The world of points, miles and credit cards can be complicated — full of potentially confusing terms and unfamiliar abbreviations. That’s what makes a card like the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card such a valuable commodity, its ease of redeeming miles and numerous valuable airline and hotel transfer partners.
While it’s often compared to the more premium Capital One Venture X Rewards credit card, the Venture has plenty to offer on its own. With so many ways to use your rewards, booking free travel can be as complicated or as easy as you make it.
Here are seven reasons why Capital One Venture is one of the best rewards credit cards to keep in your wallet.
Valuable welcome offer
If you plan to transfer your miles to Capital One’s hotel or airline partners, this welcome offer is worth about $1,638 (when adding together the value of the miles and the $250 travel credit), according to our July 2024 valuation. Of course, depending on which transfer partners you take advantage of and which awards you book, it’s possible to get more value from them.
However, if you use your miles at a fixed value to purchase travel, you’ll still get $750 worth of flights, hotels or car rentals.
Great for everyday spending
Many other credit cards offer bonus points on common purchase categories like groceries, gas or restaurants. But what about purchases that don’t fall under one of these categories, such as online shopping, gym memberships or kitchen appliances?
You’ll also earn 5 miles per dollar on hotels and car rentals booked through the Capital One travel portal. But for everyday spending, Venture is ideal because there are no categories to keep track of and no bonuses to worry about missing out on.
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Easy to redeem miles
Capital One Venture lets you Redeem your miles at a fixed value towards travel charges. This means you can effectively cover eligible travel purchases made in the last 90 days by redeeming your miles at a rate of 1 cent each.
There’s no minimum redemption amount, either (unless you have enough miles to cover the entire purchase, in which case the minimum is 2,500 miles). Let’s say you book a one-way, domestic award flight and pay $5.60 in tax with your card. You can use 560 miles to cover this small purchase — because each mile is worth 1 percent.
Capital One makes it easy to redeem your miles this way and you have two options. You can book directly through the Capital One Travel Portal by selecting miles as your payment option, or you can purchase travel with your credit card – for example an airline ticket or hotel reservation – then log into your account and select. Option to cash them as statement credit against charges.
Great airline and hotel transfer partners
You can squeeze more value out of your Capital One miles By transferring them to any of the following 15+ travel loyalty partners. All your Capital One Miles will transfer at a simple 1:1 rate except for two partners (as noted below):
- Accor Live Unlimited (2:1)
- Aeromexico Club Premier
- Air Canada Airplane
- Air France-KLM Flying Blue
- Avianca LifeMiles
- British Airways Avios
- Cathay Pacific Asia Miles
- Prerogatives of choice
- Emirates Skywards
- Etihad Guest
- EVA Infinity Mileagelands (2:1.5)
- Finnair Plus
- Qantas frequent flyer
- Singapore KrisFlyer
- Tap Air Portugal Miles & Go
- Turkish Airlines Miles and Smiles
- Wyndham Rewards
- Virgin Red
Capital One offers one of the most diverse transferable points programs around. You have airlines covering all three major alliances and some non-aligned airlines like Etihad and Emirates. Some of these options (such as Finnair) are also unique to Capital One.
Related: To Relocate or Not To Relocate: What To Do With The Capital One Mile
Convert cash back from another Capital One card to Venture Miles
you can Convert cash-back rewards from Capital One to miles if you have a Capital One mile-earning card.
For example, if you have a Capital One Venture or no-annual-fee Capital One VentureOne Rewards Credit Card (see rates and fees) you can turn cash back into miles earned with the Capital One Saver Cash Rewards Credit Card. ).
That means you can take advantage of Saver’s bonus-earning categories, including dining and groceries, to earn tons of extra rewards you can convert to Capital One Venture miles and then transfer to the program’s airline and hotel partners.
Information for the Capital One Saver Cash Rewards Card has been independently collected by The Points Guy. The card details on this page have not been reviewed or provided by the card issuer.
Valuable ongoing benefits
However, Capital One does not actively compete with the benefits provided by the Venture Card Ultra-premium cards viz Chase Sapphire Reserve® Or Platinum Card® from American ExpressIt offers some modest benefits:
*For Capital One products listed on this page, some benefits may be provided by Visa® or Mastercard® and may vary by product. For details of conditions and exclusions applicable, see the relevant guidelines for benefits.
Reasonable annual fee
The Capital One Venture Card charges just a $95 annual fee (see rates and fees), which is a low price for such a potentially valuable card. An easy-to-use earning structure, a simple redemption process, a diverse set of transfer partners, and other benefits make it easy to offset the cost of the annual fee.
However, be sure to crunch the numbers and make sure the higher-priced Venture X card doesn’t make more sense for your situation. With an array of added benefits — like $300 in annual credit for Capital One travel purchases and 10,000 bonus miles when you renew your card — you can easily cover the extra annual fee on the Premium Venture product.
RELATED: 8 Best Credit Cards With Annual Fees Under $100
Bottom line
Not only do you earn 2 miles per dollar on every purchase, but you can also keep things simple and flexible by redeeming your miles for travel purchases placed on the card. If you decide to study the award charts and find the sweet spots instead, you’ll have plenty of airline and hotel programs to choose from in the Capital One transfer partner lineup.
That’s what makes Venture so special — it lets cardholders earn miles quickly and then use them in countless ways for great value. All this and more is why the card deserves a place in your wallet, especially with its valuable welcome offer.
Learn more: Capital One Venture Rewards Card