Capital One Miles Guide (2021)
Easily Earn Points for Free Travel, Introduction to 'Transferable' Reward Points
For years, the Capital One Venture program has been the most famous of the "fixed value" reward programs. You earned 2 "miles" per dollar on every purchase. But these miles didn't work like real frequent flyer miles. While you didn't need to worry about award availability, each mile had a fixed value of 1 cent per point. Essentially the card worked the same as a 2% cashback card, just one in which the only reasonable way to redeem your points was to refund travel purchases.
In late 2018, Capital One turned Venture points into a true transferable reward program. You can still use Venture "miles" to offset any travel purchase at 1 cent each, but you can also transfer them to over a dozen different frequent flyer programs in order to redeem them for frequent flyer tickets.
Venture Rewards is a valuable and worthwhile credit card program, but generally not quite as useful as the Chase Ultimate Rewards, Amex Membership Rewards, and Citi ThankYou programs. However, if you are a big fan of booking vacation rentals, you might want to prioritize the Capital One program in order to earn as many Wyndham points as you can.
Unfortunately, it can be hard to get approved for the Venture or Spark cards. But if you can, they typically have very valuable signup bonuses and give you the flexibility of earning 2 or more Capital One "miles" per dollar.
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Airline transfer partners
Points transfers are either instantaneous or take a day or two. The main exception is Cathay Pacific, where transfers can take up to a week. You can transfer points in 100 point increments, as long as you transfer a minimum of a 1,000 points at a time. Points Transfer Times.
Like the Membership and ThankYou Rewards programs, Capital One occasionally offers transfer bonuses (where you get bonus miles when you transfer your points to a specific airline partner). See Take Advantage of Transfer Bonuses to Get More Value from Your Reward Points for more information or Frequent Miler’s Current Transfer Bonuses page. for a list of current bonuses.
The number of miles you get for each point depends on the airline. With some airlines, you get as much as a full mile per point (or 2 miles for every dollar spent with your card). In the worst cases, you only get ½ mile per point (or 1 mile per dollar). And many of their better airline partners are in-between—you get $frac34; miles per point (or 1.5 mile pr dollar).
| Star Alliance (United) |
SkyTeam (Delta) |
Oneworld (American) |
Other |
|---|---|---|---|
| Air Canada (1:¾) (Aeroplan) |
Air France / KLM (1:¾) (Flying Blue) | Cathay Pacific (1:1) (Asia Miles) |
JetBlue (1:¾) |
| Turkish Airlines (1:¾) | Alitalia (1:¾) | British Airways (1:¾) | Etihad (1:1) |
| Avianca (1:1) | Aeromexico (1:1) | Qantas (1:1) | Emirates (1:½) |
| EVA Air (1:¾) | Finnair (1:1) | ||
| Singapore (1:½) | |||
| TAP Portugal (1:1) |
At first glance, Capital One has a better set of frequent flyer transfer partners than Ultimate Rewards and ThankYou Rewards. However, it is harder to earn lots of points with the Capital One program. More importantly, with many of the partners you get less than 1 mile per point.
For example, Capital One has perhaps ThankYou Reward's best partner in Turkish Airlines (which is fantastic for many United ans Star Alliance flights and isn't a partner of Membership Rewards or Ultimate Rewards) and some nice partners that aren't available through ThankYou Rewards, but 2 Venture points only gets you 1.5 Turkish miles, while 2 ThankYou points gets you 2 Turkish miles.
Similarly British Airways is great for many shorter Oneworld flights and Air France / KLM Flying Blue can be good for SkyTeam flights, but you'll get 1:1 transfers with the other transferable point programs and only 1:¾ with Capital One. Air Canada is another good Star Alliance partner and one that is not available with Ultimate and ThankYou rewards, but suffers from the lower transfer rate.
While Avianca can be a pain to deal with, it is often a great option for Star Alliance flights and is available as a 1:1 transfer partner (just like Membership and ThankYou Rewards). Cathay is another good 1:1 partner (for Oneworld flights), but is a partner with all the other programs. Etihad can be an attractive option for many of its partners, including American Airlines, but is also available through both Membership and ThankYou rewards.
Finnair and TAP Air Portugal, Capital One's unique partners, aren't particularly useful. Neither are Qantas and EVA, which are also part of the Citibank ThankYou points program, but not part of the generally more useful Membership or Ultimate Rewards programs. The possible exception are good rates for flights on El Al with the Qantas program or to access extra premium-cabin award space on EVA.
