Why The American Express Fidelity Card Is Better Than Citi Double Cash

Update: Unfortunately the Fidelity card no longer works with American Express, so a lot of the reasons I prefer this card is no longer valid. Read my review of this card here.

Earning at a high rate in bonus categories is great, but I always recommend people have a 2% cash back card for their every day expenses as well. The two most suggested 2% cash back cards are the American Express Fidelity credit card and the Citi Double Cash credit card because both have no annual fees.

Rather than comparing these cards, I’m going to straight up tell you why the American Express Fidelity card is better. As always, remember we don’t have any affiliate links so we have no bias in recommend either card (other bloggers do have affiliate links for the Citi Double Cash).

1. The Citi Double Cash doesn’t have a sign up bonus. It was possible to sneak in on a targeted sign up bonus when the card first launch, but this loophole has been closed. The American Express Fidelity card comes with a bonus of 5,000 points (worth $50+).
2. American Express cards can be enrolled in AmEx sync offers. These offers can be extremely profitable, to give you some idea last year I made ~$150 from each American Express card I had and I didn’t even hit these offers that hard.
3. American Express cards can be enrolled in Small Business Sunday. Last year that was worth 3 x $10 statement credit per enrolled card.
4. American Express Fidelity points can be worth up to 1.4¢ each when redeeming for travel. I’m not going to rehash what has been said already, instead read these two excellent posts by Milenomics: How to Redeem WorldPoints and Use TheFlightDeal.com to Supercharge your Fidelity Rewards Amex & The Best Travel Cash Back Card, And How to Use it

There are only two reasons as to why I’d see people preferring the Double Cash card to the Fidelity:

• The Citi Double Cash card is a MasterCard. Mastercard has slightly higher acceptance than American Express, but it’s not something I notice regularly anymore. I think the benefits of American Express I mentioned above (which amounted to $180 in value last year) far out weigh this.
• It’s possible to downgrade to the Citi Double Cash card. If you have an existing Citi credit card that is going unused and it has been open for more than 12 months, it’s possible to downgrade it to the Double Cash. This saves you a hard pull.

At the moment I’m actually using neither of these cards, as I recently picked up the Discover it Miles card which is offering 3% cash back for the first year (although there is considerable risk involved in getting this full 3%). Once that runs out I’ll go back to using my American Express Fidelity card in addition to my Barclaycard Arrival Plus card (which earns 2.22% when redeemed against travel expenses). You can view what we think the best credit cards for non bonus spending are here.