10xTravel is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CreditCards.com. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. 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.
Note: Some of the offers mentioned below may have changed or may no longer be available. The content on this page is accurate as of the posting date; however, some of our partner offers may have expired. You can view current offers here.
For a large portion of its history, Capital One has played second fiddle to more popular credit card issuers, such as American Express or Chase. However, over the past decade or so, Capital One has launched major marketing campaigns, opened cafes and airport lounges across the United States, bolstered its list of transfer partners and created some attractive new credit card offerings. Nowadays, Capital One is an issuer that should be on every credit card strategist’s radar.
A few years ago, Capital One launched the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card, its top-of-the-line travel card with an annual fee of $395. This card was meant to be a lower-cost alternative to other premium travel cards, such as the Chase Sapphire Reserve® ($550 annual) and The Platinum Card® from American Express ($695 annual fee, see rates & fees).
However, while being much more affordable, the Venture X Card still comes with many of the same premium benefits, including annual hotel statement credits, unlimited complimentary airport lounge access and the ability to earn elevated spending bonuses.
Capital One also has some great options for those who don’t want to pay a large annual fee. The Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card ($95 annual fee) is a solid option that earns travel miles and offers flat-rate rewards. Plus, the Capital One SavorOne Cash Rewards Credit Card is a strong competitor for the best $0 annual fee cashback credit card on the market.
With these two noteworthy cards (and many other attractive offerings), Capital One has positioned itself as a serious competitor to Chase and Amex. So, if you’re interested in the Capital One Miles program, we’ll break down how you can earn Capital One Miles, the different credit cards that this bank offers, how you can redeem Capital One Miles and which of those redemptions offer the most value.
Capital One Miles Program Overview
Capital One now offers several credit cards with annual fees ranging from $0 to $395. There are also several Capital One business credit cards for small business owners who want to earn Capital One Miles for making business-related purchases.
Many of these cards also offer valuable welcome bonuses to new cardholders that can be earned by spending a certain amount of money on your new card within a certain period of time after account opening. These welcome bonuses are a great way to rack up a large balance of Capital One Miles quickly.
Aside from welcome bonuses, you also can earn Capital One Miles for making everyday purchases on your card and earn elevated spending bonuses by booking travel or experiences through the Capital One Travel portal or Capital One Entertainment portal.
There are many ways to redeem your Capital One Miles, most of which offer a value of 1 cent per mile. You can use your miles to cover travel purchases within 90 days of the purchase, transfer your miles to friends or family, book travel through the Capital One Travel portal, book tickets and get access to exclusive experiences through the Capital One Entertainment portal, redeem for gift cards or simply get cash back.
However, if you want to maximize the value that you get out of your Capital One Miles, you’ll want to transfer them to one of Capital One’s transfer partners.
Here is a list of all of Capital One’s transfer partners and their transfer ratios:
- Aeroméxico Club Premier (1:1)
- Air Canada Aeroplan (1:1)
- Air France-KLM Flying Blue (1:1)
- ALL Accor Live Limitless (2:1)
- Cathay Pacific Asia Miles (1:1)
- Avianca LifeMiles (1:1)
- British Airways Executive Club (1:1)
- Choice Privileges (1:1)
- Emirates Skywards (1:1)
- Etihad Guest (1:1)
- EVA Air Infinity MileageLands (2:1.5)
- Finnair Plus (1:1)
- Qantas Frequent Flyer (1:1)
- Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer (1:1)
- TAP Air Portugal Miles&Go (1:1)
- Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles (1:1)
- Virgin Red (1:1)
- Wyndham Rewards (1:1)
By transferring your miles to one of the transfer partners that offers a 1:1 transfer ratio, you can often find redemptions that offer far more than 1 cent per mile in value. In general, transferring your miles to one of these transfer partners is the best way to maximize the value of your miles.
