It’s been almost a year to the day since it was announced that Discover would be merging with Capital One.
Details since then have been scant, but Discover cardholders—some of them at least—have discovered that their cards will be moving to the Capital One platform on July 27, 2026.
There’s a lot more to be aware of, although there are still some questions remaining, particularly with regards to whether Discover It cashback and/or miles will be able to be transferred to existing Capital One miles balances.
It’s not clear yet if all Discover It and Discover It Miles cardholders will be moved to Capital One on July 27, 2026. My wife received an email advising her that her Discover It card will be moved on that date, although I’ve not received anything from Discover yet regarding my own Discover It card. That said, July 27 is still more than 2.5 months away, so it might be that it’s sending these notifications out in waves to better manage customers calling in with questions.
Thankfully, many questions can be answered on this FAQs page on Capital One’s website. If you’re a Discover cardholder, I’d recommend checking out that page, but here are some of the most important things to know.
Discover It branding being maintained (for now?)
This page on Capital One’s website has high-level details for cardholders whose accounts will be getting transferred. It confirms that your Discover card can be managed on Capital One’s website and in its app, with a screenshot of what that’ll look like suggesting that the Discover It branding will be maintained.
That makes sense as it’ll help reduce confusion with the initial conversion, but it’ll be interesting to see if things eventually change on that front and Discover cards get rebranded to something like the VentureIt card (that’s a joke Capital One, please don’t name it that). Having said that, among the FAQs is the statement that:
The Discover brand and network are not going away, but the way you’ll manage your credit card account will change.
That suggests we shouldn’t anticipate much in the way of card name rebranding.
5% rotating categories being maintained
One of the main draws of the Discover It card is that it has rotating 5% spending categories each quarter on up to $1,500 spend per quarter.
If you were worried that feature would go away post-transfer, there’s no need to be concerned—again, for now at least. Capital One has confirmed that 5% categories will still be available.
Cash Back Match & Discover Match will continue
At the end of your first year of Discover card membership, Discover currently matches any cashback or miles you earned. That means that if you max out each quarter’s 5% categories, the $300 cashback you earn will be boosted to $600. Capital One will be continuing that feature.
New bonused spending categories
Discover cardholders will gain additional 5%/5X spending categories once they’ve moved to Capital One. You’ll earn 5%/5X on hotels, vacation rentals, rental cars, and activities booked through Capital One Travel, as well as on tickets and events booked through Capital One Entertainment.
Capital One Offers will be offered
Capital One cardholders have access to Capital One Offers, a shopping portal that’s available to cardholders only (unlike the Capital One Shopping portal which is available to everyone).
Discover cardholders will also get Capital One Offers on their cards. Considering how generous those offers can be that could be a great enhancement, especially if you’re not already a Capital One cardholder. That’ll hopefully mean Discover cardholders will get access to discounted Major League Baseball tickets.
Rewards redemption options will be changing
Discover It Miles cardholders will gain the ability to redeem their rewards for gift cards, while Discover It cardholders will apparently be able to redeem cashback to offset eligible purchases made with their card. That latter element confused me a little as I thought you could already apply your Discover It Cashback Bonus balance towards your balance, so perhaps there’s some kind of minor nuance to the implementation of it with Capital One versus Discover.
One of the best ways to get value from your Discover Cashback Bonus is to redeem them for gift cards as Discover gives a 5%-20% discount on those. Capital One will continue that feature, but it’ll be implementing a minimum value of $25 for gift card redemptions. Somewhat interestingly, Capital One lists the same error as Discover in how that works (my bolding):
Rewards may continue to be redeemed for gift cards with at least 5% added value, and with a new minimum redemption amount of $25.
Discover has always marketed the gift card redemption feature as offering additional value, but it’s actually a discount which makes it even more valuable. For example, a $100 gift card with a 20% discount means you redeem $80 of your cashback earnings, whereas 20% of added value would require redeeming $83.33 in order to get a $100 gift card.
You’ll still also be able to have automatic statement credit redemptions, but you’ll have to re-enroll in that feature once your card has moved over to Capital One.
There are a couple of redemption options that’ll be going away, but it doesn’t seem to be a major nerf. You won’t be able to redeem rewards towards your minimum payment any longer, but you will still be able to redeem them towards your account balance as a statement credit.
The ability to Pay with Rewards with Apple Pay will also be going away once you’ve moved to Capital One, something that I doubt will be a dealbreaker for many cardholders.
Discover cardholder referrals will continue (with a possible interruption to regularly scheduled service)
Discover cardholders can earn $100 when referring someone to a Discover card, with a cap of $500 per year. It sounds like that ability will continue which isn’t too surprising seeing as Capital One provides the ability to refer from most of its own cards. However, they do warn that the ability to refer might be temporarily unavailable while getting cardholders situated.
Fingers crossed that Discover cardholders will get higher referral limits, like those that are offered on Capital One cards in many cases.
No annual fee continues
The Discover It and Discover It Miles cards don’t have an annual fee; that’ll continue once they’ve migrated to Capital One.
Primary cardholder number will be maintained; authorized user cards will change
Primary cardholders will keep the same card number once their card is moved over. If you have any authorized users, their card numbers will change in order to get a distinct card number of their own.
What we don’t know
One of the things I’m most curious about is whether Discover cashback and miles will become transferable to other Capital One cards if you’re an existing Capital One cardholder. Being able to convert $200 in Discover Cashback Bonus balance into 20,000 transferable Capital One miles would be awesome. There’s no indication yet as to whether or not that’ll be allowed, so fingers crossed that no news is good news.
We also don’t know if it’ll be possible to product change from a Discover-branded card to a Capital One-branded card. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s not an option initially, so as to ensure the migration of Discover accounts has gone entirely smoothly. Hopefully as time goes on though that it’ll be possible to product change if there’s a better Capital One card for you that you aren’t able to get approved for normally.
Your thoughts
Are you excited about these announcements so far? If you’ve not been able to get approved for a Capital One card before, are you tempted to get a Discover card in the next couple of months if you don’t already have one? Let us know in the comments below.
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Will this affect 5/24?