0 of 793 tracked doors
No lounge access. This card opens exactly 0 of 793 tracked lounge doors — board with the crowd, or find a card that doesn't →
Can you get it?
the route in — no cutoffs published
The cutoffs and the actual route in — not the "apply now" button, the door that opens.
Closed to new applications — existing cardholders keep the card; there is no way in.
You cannot. The programme was withdrawn on 16 July 2012 and citibank.co.in no longer serves a page for it; Citibank's Indian consumer card book was subsequently sold to Axis Bank.
Citibank publishes no income or age cutoffs for this card. Blank means blank — we don't invent numbers to fill a grid.
no MITC row researched for this card yet · filter the board by what you can get →
What's changed for this card
8 dated changes
Devaluations and buffs that touch this card directly, its issuer, or the points and programs it earns and transfers to. Every one is dated here; the tracker carries each one's before → after and the write-up.
- 15 Apr 2021Citi announces exit from Indian consumer bankingCiti credit cards, retail and wealth in India → Consumer business up for sale (later to Axis)
Citi called time on its Indian consumer arm — including its cult PremierMiles and Rewards cards — citing a lack of scale. The portfolio would eventually pass to Axis, ending one of India's most-loved rewards ecosystems.
- 1 Jun 2020InterMiles resets the clock, drags elite status into 2021
- 14 Nov 2019JetPrivilege drops the Jet, relaunches as InterMiles
- 12 Oct 2019Citi India guts reward earning on utilities, insurance, and tax
- 17 Apr 2019Jet Airways grounds its fleet; JPMiles left in limbo
- 6 Sept 2018Jet Airways pilots threaten revolt over unpaid salaries
- 22 Aug 2018Jet Airways-Bangkok Airways codeshare adds 9 new cities
- 30 Jun 2018JetPrivilege kills JPMiles expiry — first Indian program to do it
Every Citibank change we've dated → 7 events since 2012, 4 of them nerfs — worst year 2019.
Verified against Citibank's own documents on · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 2 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Citibank India's product page for the Jet Airways Citibank Silver Card, archived 31 August 2007 — the free-for-life statement, the JetPrivilege enrolment and the credit-line accrual cap
- community Live From A Lounge on the end of the Citi–Jet co-brand — withdrawn 16 July 2012 after more than twelve years