Capital One Spark Miles rebranded to Venture Business; Up to 150K welcome offer + up to $100 in new credits

Capital One rebranded and revamped the Spark Miles for Business card yesterday. It’s now known as the Venture Business card—not to be mistaken for the Venture X card or the VentureOne Business card (the latter of which was the Spark Miles Select card until yesterday)—with the welcome offer increasing for a limited time and two new credits being added which could offset the card’s annual fee.

The Offer & Key Card Details

Card Offer and Details

Capital One Venture Business ⓘ $2020 1st Yr Value EstimateClick to learn about first year value estimates Up to 150K Miles ⓘAffiliateThis is an affiliate offer. Frequent Miler may earn a commission if you are approved for this offer Limited-time offer. Earn up to 150K bonus miles: 75K miles after spending $7,500 in the first 3 months & an additional 75K miles after spending $30K in the first 6 months $95 Annual Fee Learn more Unlike many other Capital One business credit cards, the Venture Business doesn't report to personal credit reports. This card was formerly known as the Spark Miles for Business. FM Mini Review: This card is similar to the Spark Cash Plus card, but it has the advantage that miles earned with this card can be transferred to a large number of airline & hotel programs. The two credits can help offset most or all of the annual fee. Earning rate: Earn 5X miles on hotels, vacations rentals, and rental cars booked through Capital One Business Travel ✦ 2X Miles everywhere Base: 2X (2.9%) Portal Hotels: 5X (7.25%) Card Info: Mastercard issued by CapOne. This card has no foreign currency conversion fees. Noteworthy perks: $50 annual travel credit for bookings through Capital One Business Travel ✦ Up to an annual $50 statement credit for purchases at qualifying advertising or software merchants ✦ Up to $120 fee credit for TSA PreCheck® application fee or Global Entry application fee every four years ✦ Redeem miles for travel at value of 1 cent per mile ✦ Transfer Miles to airline miles & hotel points

Quick Thoughts

With this rebranding comes a limited time increased welcome offer which means you can now earn up to 150,000 bonus Capital One miles. You’ll earn 75,000 miles after spending $7,500 in the first three months of card membership, with an additional 75,000 miles earned after spending a total of $30,000 in the first six months.

The first threshold is a great return if you’re approved as the first 75,000 miles bonus represents a 10X return on that $7,500 of spend on top of the card’s standard 2X earnings (i.e. 12X total). The second threshold isn’t a no-brainer though. Earning an additional 75,000 miles in nice, but it requires an additional $22,500 of spend which means you’d be earning 3.33X on that additional spend. Add that to the base 2X earning rate and it works out to be a 5.33X return; very good for everyday spending, but not so much if that $22,500 of spend could otherwise be allocated to meeting the minimum spend requirements on other credit card welcome offers.

In its previous incarnation, the Spark Miles for Business card usually had its $95 annual fee waived for the first year. That’s not the case anymore, at least not with this limited time offer on the new Venture Business card anyway. However, Capital One has added a couple of new credits that could offset the entire annual fee both in the first year and in future years.

The first credit is a $50 Capital One Business Travel credit each cardmember year. That can be redeemed for any bookings through their business travel portal, whether that’s for flights, hotels, rental cars, etc.

The other credit is an up to $50 statement credit for purchases at qualifying advertising or software merchants. There doesn’t seem to be a list of only a few eligible retailers and services. Instead, provided it codes as advertising or software, you should get the credit(s). That might mean that purchases from Newegg (which sells all kinds of third party gift cards) are eligible if those purchases code as a software transaction, but we haven’t been able to test that out. Please let us know if you have any other suggestions of good uses for this credit; perhaps there are some award search tools that code as software, or some kind of other useful subscriptions.

Unfortunately there is some bad news for existing Spark Miles for Business cardholders. We’ve been advised that Capital One is treating the Venture Business card as a new card product and won’t be transitioning existing Spark Miles for Business cardholders to it. That means Spark Miles cardholders will continue paying a $95 annual fee, but won’t receive either of the new credits. A potential workaround is that Capital One might offer product changes to the Venture Business (or possibly a different business card) when logged in to your account, but right now at least that product change won’t be happening automatically.

There is some good news though. MilesTalk reports that new Venture Business cardholders won’t have the card reported to their credit reports. That’s helpful because Capital One is one of the few banks that reports at least some of its business cards to your personal credit report which can affect your 5/24 status.

While this card refresh isn’t the most mind-blowing set of changes, it does make the Venture Business far more enticing for its potential first year value, as well as making it more of a compelling keeper card beyond the first year if you can maximize the value from the two new credits.

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