We may receive a commission when you use our links. Monkey Miles is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CreditCards.com and CardRatings. This relationship may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Monkey Miles is also a Senior Advisor to Bilt Rewards. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card
Starting in 2018 Capital One has been growing a progressively better and better reward ecosystem. They have not only made an incredible transition from a mainly a cashback focused program to one that offers incredible transfer partners, but they have created fantastic card products. The focus? Make it straight forward and simple. That’s exactly what the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card is…simple.
Earn 2x miles on every single purchase you make without a cap and they have a great welcome offer.
Many other cards in the marketplace offer a litany of credits, etc that if used properly help to offset the annual fee. This isn’t what Capital One does. They have a simple structure of earning 2x miles on every purchase, 5x miles on specific Capital One travel bookings, a juicy Global Entry/TSA PreCheck® of up to $120 credit every 4 years, and a $95 annual fee.
The biggest competitor is the Chase Sapphire Preferred®, and over the long run, this card may actually be a bigger earner than the CSP because of the unlimited 2x everywhere.
Table of Contents
Is this the best offer we’ve ever seen?
Capital One Venture Rewards has offered a 100k miles offer in the past, BUT, you needed to spend $20k over 12 months to fully get the bonus. That would be 140k miles, give or take, on $20k spend.
That’s a lot of spend, so personally, I prefer the lower spend requirement offers that yield a lower bonus.
2x miles on everything with no limits
As I just mentioned above, you’ll get 2x Capital One miles on every. single.purchase. No need to worry about category bonuses, etc, you will earn 2 outstanding miles on every dollar you spend. Best part…it isn’t capped at any fixed amount. If you spend $1 Billion dollars, you’d earn 2 Billion miles. Ok…this is extreme but you get the point.
$120 Global Entry or TSA PreCheck® credit
You can receive up to a $120 credit, every 4 years, to put towards membership in either program. Quick tip, membership in Global Entry gets you TSAPre® as a part of the program, so you’re better off going that route since its a 2 for 1.
Can you combine your miles with other Capital One accounts? This is incredible.
Yes, you can combine your miles into one account. This applies to accounts under your name, and also to ANYONE else that has a Venture or Spark account. Pretty awesome.
Can I hold this and the Capital One Venture X
Yes you can but you need to be aware of Capital One’s application rules
How often can I get a Capital One credit card?
The rule has normally been regarded as such: Capital One will limit you to 1 new card every 6 months. This rule applies not only to personal cards, but to business cards alike. To further clarify, if you get a Capital One Venture Rewards, you’d have to wait 6 months to get a Capital One Venture X Business even though one is personal and the other is business.
- Remember that if you already have 2 personal cards it doesn’t matter if its been 6 months, you won’t get approved
There have been some exceptions to this rule when it comes to the Capital One Venture X and the Capital One Spark Cash Plus
- It seems that people have been approved for both of these cards even if you have gotten another Capital One card in the past 6 months
- Don’t count on this unequivocally, but there have been a lot of data points to back this up
What can I do with 75k Capital One Miles?
There are 3 main things you can do with your Miles
- $750 within Capital One Travel
- Offset any travel purchase at 1 penny per point
- Transfer to partners
At the very least you’ll walk away with 83k Capital One Miles which you could use in Cap1 travel for a minimum of $830. There have been instances where Capital One has really attractive offers for sporting events whereby you can redeem your miles for tickets at advantageous pricing. But…
You know I’m a transfer freak, so the options listed above isn’t where I’d throw them, but that’s the bare minimum value you’d extract. Instead, I would focus on using them to transfer into partners.
The 15+ Capital One Transfer Partners are really valuable
Here’s a pretty chart regarding Capital One transfer partners. I’m really impressed with how far Capital One has come in just a few years regarding their push to establish themselves in the travel rewards ecosystem. This is an impressive list of 15+ partners and all but two are 1:1
- The following partners are now 1:1
- Aeromexico Club Premier
- Air Canada Aeroplan
- Avianca LifeMiles
- Air France Flying Blue
- British Airways Executive Club
- Cathay Pacific Asia Miles
- Choice Privileges
- Etihad Guest
- Emirates
- Finnair Plus
- Qantas Frequent Flyer
- Singapore Airlines
- TAP Air Portugal Miles&Go
- Turkish Airlines Miles and Smiles
- Virgin Red
- Wyndham Rewards
- Accor transfer 2:1
- EVA transfers 2:1.5
Read this article to see the 50 best ways to use Capital One Miles
Hotel partners
The Accor situation could be quite interesting. Accor’s redemption is such that 2000 Accor points = 40 Euro credit. So 4000 Cap1 miles = 40Eur off. Since you’re earning 2x on purchases, you’re earning 0.02Eur on each dollar spent when transferred to Accor. Pretty decent hotel discount actually.
How quickly do you accrue the bonus and miles?
Anecdotally, people are reporting that Capital One is crediting accounts with miles when the purchases hit the account rather than having to wait until the statement processes.
Can you earn referrals?
Yes, up to 100k miles a year.
Overall
I have the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card which I absolutely love and use for personal expenses whenever I don’t have a category bonus to take advantage of, so I’m not 100% sure I’ll pick this card up. But, I’m quite tempted since its offering a really attractive welcome offer.
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.