How to Earn Capital One Miles
The only way to earn Capital One Miles is to sign up for a miles earning credit card from Capital One. To be clear, not all Capital One credit cards earn Capital One Miles. Several personal and business credit cards earn cash back instead of miles. Capital One cards that earn miles are part of the Venture family of cards. All other Capital One cards earn cash back.
To determine which card is best for your wallet, let’s run through all of the different cards in the Venture family, their annual fees, their spending bonuses and all of their other notable features.
Capital One VentureOne Rewards Credit Card for Good Credit
For consumers with credit scores in the good range (typically between 580 and 680), the Capital One VentureOne Rewards Credit Card for Good Credit is a solid option. This card doesn’t charge an annual fee and offers the following spending bonuses:
- 5X miles on prepaid hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel
- 1.25X miles on all other purchases
The ability to earn a base rewards rate of 1.25X miles on all purchases is attractive for those with good credit (especially considering many cards for good credit don’t offer any reward whatsoever). Additionally, you’ll have access to Capital One’s full list of transfer partners and redeem those miles for far more than 1 cent per mile in value.
Aside from that, this card also doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees (a feature that’s standard on all Capital One credit cards) and offers $0 fraud liability protection. Unfortunately, this card doesn’t offer a sign-up bonus.
Capital One VentureOne Rewards Credit Card
20,000
Bonus Miles
after you spend $500 in the first 3 months
Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card
The Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card is Capital One’s middle-tier travel rewards credit card with an annual fee of $95. This card is available only to consumers with excellent credit and offers the following spending bonuses:
- 5X miles on prepaid hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel
- 2X miles on all other purchases
As you can see, the Venture Rewards card offers a higher base earnings rate than the VentureOne card. If you spend at least $12,672 on your card annually (or $1,056 per month), then you’d earn more net rewards at the Venture Card’s base rewards rate of 2X miles (factoring in the $95 annual fee) than at the VentureOne Card’s base rate of 1.25X miles.
Plus, the Venture Card offers a much more valuable sign-up bonus as well as other impressive perks, including an up to $120 reimbursement credit toward the application fee for either TSA PreCheck or Global Entry, two complimentary visits to airport lounges annually and complimentary Hertz Five Star status.
And, of course, the Venture comes with all the standard features of Capital One cards, including no foreign transaction fees and $0 fraud liability protection.
Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card
75,000
Miles
once you spend $4,000 on purchases within 3 months from account opening
Annual Fee: $95
Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card
The Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card is the top-tier offering from Capital One. This card is available only to consumers with excellent credit, charges an annual fee of $395 and offers the following spending bonuses:
- 10X miles on prepaid hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel
- 5X miles on flights booked through Capital One Travel
2X miles on all other purchases
Compared to the Capital One Venture Card, the Venture X Card’s spending bonuses aren’t all that impressive. Yes, you’ll earn 10X miles on hotels and rental cars and 5X miles on flights, but the base earnings rate of 2X miles is the same as on the Venture Card. And the Venture X Card’s annual fee is $300 higher than the Venture Card’s annual fee.
However, where the Venture X makes up for its elevated annual fee is in the additional benefits that it offers.
First of all, the Venture X Card comes with unlimited complimentary visits to Capital One Lounges as well as more than 1,300 lounges worldwide from Plaza Premium and Priority Pass. Additionally, the Venture X Card allows you to add up to four authorized users to your card, and all of your authorized users will enjoy the same airport lounge access as the primary cardholder. This is one of the best ways to maximize the value you get from your Venture X Card.
On top of that, this card comes with $300 towards travel booked through Capital One (which includes hotels, rental cars and flights) as well as up to $120 reimbursement toward the application fee for TSA PreCheck or Global Entry.
Other features include $300 toward an annual membership to Gravity Haus, a complimentary six-month membership to The Cultivist and a complimentary subscription to PRIOR.
You’ll also receive an anniversary bonus of 10,000 every cardmember year, get upgraded to Hertz President’s Circle status, never pay foreign transaction fees and be covered by $0 fraud liability.
