What are Capital One Miles?
Capital One Miles are a valuable points system that is very simple to use. While Capital One lacks some of the heavy-hitting features of other points behemoths, they make up for it in having some of the best features in the game. With their high-earning base rates to the unique ability to pay for travel purchases with miles, Capital One has a lot to offer anyone interested in using miles and points to earn free travel.
How to earn Capital One Miles
Capital One Miles can be earned by opening and spending on their Venture and Spark cards. Like with Chase, Capital One offers a series of cash-back cards whose earnings can be converted to miles simply by holding any one of their miles-earning cards.
The Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card and Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card stand out because of their base earning rate of 2 miles per dollar spent on everything. If you're someone who doesn't want to pre-plan how to best maximize daily spending but still wants to earn a meaningful number of miles, a card from Capital One could be the perfect solution.
In addition to these great credit card features, using the Venture X Card to book travel through the Capital One travel portal will net cardholders 5x miles on all flight and 10x miles on hotel reservations, which is excellent value.
How to Redeem Capital One Miles
1. Use your miles to cover travel purchases
This is what really makes Capital One stand out from the crowd. This feature allows users to book travel with any vendor and then to use Capital One miles to cover the purchase in the form of a statement credit. This means that rather than being locked in to booking travel in the Capital One portal, which may or may not show you the same flights options and prices as other websites, you can book your ideal flights or hotel stays anywhere and then retroactively apply miles to cover the cost.
As you can imagine, this is an excellent way to book FareDrops! No matter where our deal directs you, be it Google Flights, Expedia, Gotogate, Priceline, etc., you can use Capital One miles to offset the purchase.
With this feature, you can even use your miles to partially offset a travel purchase. If you only have a few miles in your account, you might not be able to cover the entire purchase, but you can still offset the cost by a significant degree.
2. Transfer Partners
Capital One has a number of transfer partners, including the unique inclusion of Finnair.
Bottom Line
Capital One has become a major player in the points and miles world due to its unique ability to use miles toward any travel purchase and the new, premium Venture X card that arrived on the scene last year. For anyone looking to book cheap travel while maximizing credit card perks, building a cache of Capital One Miles is an excellent option.