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After a year of steadily shrinking credit card offers, with none of the deals consumers over the past decade had come to take for granted, one type of credit card deals is bouncing back: rewards credit cards.
Cases in point are the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card and Capital One’s VentureOne Rewards Credit Card, the newest offshoots in a growing line-up of attractive rewards credit card deals. The new Capital One Venture cards up the ante on travel rewards programs, literally “going the extra mile” by offering new cardholders from 1.25 to 2 miles per every dollar spent, enabling users to rack up bonus miles at twice the speed most other rewards credit cards allow.
The Capital One VentureOne is the no-annual-fee version of the new Venture line of cards. It is available to people with good credit and offers similar perks as the Capital One Venture Card, but the rewards are lower: 1.25 miles per dollar spent. People with excellent credit who don’t mind paying a $59 annual fee (waived the first year), might prefer the Capital One Venture Card, which lets users earn whopping 2 miles per dollar spent. Big spenders will benefit the most from this card; the extra miles earnings (equivalent to 0.75 cent per dollar spent) will pay back the annual fee after the first $7,870 in charges, and only then do cardholders benefit from the extra points earnings. For the first year, however, new cardholders who spend $1,000 within the first 3 months receive 10,000 bonus miles, the equivalent of a $100 cash back bonus, which more than pays for the first year’s annual fee.
While some rewards programs feature complicated or involved points redemption systems, the Capital One Venture cards are fairly easy and straightforward (can you say No Hassle?). First of all, the value of the miles is a straightforward one cent per miles, so knowing the value of your earnings and calculating how many miles you will need for a ticket purchase is straightforward: simply multiply the cost of a transaction by 100 (add two zeros) to determine how many miles are needed.
In addition, there are no expiration dates, blackouts, or limits on how many miles cardholders can accumulate—or where they can be redeemed; Venture cardholders enjoy easy redemption with any airline at any time. International travelers will particularly appreciate that both cards charge no foreign transaction fees on purchases made while travelling abroad; foreign transaction fees otherwise range as high as 3.5 percent on most credit cards.
Reward redemption is not limited to airline purchases alone: Capital One Venture cardholders can cash in miles for other travel purchases, such as hotel, cruise, car rental transactions, or even redeem miles earned as cash back earnings in the form of a statement credit.
The Capital One Venture Card is a Visa Signature card, which comes with a long list of additional benefits, including preferred access to popular entertainment, dining, and sporting events as well as special travel offers.
Curious to see how many miles you can accrue in a year with the new Venture card? Visit Capital One’s website and check out their mile calculator on the Venture card page. You can compare your potential earnings with a Venture card to what you might receive from other major travel rewards card issuers.
