Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card Perks

Travel often? The Capital One® Venture® Rewards credit card may just be what you’re looking for. Designed with frequent fliers in mind, this card offers a huge Intro bonus, a high rewards rate, flexible redemption options, and no foreign transaction fee.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the Capital One® Venture® Rewards credit card and how Sift can help you take advantage of this card’s many opportunities. First, let’s start with a list of credit card benefits featured with this card.

Credit Card Benefits

2x Reward Miles

What makes this card great is its simplicity: for every dollar that you spend using the Capital One® Venture® Rewards credit card, you earn two rewards miles. If you spend $100, you earn 200 miles. Easy!

There are no exclusions, rotating categories, spending caps, carve-outs, or expiration dates with the Capital One® Venture® Rewards card. We go into further detail about how you can redeem your rewards miles for deep discounts and great rewards later in this article.

No Foreign Transaction Fees

If you’re a traveler that likes to shop abroad, you’ll be happy to know that this card has no foreign transaction fees. Typically, credit cards have a 3% fee is attached to all non-U.S. purchases, which normally defeats the purpose of whatever cash back rewards you would receive. Luckily, the Capital One® Venture® Rewards credit card rewards you for your international wanderlust.

Additionally, the foreign exchange conversion rate (commonly known as the FX rate) for this credit card is very close to the spot rate, ensuring that your money isn’t lost in translation. To learn more about foreign transaction fees from Capital One, click here.

Capital One CreditWise

One of Capital One’s standard perks for all of their credit cards is access to Capital One® CreditWise, which means that you’ll be able to actively monitor your credit score and credit history—something that can absolutely vital when avoiding identity theft or card misuse. The insights from CreditWise give you an idea of how many recent inquiries were made on your account, how many new accounts were opened, credit utilization, and includes a grading system that enables you to better understand your credit profile.

Intro Bonus

Plan on using this card right off the bat? When you sign up for a Capital One® Venture® Rewards credit card, you can earn a bonus of 60,000 points if you spend at least $3,000 on purchases within the first three months of opening the account. 60,000 points are equal to $600 in statement credit, so this bonus greatly improves the card’s short-term value. After the introductory three months, you earn unlimited 2x miles per dollar spent on purchases.

Note: Balance transfers, cash advances, and fees do not count towards this minimum spending amount.

Low Annual Fee

The Capital One® Venture® Rewards card has an attractive annual fee — $95 for the first year. A low price compared with most travel credit cards, which is only $8 per month for the ability to tap into this card’s great rewards program.

Credit Card Drawbacks

Despite all of the benefits, Capital One® Venture Rewards is not ideal for all credit cardholders.

Low cash-back rewards

If you want to use your miles for cash back or a statement credit for non-travel purchases, think again. Capital One® Venture® Rewards’ strength lies in its travel benefits; those same miles are only worth half as much as if you were to redeem them for travel rewards. Unless you plan to use your rewards solely for travel, this card might not be for you. (See Redeeming Your Points below for more details)

Not Very Hackable

If you’re looking to use this card as part of a credit card hacking strategy, you may want to reconsider. The reason lies in the simplicity of Capital One® Venture® Rewards credit card’s 2x rewards—what you see is what you get. This credit card doesn’t allow you to transfer your miles to a travel partner or exploit any other loopholes to multiply your rewards. On its own, the Capital One® Venture® Rewards card works for frequent fliers; hackers might have to look elsewhere.

 If you’re looking for more info (terms, conditions, rates, fees, etc.) about the Capital One® Venture® Rewards credit card’s, click here.

Redeeming Your Points

As mentioned previously, the 2x reward miles is what makes Capital One® Venture® Rewards so appealing. But, how do you redeem the rewards miles? Let’s look at an example.

Suppose you make $1,000 worth of purchases a month, whether those purchases are shopping for groceries, filling up your gas tank, or just entertainment. Because you are earning 2x miles for every dollar spent—regardless of where you spend your money—you’ll earn 2,000 rewards miles every month. Yearly, this comes out to 24,000 rewards miles.

Note: “Rewards miles” are synonymous with fixed-value points, and therefore are not related directly to distance traveled/earned.

Using those 24,000 miles, there are two choices for travel redemption in Capital One’s Rewards program:

  1. You can use the rewards program to find deals on flights, hotels, rental cars or vacation packages, or
  2. Use Capital One’s Purchase Eraser to get a statement credit for your flight or hotel expenses.

First, converting your miles to deals is pretty straight-forward. Simply accumulate enough travel miles and choose your appropriate reward once you’ve reached a certain points level. These may include plane tickets, gift cards, or even charitable donations.

Your second option is Capital One’s Purchase Eraser, which allows you to put your 2x miles towards past purchases, your current balance, or as a check reimbursement. The advantage of this system is that you have the freedom to choose your own travel while not being restricted to a particular airline or hotel—if you meet the minimum requirement of 2,500 rewards miles ($25 in statement credit), you can use it towards what you’ve already spent on travel. For our 24,000 rewards miles example, this equals $240—the cost of a ticket from coast to coast if you purchase in advance.

Note: The rewards program allows you to book ten months in advance.

There are several restrictions. For example, you can use these rewards miles as a statement credit to lower your balance, but they can’t be used as payments on your bill. Additionally, cash back check reimbursements can only be redeemed for a 1x rewards rate, rendering this type of rewards card equivalent to other cards on the market, but without the high percentages of rewards points that could be spent elsewhere (i.e. departments stores, gas, etc.)

For more info on other eligible redemptions, restrictions, and other frequently asked questions, click here.

 Credit Card Benefits

The Capital One® Venture® Rewards credit card has a number of benefits. These include:

  • extended warranty
  • return protection (claims within 90 days, $300 per returned item up to a maximum $1,000 annually)
  • car rental loss and damage insurance
  • travel accident insurance
  • 24-hour travel assistance services
  • Lost luggage reimbursement

While these benefits are great for cardholders, they can be hard to keep track of or hidden to customers. That’s where using Sift can really come in handy. Sift user can take advantage of their benefits, track and manage these benefits, and automatically file claims to get the cash back they deserve—no need to decipher jargon or mark your calendar.

Want to know more? Click here to see how Sift can help your credit card put cash back in your wallet!

For more specific information about the Capital One® Venture® Rewards credit card, click here.

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