All in all, the Capital One Venture X Card can easily make up for its annual fee with its spending bonuses and benefits so long as you take advantage of them.
Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card
75,000
Venture Miles
after you spend $4,000 in purchases in the first 3 months.
Annual Fee: $395
Capital One Venture X Business
The Capital One Venture X Business card is a premium travel-focused business credit card. It’s essentially a business version of the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card and offers the same spending bonuses as the personal version. That means you’ll earn a baseline of 2X miles on every non-bonus purchase and elevated spending bonuses for purchases made through the Capital One Travel portal.
Here are the spending bonuses offered by the Venture X Business card:
- 10X miles on hotels and rental cars booked directly through Capital One Travel
- 5X miles on flights and vacation rentals booked directly through Capital One Travel
- 2X miles on every other purchase
These spending bonuses are mostly geared toward small business owners who frequently book travel and who are willing to book travel through the Capital One Travel portal. If your business frequently books hotels and rental cars, then you can earn a lot of miles with the 10X spending bonus.
Capital One Venture X Business
150,000
Bonus Miles
after you spend $30,000 in the first 3 months
Annual Fee: $395
Capital One Spark Miles Select for Business Card
Small business owners may be interested in signing up for the Capital One Spark Miles Select for Business Card. This card doesn’t charge an annual fee and is available only to business owners with credit scores in the “excellent” range. It’s worth noting that freelancers, sole proprietors, LLC operators and gig economy workers can be approved for a business credit card.
The Capital One Spark Miles Select for Business Card offers the following spending bonuses:
- 5X miles on prepaid hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel
- 1.5X miles on all other purchases
On top of that, the Spark Miles Select Card also offers a valuable welcome bonus that can be earned by spending a certain amount of money on your card in a certain amount of time after account opening. You’ll also enjoy 0% APR on purchases for the first nine months after account opening.
You can also issue cards to your employee for free and set spending limits on each of those employee cards individually. And, of course, the Spark Miles Select Card comes with no foreign transaction fees and $0 fraud liability protection.
Capital One Spark Miles for Business Card
The Capital One Spark Miles for Business Card offers a slightly elevated earnings rate and some additional benefits over the Spark Miles Select Card for a modest annual fee. This card is available only to those with excellent credit and charges $0 annual fee for the first year and then $95 annually every year after that.
Here are the spending bonuses offered by the Capital One Spark Miles for Business Card:
- 5X miles on prepaid hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel
- 2X miles on all other purchases
At the 2X miles earnings rate, you’d need to spend at least $19,000 annually on your card to justify paying the $95 annual fee for the Spark Miles Card (compared to the Spark Miles Select Card, which earns 1.5X miles and doesn’t charge an annual fee).
However, this calculation doesn’t factor in the waived annual fee for the first cardmember year for the Spark Miles Card or the additional benefits that come with the Spark Miles Card.
In addition to the elevated flat rate spending bonus offered by the Spark Miles Card, it also offers a $120 reimbursement credit toward the application fee for either Global Entry or TSA PreCheck. Since you need to re-enroll in these programs every four years, that comes out to a value of about $25 per year.
The Spark Miles Card also offers an even more valuable welcome bonus than the Spark Miles Select Card. However, the Spark Miles Card doesn’t offer any 0% intro APR period. The Spark Miles Card also comes with standard features like no foreign transaction fees and $0 fraud liability protection.
Converting Cash Back to Capital One Miles
As of 2021, Capital One began allowing its customers to convert cash back earned on one of their personal cash back cards into Capital One Miles at a 1:1 ratio as long as they also have a card in the Venture family.
This option makes Capital One’s cashback cards a whole lot more valuable considering you can convert your cash back to miles and then transfer those miles to one of Capital One’s transfer partners and use them for redemptions that yield far more than 1 cent per mile in value.
