Capital One Shopping is a public shopping portal (no Capital One credit card required) that offers rewards dollars that can only be redeemed for gift cards to select merchants. Over time, they have offered some broadly useful merchants like Walmart, Kroger, Safeway/Albertsons/Vons/etc, DoorDash, GrubHub, and Uber Eats among others. Sadly, none of the merchants in that sentence are available anymore (each having been removed at different times, some returning for a time and disappearing again). While I have long been willing to mostly look past the limitation of only being able to redeem rewards for gift cards, it’s been really frustrating to see high turnover in the redemption options over time.
Quick Thoughts
A reader reached out today to say that they thought that ebay gift cards had been removed as a redemption option. Thankfully, that doesn’t appear to be correct (I still see ebay among the gift card redemption options), but it was nonetheless a good reminder to publish a post about which options have been removed and which remain.
For many, redemption options like Kroger, Safeway, and Walmart made the utility of the rewards earned through Capital One Shopping almost as good as cash. Portal rewards are never quite the same as cash given the delay in payouts and if you’re using gift cards at Kroger or Safeway, you’re missing out on earning a bonus category for that spend. Still, given the monster payouts frequently offered by Capital One Shopping, it has been easy enough to overlook the limitation of gift cards.
However, given the loss of popular redemption options noted in the first paragraph, some readers might think twice about whether they want to collect portal rewards through Capital One Shopping given the uncertainty of redemption options.
Personally, I’m still happy to use Capital One Shopping. Just yesterday, I got offers like 35.5% back at Get Your Guide, up to 36% back at Expedia (usually good for tours and activities), 40% back at Klook, 15% back at Vrbo, 25% back at Agoda, 15.5% back at IHG, and many more. The payouts tend to be enough higher than what I see elsewhere that I’m confident I will get enough value out of the rewards even with a more limited set of redemption partners. However, that won’t necessarily work out for everyone.
Out of the redemption options available at the time of writing, I would say that the most broadly useful and/or relevant to travel are:
- ebay
- Lowe’s
- Home Depot
- Instacart
- Hotels.com
- Celebrity Cruises
Personally, I’m still happy to redeem for Hotels.com and I’ll surely have occasional uses with other merchants. For instance, I buy stuff from L.L. Bean from time to time and don’t otherwise see their gift cards discounted. I’ll buy a holiday gift from Bass Pro Shops now and then, etc. Still, you’ll want to more closely track the redemption options if you don’t find the gift card options as useful.
Here is a full list of available gift card redemptions at the time of writing.
- REI
- Expedia Global Hotel Card
- Shutterfly
- Home Chef
- 1800Flowers
- Etsy
- StubHub
- The Container Store
- Lowe’s
- Home Depot
- Omaha Steaks
- The Children’s Place
- Carter’s / Oshkosh B’Gosh
- Groupon
- Office Depot / Office Max
- Allbirds
- Columbia
- Lands’ End
- Ulta Beauty
- Macy’s
- Vistoria’s Secret
- Cabela’s
- Boscov’s
- Ace Hardware
- Soma
- Instacart
- PetSmart
- NFL Shop
- MLB Shop
- Nordstrom Rack
- Unfer Armour
- Chico’s
- Hanna Anderson
- Zappos
- Hulu
- Athleta
- Advance Auto
- White House Black Market
- Chewy
- Staples
- CVS
- Bass Pro Shops
- Michaels
- DSW
- GAP
- Adidas
- Sephora
- ebay
- American Eagle
- L.L. Bean
- Callaway
- Banana Republic
- Hotels.com
- Barnes & Noble
- Kohl’s
- Old Navy
- Saks Fifth Avenue
- H&M
- SiriusXM
- TJ Maxx / Marshalls / Home Goods / Sierra / Home Sense
- Stitch Fix
- Celebrity Cruises
- Sling
- Petco
- Belk
- Lane Bryant
- Asos
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Lame-o… At least keep Grubhub
i see different redemption options on different accounts that I have. One home depot got pulled, the other still has it.
Does anyone have experience with the Celebrity cruise gift card option and willing to share? I’m considering this as an option to cash out my capital one shopping account. It sounds like these gift cards are pretty restrictive (only on a new booking and at time of booking but can’t use for deposit, possibly only up to 1k/stateroom?, only can be used for fare).
The wording on the website is pretty harsh but we were able to use a physical gift card (bought in store) to purchase wi-fi and drink package on a cruise 1 week prior to boarding (cruise cost was fully paid by this time). This was in March 2025.
