Citi Simplicity Pricing and Information Table

Citibank's filed agreement for Citi Simplicity Pricing and Information Table discloses a purchase APR of 17.49%–28.24% and no annual fee. That purchase rate ranks near the 68th percentile across this corpus of 4,587 filings.

What the agreement puts on the record

Citibank filed this agreement for Citi Simplicity Pricing and Information Table with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The filing runs two pages.

On the record here: a purchase rate, a cash advance rate, a balance transfer rate, an annual fee line and a late payment maximum. It is silent on a penalty rate and a foreign transaction fee.

How the purchase rate compares

Rather than a single purchase rate, the document gives a band — 17.49% at the bottom, 28.24% at the top, 10.75 points wide. The agreement discloses the range without disclosing how an account is placed within it.

The floor of that band sits at about the 47th percentile of filed purchase rates; the ceiling sits at about the 68th. In corpus terms the same card can be cheap or expensive depending on how it is priced.

This is disclosed as a variable rate. The number above is a snapshot: it tracks an index, so it changes without the agreement being amended.

Translating the rate into money

Carry $2,000 on this card for a year without paying it down and the purchase rate alone generates roughly $652 in interest.

The median purchase rate across the corpus is 21.99%; the same balance there would cost about $492. The gap — roughly $161 a year on $2,000 — is the price of this particular filing over a typical one.

These figures are arithmetic on the disclosed rate, not a quote: they assume the balance is never reduced, ignore any payments, and take no account of fees charged separately.

What a missed payment costs

Late payments are capped at $0 under this filing, about the 2nd percentile of late fee maximums in the corpus.

The fee structure

The annual fee is $0. Roughly 75% of filings here that state a fee state zero, so the absence of one is unremarkable in this market.

For cash advances the filing discloses a cash advance APR of 29.74%. The premium over purchases is 1.5 percentage points. Cash advances also tend to fall outside any grace period, which means interest typically starts on day one rather than at the end of a billing cycle.

Balance transfers cost 0.05% of the amount transferred up front and then accrue at 17.49%. Shifting $5,000 across attracts something like $2 in fees on day one.

The grace period

The filing gives 23 days' grace on purchases, meaning a statement balance paid in full within that window attracts no interest. With a corpus median of 25 days, this window is narrower than the norm.

Where interest applies at all, the filing bills at least $0.50. On a tiny balance that floor can dwarf the rate itself.

The issuer's other agreements

82 separate Citibank filings appear in the corpus. The issuer's own range is 25.99%–34.24%. At 28.24%, this agreement is dearer than 8 of its siblings.

On fees, 33 of the 39 sibling filings that disclose an annual fee also set it at zero — this one is among them.

What you cannot learn from the filing

Absent from the captured terms: a foreign transaction fee and penalty pricing. The original document is the place to look for any of these.

What this analysis can address is bounded by the filing: rates, fees and the terms around them. Everything a card issuer might advertise — rewards, benefits, bonuses, who qualifies — falls outside the document and outside this review.

The document itself

The original filing, 2 pages long, is linked on this page and should be read before any figure here is acted on. It is also a snapshot: issuers refile as terms change.

In short

At 28.24% the purchase rate is close to ordinary for this corpus; nothing in the rate table sets this filing far apart from its peers. The absence of an annual fee means the rate is the only thing that can make this card expensive.