In fact, earning rewards on a cashback card might even be a better option than earning rewards on a Venture Card that earns miles. That’s because Capital One Miles convert to cash back at a rate of 0.5 cent per mile (effectively cutting the value of your points in half) whereas cash back can be converted to Capital One Miles at a 1:1 ratio.
For example, let’s say that you hold both the Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card and the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card. The Venture Card would earn 2X miles on all dining purchases (as it would on all other purchases outside of Capital One Travel). On the other hand, the Savor Card would earn 4% cash back on dining purchases, which is effectively the same as earning 4X miles since cash back can be converted to miles at a 1:1 ratio.
Plus, if you decide that you want to redeem your points for cash back, the Savor Card is the better option. If you want to redeem the Capital One Miles you earned with the Venture Card for cash back, you’d get a value of just 0.5 cent per mile.
We’d recommend that, if you’re going to get a card in the Venture family, you should also get a card in the Savor family. The spending bonuses compliment each other extremely well, and all of the cash back earned with the Savor or the SavorOne can be converted to Capital One Miles at a 1:1 ratio.
How to Redeem Capital One Miles
As previously mentioned, the best way to maximize the value of your Capital One Miles is to transfer them to one of Capital One’s 16 transfer partners that offer a 1:1 transfer ratio. However, you may not want to bother with searching for redemptions through partners or you may have other reasons for wanting to redeem your miles through Capital One rather than through a partner. So, let’s cover all of the different ways to redeem Capital One Miles.
Cover a Recent Travel Purchase
You can choose to redeem your miles to pay for travel purchases made in the last 90 days by clicking the “Cover travel purchases” button in your Capital One rewards portal. From there, you’ll be shown which of your recent purchases are eligible to be covered with points and how much it will cost to reimburse each of these purchases.
The “travel” category, in this case, is defined rather broadly and includes train tickets, Uber or other ride-hailing purchases and Airbnb stays.
You also have the option to cover a portion of a recent travel purchase with miles. For example, you can apply just 500 miles toward a travel purchase and receive $5 off (even if the purchase cost more than $5).
Using your Capital One Miles to cover recent travel purchases always yields a value of 1 cent per point. And although that’s not a bad redemption value, you can get more value out of your points by transferring them to one of Capital One’s partner programs.
Booking Through Capital One Travel
You can use your Capital One Miles to make new travel bookings through the Capital One Travel portal. Using your miles this way also yields a fixed value of 1 cent per point.
Capital One offers flights, hotels and rental cars from most major travel companies through this portal. However, it’s worth noting that Capital One Travel doesn’t display every available flight, hotel and rental. Occasionally, bookings from certain companies (usually budget companies) won’t appear on Capital One Travel but will appear on other booking engines.
Capital One customers can rest assured that they’re getting the best rate available as it will match your price if you find a lower price elsewhere. You’ll also receive free price drop protection, which means that you can receive up to $50 in travel credit to cover the difference if the price of a flight goes down over the next 10 days after booking. Capital One Travel also gives you access to a free price prediction tool that can help you determine whether you should book now or wait.
In 2023, Capital One launched its “Premier Collection,” a collection of luxury hotels and perks exclusive to Venture X cardholders. Because the Premier Collection includes only high-end hotels and resorts, you won’t find any cheap rates. However, every Premier Collection booking includes a package of perks that match or exceed the top level of hotel elite status. These perks include:
- Complimentary breakfast for two each morning
- A $100 credit toward dining, spa, or other experiences on the property
- Free Wi-Fi for your entire stay
- Room upgrades, early check-in, and late checkout when available
The Premier Collection also includes exclusive partnerships with some of the world’s coolest hotels, meaning that Capital One Miles is the only rewards currency accepted by these properties. These hotels include The Ned NoMad in New York City, The Madrona in California, Hotel Three Sixty in Costa Rica, Hotel TwentySeven in the Netherlands, COMO Uma Canggu in Bali and The Carlin Hotel in New Zealand.
Unfortunately, only Venture X cardholders currently have access to the Premier Collection. The Capital One Venture X Business (which launched in September 2023) also has access to the Premier Collection.
