Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card Complete Guide

This is a decent travel rewards credit card with good “everywhere” rewards. Earn 2 miles per dollar for all spend. Miles are worth 1 cent each when redeemed for travel. Simply use the card to pay for any travel expenses, and then log onto your account and apply miles to offset your statement charges.

Things get more interesting now that Capital One Miles are transferable to airline miles. Since the transfer ratio is 2 to 1.5, you can think of this card as earning your choice of 2% everywhere OR 1.5 airline miles everywhere.

It is worth noting that Capital One is known to pull from all three bureaus for new applications, resulting in hard inquiries on all of them. Anecdotally, some have reported being approved with a single report frozen.

Capital One allows at most 2 Capital One consumer cards and you must wait six months before applying for another card.

However, beyond those rules, Capital One also tends to be less likely to approve those who have opened many credit cards with other issuers. There is no known rule as to how many is too many, but those who regularly open rewards credit cards are likely to have difficulty being approved.

If your application is denied, we recommend calling for reconsideration (800) 625-7866. It’s surprising how often denials can be changed to approvals just by asking, though note that Capital One is unlikely to approve those with many open credit cards.

Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card Perks

Capital One “Miles”

Capital One calls its rewards currency “miles”, though really it is like other transferable currencies in that it offers the ability to redeem towards travel or to transfer to airline miles as follows:

• Redeem Points $0.01 each toward travel: Points are worth 1 cent each toward travel and can be used to “erase” a broad range of travel purchases (including flights, lodging, ride shares, cruises, and more) within 90 days of purchase.
• Transfer Points to Partners: Points can be transferred one to one to a number of airline loyalty programs. Capital One “miles” transfer to most airline partners at a rate of 2 Capital One “miles” to 1.5 airline miles, though some offer a worse ratio of 2:1. Transfer bonuses sometimes improve these ratios.

Travel Protections

• Auto Rental Coverage: Capital One offers secondary auto rental CDW (collision damage waiver), which means that it acts as supplemental insurance to your personal car insurance if you have any (if you do not have car insurance, it acts as primary CDW). Here’s the description directly from Capital One: “Rent an eligible vehicle with your credit card and you can be covered for damage due to collision or theft.”
• Travel Accident Insurance: When you charge the entire cost of the passenger fare(s) to your card, you, your spouse and unmarried dependent children will be automatically insured up to $250,000 against accidental loss of life, limb, sight, speech or hearing while riding as a passenger in, entering or exiting any licensed common carrier.