Remember that you can use miles from any of these programs to book awards with any of that program’s partner airlines. So, you can transfer your Venture points to Air Canada and then use the Air Canada miles to fly United, any of the two dozen or so other airlines that are part of the Star Alliance, or any other of Air Canada's other airline partners. With all the various partnerships, you can redeem your Venture points for flights on almost 100 airlines.
Hotel transfer partners
You can transfer your Venture points to three hotel partners. And two of them are worthwhile (the only other good hotel point transfer option among the big four programs is Ultimate Rewards to Hyatt).
- Wyndham Rewards. Venture points transfer at a 1:1 ratio. Since we value Wyndham points at 0.8 cents each, this seems like a low-value redemption. However, Wyndham points can be much more valuable when used to book vacation rentals. If this is something that you will be able to frequently take advantage of, the ability to earn 2x Wyndham points per dollar with the Capital One cards may be the main reason you'll want to take advantage of. If not, it may still be worthwhile for more valuable Wyndham hotel redemptions. Guide to Wyndham Rewards.
- Accor Live Limitless (ALL). Accor is the loyalty program for a very large number of primarily European and Luxury brands, including Novotel, Sofitel, and Fairmont. They offer a fixed-value reward program, where each point is worth exactly .02 Euros (around 2.2 cents). Venture points transfer at a 2:1 ratio, so you are getting around 1.1 cents per Venture point. This is slightly more than you would get by using your Venture points for regular travel purchases. Guide to Accor Live Limitless.
- Choice Privileges. Since you can "buy" Choice points for .8 cents each with the Cash & Points trick, it doesn't make sense to transfer your Capital One points to Choice. You'd be better off cashing them out at 1 cent each (or transferring them to some more valuable program. Guide to the Choice Privileges Program.
Wyndham and Acccor don't participate with the other transferable credit card reward programs.
Cashing out your points
If you don’t want to mess around with frequent flyer tickets, your can always use your Venture points to pay for most other travel purchases.
Unlike programs like Ultimate Rewards, you don't need to make your purchase through a travel portal that is run by the credit card company. You can just use your Capital One Card to make almost any travel purchase and then use your points to "erase" the charges on your statement. For example, you can make a direct purchase at Hilton, a secret hotel purchase on Hotwire, or a payment directly to a taxi cab driver, and then use your points to offset the charge on your statement.
You have up to 90 days to make a redemption, so you can eventually use points you haven't earned yet to offset purchases you make with your card.
Unlike many other fixed-value points, there is no minimum redemption. If you have a $2 train ticket, you can use 200 points to "erase" it. However, if you only want to use points for part of the charged amount, you'll need to use at least 2,500 points.
You also have the option of making a point-based purchase directly through Capital One's travel portal. But you'll probably receive better pricing, and often receive additional benefits and reward points, by booking elsewhere and then using your Capital One points to offset the credit card charge.
Capital One "transferable points" credit cards
Only the Venture and Spark Miles Cards earn points that can be directly transferred to airline and hotel partners. However, if you have one of those cards, points from the VentureOne, Spark Cash, Savor, Savor One, and Quicksilver cards can be transferred to your "miles"-based card and then transferred out.
A combination of card allows you to earn bonus "miles" on restaurant and dining and to increase the number of "miles" you can earn from signup bonuses.
| Card | Typical Signup Bonus | Bonus Categories | Effective Annual Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capital One Venture | 50,000 | 2x all purchases | $95 |
| Capital One VentureOne | 20,000 | 1.25x all purchases | $0 |
| Spark Miles (Business) | 50,000 | 2x all purchases | $95, waived first year |
| Spark Miles Select (business) | 20,000 | 1.5x all purchases | $0 |
| Capital One Savor Card | 30,000 | 4x dining and entertainment
2x grocery |
$95 |
| Capital One SaverOne Card | 20,000 | 3x dining and entertainment
2x grocery store |
$0 |
| Quicksilver | 20,000 | 1.5x all purchases | $0 |
Collecting multiple signup bonuses
- Points are worth at least 1 cent each. You are likely to get a more when redeeming for frequent flyer tickets and potentially Wyndham points. Because you can transfer you points to whichever of several frequent flyer programs that offers the best deal for whatever trip you are trying to take, Venture miles are worth more than most regular frequent flyer miles. Introduction to 'Transferable' Reward Points.
- It is worthwhile to collect miles from the Venture, Spark Miles, and Spark Cash signup bonuses. A typical signup bonus of 50,000 points can still be redeemed for $500 in travel purchases and can be worth considerably more when transferred to frequent flyer programs.
- You can only receive a new Capital One personal credit card every six months. And you can only have a total of two cards at one time.