I just love reading this on the day that Rakuten closed my accounts 🙁
What!?! Do you know why? I’m not even aware of shenanigans with Rakuten but I’ve gotten a bunch of friends and family to adopt the portal!
Someone shared your Flyertalk report with me, too, but I didn’t notice any detail. Can you provide any information / context as to the cause? Either here or via email at mailbag at frequentmiler dot com.
I put your list through a sorter to make it easier to read. Thanks for updating the list. Losing Albertsons really stinks for me.
1800Flowers
Ace Hardware
Adidas
Advance Auto
Allbirds
American Eagle
Asos
Athleta
Banana Republic
Barnes & Noble
Bass Pro Shops
Belk
Boscov’s
Cabela’s
Callaway
Carter’s / Oshkosh B’Gosh
Celebrity Cruises
Chewy
Chico’s
Columbia
CVS
DSW
eBay
Etsy
Expedia Global Hotel Card
GAP
Groupon
H&M
Hanna Anderson
Home Chef
Home Depot
Hotels.com
Hulu
Instacart
Kohl’s
L.L. Bean
Lands’ End
Lane Bryant
Lowe’s
Macy’s
Michaels
MLB Shop
NFL Shop
Nordstrom Rack
Office Depot / Office Max
Old Navy
Omaha Steaks
Petco
PetSmart
REI
Saks Fifth Avenue
Sephora
Shutterfly
SiriusXM
Sling
Soma
Staples
Stitch Fix
StubHub
The Children’s Place
The Container Store
TJ Maxx / Marshalls / Home Goods / Sierra / Home Sense
Ulta Beauty
Under Armour
Victoria’s Secret
White House Black Market
Zappos
indeed ebay is gone
Vistoria’s Secret?
I think it was Tim that mentioned on the last Ask Us Anything episode that he is constantly in need of lodging points. I would agree with this take. C1 Shopping and Seated rewards (who also has AirBNB and Delta cards) have been “one key” way I’ve been supplementing my lodging points. The One Key program is a terrible rebate program, but it often has pretty decent up-front pricing for hotel rooms. More importantly, you can stack your gift cards with a portal bonus when you make a partial payment with a credit card. It isn’t uncommon to see 15-25% on Hotels.com in C1 Shopping. I also see 10x miles somewhat regularly in C1 offers.
That’s a great tip Brent, I had no idea.
Is split tender / partial CC payment necessary for that c1shopping stack to work?
Pepper has often had nice discounts on Hotels.com GCs too.
No, Capital One shopping doesn’t care how you pay for your order. I know it’s branded with Capital One, but it doesn’t have much to do with Capital One besides the name. Generally speaking, you can click through to a merchant and whether you pay with a credit card or a gift card doesn’t matter at all. There are rare exceptions to that, but they’re pretty rare.
This is why I list hotels.com is one of the best options and indeed it is the option that I have used the most. You can combine hotels.com gift cards up to a maximum value of $2,000 on a single gift card. So if you redeem for four separate $500 hotels.com gift cards, it is possible to combine the value through the hotels.com website (this step is necessary because you can only use one gift card at checkout).
Do make sure before you start redeeming that the hotel you’ve chosen accepts hotels.com gift cards. You would think that every hotel listed on the website could be paid for with a gift card, but that’s not the case. Some property is for some reason cannot be paid with a gift card. So I always go through the motions of making a booking and go through to the final payment page to make sure that it is possible to enter a gift card number on that page. Then I’ll go all the way back to the beginning and click through from a portal, whether that’s the Capital One shopping portal or Capital One credit card login or another portal like Rakuten and then use the gift card during checkout.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t prefer to book hotels through hotels.com in general because those bookings will not earn Hotel points, elite night credit, or qualify for elite benefits. However, I’ve had a couple of stays over the last year at places that were not chains, so that part didn’t matter.
I have had issues with full gift card payment in C1 offers (only a couple times). I have not tried full gift card payment with C1 shopping.
I’ve never had issues using GCs to pay with C1shopping either.
I haven’t bothered with hotels.com precisely because of the loss of elite benefits, night credits, et cetera.
Those are helpful tips RE combining GCs to get around the 1 GC limit, and that being listed on the hotels.com site does not necessarily mean redemptions will work at the property.
Apologies if you’ve done this already Nick, but one of your trademark long pieces on optimizing hotels.com would be of interest.