Book Experiences Through Capital One Entertainment
You can redeem your miles for tickets to experiences through the Capital One Entertainment portal. These experiences include sporting events, comedy shows, theater, love music performances, dining experiences and much more.
You also can gain access to exclusive experiences by clicking the “Cardholder Exclusives” tab at the top of the Capital One Entertainment homepage.
As a Capital One cardholder, you’ll have access to experiences that aren’t available to the public. For instance, even if tickets to a certain concert or sporting event are sold out, you may still be able to get exclusive tickets through Capital One Entertainment.
Redeem for Gift Cards
Capital One also offers the option to redeem your miles for gift cards from certain partner companies. Most of the time, redeeming your miles this way will yield a value of 1 cent per point. However, redeeming for gift cards from a select few companies, including Amazon, Apple and DoorDash, will yield a value of 0.8 cent per mile.
Here is the full list of companies from which you can buy gift cards with Capital One Miles:
- Amazon
- Apple
- Applebee’s
- Athleta
- Banana Republic
- Barnes & Noble
- Bath & Body Works
- Best Buy
- Bloomingdale’s
- Bonefish Grill
- BP
- Brinker-Chili’s
- Buffalo Wild Wings
- Burger King
- Burlington
- Carrabba’s Italian Grill
- The Cheesecake Factory
- Chevron
- Chipotle Mexican Grill
- Columbia Sportswear
- The Container Store
- Crate & Barrel
- Darden Restaurants
- Dillard’s
- Domino’s
- DoorDash
- DSW
- Dunkin’
- ExxonMobil
- Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar
- GameStop
- Gap
- Gap Options
- Happy Teen
- The Home Depot
- Hotels.com
- Kohl’s
- Kroger
- Landry’s Restaurants
- Lands’ End
- Lowe’s
- Macy’s
- Michaels
- Microsoft Xbox
- Morton’s
- Nike
- Nintendo
- Nordstrom
- Old Navy
- Omaha Steaks
- Outback Steakhouse
- Papa John’s Pizza
- Petco
- Petsmart
- Pottery Barn
- Red Lobster
- Red Robin
- Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse
- Saks Fifth Avenue
- Sam’s Club
- Sephora
- Shell
- Shutterfly
- Spafinder
- Starbucks
- Stitch Fix
- StubHub
- Subway
- Target
- Texas Roadhouse
- TJX Multi-Brand
- Topgolf
- Uber Eats
- Ulta Beauty
- Under Armour
- Victoria’s Secret
- Victoria’s Secret PINK
- Walmart
- Wayfair
- west elm
- Williams Sonoma
All of these gift cards have no fees, no expiration dates and typically arrive in the mail within two to three weeks.
Shop Online with Amazon or PayPal
It’s possible to redeem your Capital One Miles to pay for online purchases made with PayPal or through Amazon.com. To do so, you’ll need to link your Capital One account to your PayPal or Amazon.com account. Then, you can use your miles to pay for all or just a portion of your purchases.
Unfortunately, miles are worth just 0.8 cent apiece when redeeming this way, so it’s probably best to avoid this redemption method.
Redeem for Cash Back
Capital One does allow you to redeem your miles for cash back, but doing so will provide a dismal value of 0.5 cent per mile. So, we don’t recommend redeeming your miles this way unless you’re in desperate need of cash.
You can choose to either have your cash back applied to your credit card balance or have a check mailed to your physical address. But again, we don’t recommend redeeming your miles for cash back as it provides a low value per mile.
Move Your Miles to Another Account
By choosing the “Move rewards” option in the Rewards portal, you can move your miles from one Capital One account to another. There are no fees for moving your miles from one account to another. As long as the other person has a miles-earning card from Capital One, there are no restrictions on who you can send money to.
In some cases, you’ll need to call Capital One’s customer service line to link another account to your account and move your miles.
