Most CC issuers treat statement credits a little weird. For example, statement credits almost never count towards the minimum payment. The double cash to me is very clear. One percent on spending and one percent on your payments. A statement credit is not your payment but a credit given by the CC issuer. While this could be merely symantics, most of our contracts with major financial institutions are filled with similar phrasings where one could easily misconstrue the meaning.
As others have stated, setting up direct deposit is fairly simple. You have to wait till the 2nd statement cuts I believe before you can set it up. For those who prefer not to deal with that, taking a statement credit instead is a negligible reduction in benefits. I spend more than most and much less than many on my CCs each year (~60k/year). If all my spend was on the Double Cash (less than 10% of my spend is on this card) and I PIF'd my card and used the statement credit option, I would lose 6 dollars in redemptions. Instead of getting $1200 back, I would get $1194 back on 60k spend.
Yes, Citi could be clearer with their language and advertisements. Many people think of the card as a 2% card and not a 1% plus 1% card. While the two can be the same, they are not always the same as illustrated here. We could blacklist Citi and ignore them for their devious ways, but that would probably only hurt us. Not to mention every other bank is just as bad. You see threads about people not getting introductory or sign-up offers because they did not qualify for it (e.g. BT thinking they got 0% offer only to find out they got card but not the intro offer after the BT).
TLDR: Could Citi be clearer here? Sure. Are they doing anything different from other banks? No.
