Capital One Venture One Rewards Credit Card Review

capital-one-venture-one-review Today’s credit card review is focused on the Capital One Venture One Rewards Credit Card (not to be confused with the similarly named Capital One Venture Rewards Card). While the Venture One Rewards Card is classified as a travel rewards card, we actually view it more like a cash-back credit card with some redemption restrictions (namely, rewards can only be redeemed to offset travel expenses). The distinction may seem small, but it’s important.

When evaluating this card, one of your main decisions will be whether to get the Capital One Venture One credit card, or the Capital One Venture Rewards Card which offers bigger rewards (but has an annual fee). We’ve dedicated a section below to help you make that decision.

Snapshot of the Capital One Venture One Rewards Credit Card
Credit Level Required Excellent
Base Rewards 1.25 miles per dollar of spend
Spend Target Bonus 10,000 miles when you spend $1,000 within first 3 months of card approval.
Miles Expiration Miles don’t expire
Mileage Earning Caps No limit to the miles you can earn
Redemption Options Redeem for flights, hotels, car rentals, cruises, travel packages, gift cards and more.
Optimum Redemption Method Redemption for any form of travel yields maximum value for your miles.
Annual Fee None
Foreign Transaction Fee None

Earning Miles with CapitalOne’s VentureOne Card

The earnings structure for the VentureOne credit card is quite straightforward—1.25 miles per dollar of spend. Miles don’t expire, and there’s no limit to the number of miles you can earn.

You’ll also earn 10,000 additional miles if you spend $1,000 within the first 3 months of getting your credit card approved. If you’re in the market for sign-up bonuses, this is just an OK deal, but you can check out our post on killer sign-up bonuses to see what’s brewing in that department.

To The Point: Deciding Between the Capital One Venture Rewards and Venture One Rewards Cards

While we encourage you to read our detailed post comparing the Capital One Venture versus the Capital One Venture Rewards credit cards, the simple answer is if you plan to hold onto either card for the long haul (5+ years), then you should go with the Venture Rewards Card (with the annual fee) if you plan on spending more than about $500 per month (the math is slightly more complex, but again read the detailed post to get more precise answers). For shorter durations, definitely read the post.

Redeeming Miles with the Venture One Card

Redemption of your miles is also straight-forward. Basically, you can either call up CapOne and book any sort of travel (flight, hotel, auto rental, cruises, etc) or you can just purchase the travel yourself using your Venture One Card, and then call up those Visigoths to get reimbursed. Your rewards are valued at $0.01 per mile. Note that you have 10 months from the date of the travel item posting to your statement to call up and apply for reimbursement.

That’s why, as we said above, we view this card more as a cashback card than a travel rewards card. We define travel cards as those that earn miles on a specific carrier, whereas the Venture One card simply lets you take your miles and get a direct statement credit (same thing as cash)—with the only restriction being you can only apply it to travel purchases.

Closing Thoughts on the Capital One Venture One Travel Rewards Card

While the Venture One card’s 1.25 miles per dollar and no annual fee are reasonably nice, we feel that both the Venture One card and the Venture Rewards card are designed to be primary use cards (versus niche gas or restaurant cards, for example). Thus, we believe that many folks will do better off with the Venture Rewards Card—assuming they spend more than approximately $500-$600 per month on the card.

Apply for the Capital One Venture One Card here.

Last Reviewed: 1/22/2012

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