Transfer Miles to Partner Programs
All of the other redemption options in this article offer a fixed value between 1 cent and 0.5 cent per mile. However, you can reap far more than 1 cent per mile in value by transferring your miles to one of Capital One’s transfer partners.
Poor Transfer Options
All of Capital One’s transfer partners offer a 1:1 transfer ratio with the exceptions of ALL Accor Live Limitless (2:1 transfer ratio) and EVA Air Infinity MileageLands (2:1.5 transfer ratio). For that reason, we don’t recommend transferring your miles to these two programs unless there’s a specific redemption that you’re after.
Additionally, Ethiad Guest, Finnair Plus and TAP Miles&Go don’t offer much value and are often plagued with hassles, so you’ll probably want to avoid transferring your points to these programs as well. While you might be able to find a specific route that offers decent value, the process of booking it will most likely be ridden with high fuel surcharges, glitchy websites, bad customer service and limited award availability.
Aeroméxico Club Premier is another frequent-flyer program that you’ll probably want to avoid transferring your miles to. That’s because this program prices its award flights using kilometers rather than miles, which means that award prices are around 60% higher than the average loyalty program that uses miles.
As a side note, American Express Membership Rewards points transfer to Aeroméxico at a rate of 1:1.6 to compensate for the inflated award prices. So, if you fly with Aeroméxico frequently, you might want to consider getting an Amex card.
Average Transfer Options
Air France-KLM Flying Blue runs monthly promos that offer discounts of between 25% and 50% on certain routes, and these discounts can make it fairly easy to get solid value out of your miles. However, Flying Blue uses a dynamic pricing model, which makes it difficult to determine the value of the average Flying Blue redemption since prices can vary heavily from day to day.
Cathay Pacific Asia Miles offers one of the finest first-class products in the industry, and transferring Capital One Miles into the program is one of the best ways to experience this first-class product. You can also find some high-value redemptions on shorter domestic flights and flights from the U.S. to Europe from some of Cathay Pacific’s Oneworld partners.
Virgin Red occasionally offers some high-value deals. For instance, it has offered an eight-night cruise for two people departing from either Miami or Barcelona for just 100,000 points. If you were to book that same trip with cash, it would cost you around $3,400. So, this redemption would yield a value of around 3.4 cents per mile, which is great.
British Airways Executive Club, Emirates Skywards, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer and Qantas Frequent Flyer are all programs that also provide decent value on certain redemptions. They’re certainly worth paying attention to, but you can probably find more value per mile with other transfer partners.
Good Transfer Options
In general, three of Capital One’s transfer partners offer the most value: Air Canada Aeroplan, Avianca LifeMiles and Turkish Miles&Smiles. If you don’t want to spend a ton of time looking for the highest-value redemptions, then transferring your Capital One Miles to one of these three programs is usually a pretty safe bet.
Air Canada Aeroplan is a great option for booking award flights with Star Alliance partners, especially in premium cabins. Additionally, since United Airlines switched to a dynamic pricing model, booking United flights through Aeroplan (which uses a fixed award chart for partner awards) is often the best way to book high-value United award flights. Plus, Air Canada recently eliminated fuel surcharges for partner award flights, making Aeroplan an even more attractive program for transferring miles.
Avianca LifeMiles also doesn’t pass on fuel surcharges on partner awards, making it one of the best frequent-flyer programs to book Star Alliance awards, including award flights from Air China, Air Canada, Lufthansa and United.
For instance, you could book a Lufthansa first-class ticket (one of the best first-class products in the world) for about 90,000 LifeMiles and low fees. If you were to book the same ticket with cash, it would probably cost multiple thousands of dollars.
Turkish Miles&Smiles is also part of Star Alliance and offers some great sweet spots for partner award flights. That’s because this program prices its award flights using zone-based award charts. For instance, Hawaii is grouped as part of the North America zone, so you can find round-trip award flights to Hawaii from anywhere in North America on United for just 15,000 miles in economy class (the same price as any other flight within North America in economy class).
