Credit Cards · August 2026
Citi publishes its purchase APR figure inside a linked PDF nearby
An AI agent ran five ordinary credit cards tasks on the public pages of Citi and scored what each page delivered.
Run 6 August 2026 · five tasks · public pages, logged out · Issuer
73/100
Mystery Agent score
Credit Cards · rank 11 of 25
Purchase APR
82Served as PDF
Card comparison
90Served as text
Pricing and terms
85Served as PDF
Welcome offer
92Served as text
Application page
15Arrives after scripts
Summary
- Citi's card pages carry a full FAQ block in the initial HTML, giving the welcome offer and a two-card comparison.
- An automated reader located the Pricing Information Table PDF, a one-page Fact Sheet stating every APR, fee, and penalty term.
- Purchase APR and welcome-bonus dollar figures on the card page render as empty placeholders filled in later by client-side script.
Citi also appears in the Deposits study, where it scores 46 and ranks 20 of 25.
See that scorecard.
Task by task
Each task is scored out of 100 on completion, answer quality and how directly the answer was reached. Each note describes what the page delivered, with a link to the page the answer was found on.
Task 01Purchase APRServed as PDF82 out of 100
The Double Cash card page names the pricing detail section but leaves the actual APR figure as an empty placeholder; a linked Pricing Information Table PDF states the purchase APR as 17.49% to 27.49%.
Task 02Card comparisonServed as text90 out of 100
Citi's FAQ block states the Double Cash card earns unlimited 2% cash back with a $0 annual fee, while the Custom Cash card earns 5% on the top spending category each cycle, plus 1% on everything else.
Task 03Pricing and termsServed as PDF85 out of 100
Though the page's Pricing Details accordion renders as empty template spans, the linked Pricing Information Table PDF gives a full Schumer box: purchase APR 17.49% to 27.49%, cash advance APR 29.74%, and a $0.50 minimum interest charge.
Task 04Welcome offerServed as text92 out of 100
The Double Cash product page's FAQ block answers the welcome-bonus question directly: a new cardholder earns a $200 welcome bonus by spending $1,500 on purchases within the first six months of opening the account.
Task 05Application pageArrives after scripts15 out of 100
Since the page's own Apply buttons render as disabled links, the working path is a pre-qualify link; a plain fetch of that page returns 13,505 bytes holding just 15 characters of visible text and zero form fields.
You can earn your $200 welcome bonus by spending $1,500 on purchases in the first 6 months.
The application page
What the account opening page states to a reader that runs no scripts.
13,505Bytes delivered
15Characters of visible text
0Form fields in the first response
After scripts runWhat an applicant needs
Strengths and opportunities
What is working
- Card product pages carry a full FAQPage schema.org block in the initial delivered HTML, so an agent gets the welcome offer and a plain-English two-card comparison without running any JavaScript.
- robots.txt is open and helpful: it disallows only a handful of narrow paths and publishes ten sitemaps, and the credit-cards sitemap leads directly to a Credit Card Agreements hub page with static links to per-card Pricing Information Table PDFs.
- The Pricing Information Table PDFs are clean, well-labeled one-page Fact Sheets that state every APR, fee, and penalty term in plain extractable text, a genuine Schumer-box disclosure delivered without a login.
Opportunities
- Purchase APR, balance transfer APR, and welcome-bonus dollar amounts on the card product pages are rendered as empty data-id spans filled in by client-side JavaScript, so an agent reading only the delivered HTML sees the surrounding sentence but not the number, even though the same figures are already sitting in a linked PDF one hop away.
- The 'Apply now' and 'See Pricing Details' buttons on card pages are delivered as disabled links with placeholder hrefs, so an agent cannot follow the primary call to action directly from the product page; it has to find the pre-qualify link or the agreements hub instead.
- The pre-qualify application page at online.citi.com returns a 13.5 KB single-page-app shell with 15 characters of visible text and zero form fields, so a plain GET cannot show a customer what information the application will eventually ask for.
Access
Every page the agent requested was delivered on the first attempt. Publishing an llms.txt file would give agent traffic a documented entry point.
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