- It can be hard to be approved for Capital One cards. They seem to prefer people who don't pay off your balance every month. If you fall into this category, you should focus on reducing your interest rates (and paying off your debt), not on collecting signup bonuses.
Point transfers and expiration
- You can transfer points to any other Capital One cardholder, not just a spouse or family member. You'll need to call in, as there is no way to do this online.
- Each Capital One credit card accrues miles into a separate account, but you can freely move miles between cards. When it is time to transfer miles to a partner, offset travel purchases, or cancel a card, you can easily combine the miles into the account associated with any one of your cards.
- You'll need to keep one of these cards open if you want to maintain your points balance. However, you should be able to downgrade your card into a one of the options that doesn't charge an annual fee. Other options are to use your points for a travel purchase or transfer them to the partner you are mostly likely to want to leverage in the future.
Comparing to the other transferable points programs
While we really like the Capital One program, we think it is somewhat less useful than the other three big transferable point programs (unless you can frequently take advantage of the Wyndham vacation rental opportunity).
- It is much harder to easily acquire lots of points. The other programs make it easier to collect large number of points from signup bonuses (and referral and upgrade bonuses with Membership Rewards). While there aren't that many more Ultimate and ThankYou rewards credit cards than there are Capital One cards, it is very difficult to collect more than a couple Capital One bonuses. Because it is hard to get approved for a Capital One card, you can't rely on cancelling cards and then reapplying for a new bonus. You are also limited to only two total personal cards at any one time.
- For frequent flyer tickets, Membership Rewards is, by far, the best option. It has many more airline partners and the most transfer bonuses, and it is the easiest program to accumulate a lot of points. On the other hand, if you aren't willing and able to get a business card, you can only earn 1.5x points per dollar with Amex (and then only with the annoying 30-transaction minimum on the Everyday Preferred card). So, you might choose to use the Venture as your general-purpose card and earn your Membership Reward points through bonuses. While Capital One has a slightly better set of partners than ThankYou Rewards, it doesn't provide full 1:1 transfers on many of their best programs. For award tickets, we still prefer a ThankYou point to a Capital One mile, even without the 10% boost from the Citi Rewards+ card. But with Capital One's changes in 2021, it is getting close.
- For general-purpose points, we recommend Ultimate Rewards for most people. We love hotel points, and for most people, Hyatt is a much better partner than Wyndham and Accor. Ultimate Rewards is a bit weaker than Capital One for frequent flyer tickets, but has the advantage of 1:1 transfers with all their partners. And if you are collecting Membership Rewards as well, you may want to use most of your Ultimate Rewards points for Hyatt stays. And if you need to "cash out", you can get up to 1.5 cents per point (or 2.25% on everyday purchases) with Chase, versus 1 cent per point (or 2% on everyday purchases) with Capital One.
- Capital One might be a better option than Citi as a third program. If you are already have stashes of Membership and Ultimate Rewards points and Amex and Chase cards that earn good bonus categories, Capital One might be a better option than Citibank (as a third program). This primarily comes down to whether you can get approved for a Capital One card and whether the ability to acquire Wyndham points is more valuable than the higher transfer rate to Turkish Airlines. In any event, if you are going for a third program, you might as well take advantage of all four.
- Capital One does provide the ultimate one-card solution. If you absolutely want to stick with a single card, the Venture card is probably your best bet. You have the option of 2% cash back, while maintaining the upside of potentially getting more value through frequent flyer tickets or good value Wyndham redemptions.
- However, both Chase and Citi have two-card solutions that are probably better and don't cost any more each year. The Citi Double Cash / Premier combo earns a great set of bonus category rewards, the same cashback rate, and slight more valuable points for frequent flyer redemptions. It is also easier to get a periodic signup bonus boost. The main thing you'll miss is the Wyndham option, but for most people, the all-in-one bonus categories of the Premier card more than make up for that.
It is also more difficult to earn lots of Capital One points with bonus categories. The only Capital One bonus category option is the restaurant and entertainment bonuses of the Savor cards. Chase, Amex, and Citibank have lucrative bonuses on a wide variety of categories.
Like the Citi combo, the Freedom Unlimited / Sapphire combo also has the advantage of bonus category rewards. More importantly, most people will get great value out of redeeming the points on Hyatt hotel stays, without the difficulties of using points for frequent flyer tickets. In most cases 1.5 Hyatt points is much better than 2 Wyndham points.
Despite any potential advantages with the other programs, there is plenty of value to be had with Capital One's program. And there is nothing to stop you from earning a pile of points with a couple of Capital One signup offers and earning 2x Capital One miles on a chunk of your everyday spending, alongside earning points with the other programs.
