The Capital One® Venture® Rewards card is a great option for those who are just learning about points and miles, as well as seasoned veterans. This card offers straightforward ways to both earn and redeem your miles. The Capital One Venture card also gives you the flexibility to transfer your points to one of their airline partners to unlock even greater value. With an annual fee that’s waived during the first year, everyone should take a look at this card to see if it’s right for you.
The Capital One Venture card is one of the best travel rewards cards on the market. It is often compared to the Chase Sapphire Preferred card because it has great benefits, it’s easy to earn and redeem your points and it has a low annual fee. In fact, during the first year the annual fee is waived for new card holders. That means you can try the card out, with all of its benefits for an entire year for free! Let me walk you through just how easy this card is to use and why it can easily earn a spot in your wallet.
Sign-Up Bonus
Right now, new Venture cardholders can earn a welcome bonus of 50,000 miles after spending $3,000 within three months of being approved for the card. Capital One values these at 1 cent per mile if you choose to redeem them as statement credits towards travel purchases you’ve made. While there are other ways to unlock more value, this means the miles you get from the sign-up bonus alone are worth a minimum of $500 in travel.
These statement credits can be used towards anything that codes as travel on your credit card statement. That means, virtually any airline, hotel, cruse line and many more! If you are just learning about points and miles, this card is an easy way to learn.
Earning Points
The great part about the Capital One Venture card is that earning miles are easy and straightforward. There are no rotating categories you need to track or having to remember to use the right card at the right store. You’ll earn 2 miles for every dollar you spend with the Venture card.
Like I said, it’s super easy. There is also no cap, so you can earn as many miles as you want. I love using hotels.com whenever I go places where the major chains aren’t all over the place. For me, this includes staying on the Strip in Las Vegas or when we travel internationally and there are a lot of independent hotels.
Using Your Venture Miles
Redeeming your Venture miles for travel is extremely easy. Once you make a travel purchase with your card, you have 90 days to use the Purchase Eraser for a statement credit. Your Venture miles are valued at 1 cent per mile when redeemed for travel. For example, you would need 10,000 miles to “erase” a $100 travel purchase. The nice thing is there is no minimum amount needed to offset a travel purchase. If you paid a $5 parking fee, you could erase it by redeeming 500 miles.
One great benefit of using the Purchase Eraser is that you are still eligible to earn points and miles on your purchases. Another benefit is that these miles can be used for a wide variety of “travel” purchases. If you’re a fan of Disney, you know visiting the parks can be expensive. When you purchase your tickets through an agency, like Get Away Today, your park tickets will code as travel so you can use your miles to pay for the tickets. Just be sure to check with the agency before you buy them to make sure they purchase will process as travel with your card.
The best way to get the most value from your Venture miles is to redeem them with one of Capital One’s 15 airline partners. This option takes some work but it’ll be well worth your time when you find a great redemption option. One thing to note is that each of the 15 airline partners is also a transfer partner of either Chase’s Ultimate Rewards or American Express’ Membership Rewards programs. If you have a card like the Chase Sapphire Preferred or the AMEX Platinum, it’s a great way to combine your points to book that dream vacation.
Transfer Partners
Transferring your miles to one of the airline partners isn’t as straightforward as I would like. For most of the partners, your miles will transfer at a 2:1.5 ratio which can be a little confusing. If you transfer your miles to either Emirates, JetBlue or Singapore KrisFlyer your miles will transfer at a 2:1 ratio.
You’ll notice some of the miles won’t transfer instantly, so you’ll want to take this into consideration as you’re making your travel plans. Here is an alphabetical list of the airline partners programs that partner with Capital One.
Airline Partners
- Aeromexico Club Premier – Points transfer instantly
- Air Canada Aeroplan – Points transfer instantly
- Air France/KLM Flying Blue – Points transfer instantly
- Alitalia MilleMiglia – Points transfer instantly
- Avianca LifeMiles – Points transfer instantly
- Cathay Pacific Asia Miles – Points transfer in 5 days
- Emirates Skywards (2:1) – Points transfer instantly
- Etihad Guest – Points transfer within 24 hours
- Eva Infinity MileageLands – Points transfer within 36 hours
- Finnair Plus – Points transfer instantly
- Hainan Fortune Wings Club – Points transfer within 36 hours
- JetBlue TrueBlue (2:1) – Points transfer instantly
- Qantas Frequent Flyer – Points transfer within 24 hours
- Qatar Airway Privilege Club – Points transfer within 24 hours
- Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer (2:1) – Points transfer within 36 hours
Card Benefits
The Capital One Venture card (learn how to apply here) comes with a few great benefits for cardholders. This isn’t a complete list of the benefits but these are the ones I think are most important.
Low Annual Fee – Capital One is waiving the annual fee for new card members during the first year. After that, the annual fee is just $95.
TSA Precheck/Global Entry Fee Credit – You will receive a statement credit for your application fee with either TSA Precheck or Global Entry if you pay the fee using your Venture card. You are eligible for this credit once every four years. I absolutely love precheck, so if you haven’t signed up for it yet, now you have no excuse not to.
The great thing about this credit, is you can use it to pay for someone else’s application fee if you already have it. I used my credit to pay for my daughter’s application now that she’s old enough to need it. Simply pay for the application with this card and the statement credit will automatically post to your account.
No Foreign Transaction Fees – This card doesn’t charge any transaction fees on purchases made outside of the U.S.
Extended Warranty Coverage – When you use your card to purchase qualifying items your manufacturer’s warranty is extended for free.
Final Thoughts
The Capital One Venture card is a fantastic option for just about everyone. Whether you’re just learning how to redeem your miles or you’ve traveled the world for free, this card will help you go more places. When you consider the annual fee is waived during the first year there’s no risk to trying this card out. Add the $0 annual fee to the Precheck credit and other benefits, Capital One is making this decision a whole lot easier.
Disneyland Hotels You Can Book With Points