Citi / AAdvantage Business World Elite Mastercard

Rewards by category

Our take

This is the American Airlines card for a business that already flies American. It earns 2 AAdvantage miles per dollar on eligible American Airlines purchases, at car rental merchants and gas stations, and at telecommunications merchants and cable and satellite providers; everything else earns 1 mile per dollar, and Citi states there is no maximum on the miles an account can accumulate. At SwipeCaddy's conservative 1.2-cent valuation, those 2x categories work out to roughly a 2.4% return.

Three qualifiers decide whether the earn table is as good as it looks. The airline rate covers eligible American Airlines purchases, not all airfare, so a ticket bought through a third party can land at 1x. The travel rate is narrower than our category: Citi names car rental merchants, so cruises, vacation rentals and tours earn the base rate even though they share the category page. And the telecom rate covers telecommunications merchants plus cable and satellite providers — streaming services are not named, so we do not claim them.

The annual fee is $0 for the first year and $99 after that, and there are no foreign transaction fees on purchases, which makes it a sensible card to carry on a trip you already booked on American. One structural detail worth knowing before you apply: the miles post to the company's AAdvantage Business account rather than the cardmember's personal AAdvantage account. Only Loyalty Points, the status currency, accrue to the individual. Citi advertises a welcome offer on this page, but its size is rendered by the page's own scripts and we could not read it, so we do not publish a number.

The math

Run $200 a month of gas through this card and you're earning about $58 a year at our conservative valuations. Against the $99 annual fee, that top rate needs roughly $2,075 a month of gas spend before it beats a no-fee flat 2% card.

Store bonuses

• American Airlines2x

Key benefits

• $0 introductory annual fee, $99 after the first year
• No foreign transaction fees on purchases
• No maximum on the number of AAdvantage miles the account can accumulate

Common questions

Does Citi / AAdvantage Business World Elite Mastercard have an annual fee?

Yes — $99 per year.

What does Citi / AAdvantage Business World Elite Mastercard earn on gas?

2x on gas.

What rewards does Citi / AAdvantage Business World Elite Mastercard earn on everything else?

1x on all other purchases, in American Airlines AAdvantage.

Is this the same card as the CitiBusiness / AAdvantage Platinum Select?

It is the product that replaced it. Citi's own card lineup no longer lists a Platinum Select business card; the live business product is the Citi / AAdvantage Business World Elite Mastercard described here. If you are comparing against an older article, check the earn table against this one before assuming the rates carried over.

Do the miles go to me or to my business?

To the business. Miles earned on this card post to the company's AAdvantage Business account, not to the cardmember's personal AAdvantage account, so they are spent on company travel rather than a personal award ticket. The individual cardmember still accrues Loyalty Points, which is what drives AAdvantage status.

Related reading

• How we value points and miles (and why our numbers are lower than everyone else's)SwipeCaddy ranks cards by reward rate × a conservative cash value per point: 1¢ for cash back and transferable points (Chase, Amex, Citi, Capital One, Bilt), 1.1–1.3¢ for airline miles, 0.4–1.4¢ for hotel points, and 0.8–0.9¢ for store currencies. Optimistic transfer values are recorded for context but never ranked, because most people never achieve them.