By contrast, if you were to book a round-trip award flight in economy class from the continental U.S. to Hawaii directly through United, you can expect to pay around twice as many miles in most cases.
As you can see, transferring your Capital One Miles to either Air Canada Aeroplan, Avianca LifeMiles or Turkish Miles&Smiles is typically the best way to get maximum value out of your rewards. However, that doesn’t mean that Capital One’s other transfer partners don’t offer high value awards occasionally. It’s worth doing some research and seeing which redemptions from which partners offer the most value per point.
Transfer Bonuses
If you’re pretty flexible with your travel plans and which airline or hotel you transfer your points to, then it’s definitely worth paying attention to the limited-time transfer bonuses that Capital One occasionally offers. These bonuses can substantially boost the amount of value you can get out of your Capital One Miles.
For instance, in the past, Capital One has offered a limited-time 30% transfer bonus to Air France-KLM Flying Blue. So, if you were to transfer 10,000 Capital One Miles to Flying Blue during the transfer promo window, you would have received 13,000 Flying Blue miles. Normally, without the transfer bonus, 10,000 Capital One Miles would get you 10,000 Flying Blue miles.
As you can see from the previous example, taking advantage of transfer bonuses can help you get a lot more value out of your miles if you’re flexible with your airline and travel destinations. But, of course, there’s no reason to transfer a bunch of miles to an airline loyalty program if you don’t have much interest in flying with that airline.
The Bottom Line
Capital One’s family of Venture cards (the only cards that earn miles directly) are simple and straightforward. There are no special spending categories with the exception of earning 5X miles when you book travel through the Capital One Travel portal. Outside of that, the VentureOne Card, the Venture Card and the Venture X Card all offer flat-rate spending bonuses, which makes it easy to rack up miles without paying too much attention to what you’re spending money on.
However, if you want to elevate your Capital One Miles earnings even more, we recommend coupling one of Capital One’s cash back-earning cards with your Venture Miles-earning card. That’s because Capital One allows Venture cardholders to convert cash back to Venture Miles at a 1:1 ratio. And, when the SavorOne card offers 3% cash back on dining, select streaming services, entertainment and grocery stores for no annual fee, this is a cheap and effective way to rack up Capital One Miles quickly.
The Capital One Venture X Card is also worth consideration if you’re willing to pay for a premium travel card. This card comes with valuable perks, such as unlimited access to Priority Pass lounges for you and two guests, up to four authorized users for free (all of who can get their own Priority Pass memberships), a $300 annual hotel credit, up to $120 reimbursement credit for the TSA PreCheck or Global Entry application fee and much more. Plus, its $395 annual fee is significantly lower than that of the Chase Sapphire Reserve or The Platinum Card from American Express.
When it comes to redeeming Capital One Miles, generally, the best way to maximize their value is to transfer them to one of Capital One’s 16 transfer partners that offer a 1:1 transfer ratio. All other redemption methods offer a fixed value that tops out at 1 cent per mile. By transferring your miles to one of Capital One’s partner programs, you can get outsized value far exceeding 1 cent per mile.
In particular, transferring your miles to either Air Canada Aeroplan, Avianca LifeMiles or Turkish Miles&Smiles is usually a good bet if you’re looking to get the maximum value out of your Capital One Miles.
New to the world of points and miles? The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is the best card to start with.
With a bonus of Offer Ending Soon 60,000 bonus points after $4,000 in purchases in your first 3 months from account opening. Plus, get up to $300 in statement credits on Chase Travel℠ purchases within your first year. , 5x points on travel booked through the Chase Travel Portal and 3x points on restaurants, streaming services, and online groceries (excluding Target, Walmart, and wholesale clubs), this card truly cannot be beat for getting started!
after you spend $500 in the first 3 months
after you spend $4,000 in purchases in the first 3 months.
after you spend $4,500 in the first 3 months
Editors Note: Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.