Capital One Venture Card Review

This card is for people who want to earn travel rewards, but don’t want to track bonus categories or navigate complicated travel restrictions. Since you’ll earn the same 2 miles on every purchase, you won’t have to worry about bonus-earning categories that many other travel rewards cards have. 

Even if you typically rely on other cards to earn even more than 2 points per dollar spent on your, say, travel, restaurant, gas, or grocery spending, you could use this card as a high-earning supplemental card for purchases that don’t earn a larger bonus.

Pros Explained

• Simple and predictable miles earning: Every purchase you make will earn the same 2 miles for every $1 you spend. That means you don’t have to keep track of different rewards rates for different categories of spend. 
• Fee credit for TSA Precheck or Global Entry: If you apply for TSA Precheck or Global Entry, Capital One will reimburse you for the fee when you pay with your Venture card. You are eligible for a reimbursement every four years. 
• Miles are transferable to airline & hotel partners: Capital One lets you transfer your miles to 13 airline partners and two hotel partners. 
• Great bonus for new cardholders: This card offers one of the best bonuses among general travel cards that charge similar annual fees right now. You'll earn 100,000 bonus miles when you spend $20,000 in the first 12 months or 50,000 bonus miles when you spend $3,00 in the first 3 months.

Cons Explained

• Limited choice of airline partners: All but one of the airline transfer partners are foreign airlines, some of which only fly in limited areas of the globe. Jet Blue is the only domestic airline transfer partner. 
• Transfers to partners is not on a 1:1 basis: For every 100 Venture points you transfer to an airline or hotel, you’ll only get 50 or 75 miles or points with that partner (depending on the partner). Competing programs such as Chase Ultimate Rewards give you 100 hotel or airline loyalty points for every 100 Ultimate Rewards points.

Capital One Venture Rewards Card Bonus for New Cardholders

Earn 100,000 bonus miles when you spend $20,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening or 50,000 bonus miles when you spend $3,000 on purchases in the first twelve months. The bonus is worth up to $1,000 when miles are used to reimburse travel purchases made with your Venture card using the Capital One Purchase Eraser (more about that below). This is one of the best bonuses offered by a flexible travel rewards card right now.

Earning Points & Rewards

Purchases you charge to your Venture card will earn an unlimited 2 miles per $1 spent. The average U.S. household spends around $24,297 a year, based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That spending could earn 48,594 miles that may be worth $485.94.

Redeeming Rewards 

Redeeming your miles can be effortless—especially if you use them for travel. Capital One offers a redemption tool called “Purchase Eraser,” which essentially removes any qualifying travel purchases you’ve made within the past 90 days by crediting you with the total cost of your purchase.

If you don’t want to spend your own money upfront, you can also book travel through Capital One’s rewards center, using your rewards miles to pay for:

• A hotel room
• Car rental booking
• Airplane ticket

Each mile will be worth 1 cent when used this way, so if you want to book a $400 airfare, you’ll need 40,000 miles to pay for it.

In addition, you can transfer your points to Capital One’s airline partners. For all but two of them, you’ll need to transfer 2 Capital One miles to get 1.5 airline miles. For Emirates and Singapore Airlines, 2 Capital One miles will only buy you 1 airline mile.

Given that transfer ratio, The Balance values miles used for JetBlue at 1.07 cents per mile on average; that’s right around the 1 cent-per-mile benchmark you’d want from a travel card.

How to Get the Most Out of This Card

Don't let the bonus pass you by. Spend $1,666 per month using this card, on average, and you'll meet the spending requirement for the full 100,000-mile bonus. The simplest way to use this card is to put all your purchases on it. However, you could also pair it with another card that earns more for certain categories of purchases—3% cash back on dining and entertainment, for example. Then, use your Venture card for any purchases that fall outside of the bonus categories.

Make sure you use your credit for Global Entry or TSA Precheck, which can speed you through airports and give you more value from the card.

On the redemption side, use your miles for travel purchases rather than for cash back or gift cards. 

The Capital One Venture Rewards Card’s Excellent Perks

As a cardholder, you get certain benefits our editors have deemed as being “excellent” because they’re more valuable than the standard perks many rewards cards offer.

• Global Entry/TSA Precheck application fee reimbursement: Get reimbursed up to $100 if you use your Venture card to pay the application fee for either of these expedited airport-security programs. 
• Coverage for lost luggage: If your carry-on or checked baggage is lost on a trip paid for with your Venture card, you could be reimbursed for up to $3,000. 
• Travel accident insurance: Should something terrible happen to you, your spouse, or your children on a trip paid for with your card, this policy provides coverage for up to $250,000 against accidental loss of life, limb, sight, speech, or hearing.

The Capital One Venture Rewards Card’s Other Features

• Auto rental collision damage waiver
• Extended warranties
• Insurance for stolen or damaged purchases
• Roadside assistance
• Concierge for booking event tickets, travel, and other services
• Travel and emergency assistance services

Customer Experience

Capital One ranked fifth out of 11 national card issuers and scored two points below the average in J.D. Power's 2020 U.S. Credit Card Satisfaction Study. Capital One offers a pretty good credit card app, too. In the J.D. Power 2020 U.S. Credit Card Mobile App Satisfaction Study, Capital One was fifth and scored only one point below the average.

For the credit-score-curious, there’s a complimentary credit score monitoring tool called CreditWise (available to non-cardholders, too), which gives you access to your VantageScore 3.0 credit score.

Security Features

Capital One offers security features that are standard for the credit card industry. Also, you can get alerts if the company notices a change to your TransUnion and Experian credit report or if it spots unauthorized use of your Social Security number.

The Capital One Venture Rewards Card’s Fees

The fees associated with the Capital One Venture Card are in line with industry norms. There is no foreign transaction fee so you can keep earning miles while you're out of the country for even more travel.