Capital One Shopping adds Kroger, Uber Eats, Celebrity cruise gift card redemptions (many new options)

Capital One Shopping is a public shopping portal, but rewards earned through the portal can only be redeemed for gift cards (not cash or miles). A reader pointed out that Capital One Shopping quietly expanded the gift card offerings at some point to add many new gift card redemptions, including Kroger, Uber Eats, Celebrity cruise lines and many other additional gift card redemptions. I imagine that the Kroger cards will make it far easier to get close to face value out of rewards for those who live within the Kroger family of stores footprint.

Yesterday, I published a post about the crazy portal payout rates I’ve had from Capital One Shopping as well as my frustrations and tips. In the comments of that post, a reader pointed out that Capital One Shopping has added many new gift card redemption options. I haven’t tracked the overall options very closely, but some that I don’t recall having seen before include:

• Kroger
• Uber Eats
• Celebrity Cruises
• Walgreens
• Carter’s
• Victoria’s Secret
• R.E.I.
• Walmart (we had previously reported this, but I’m including it here to highlight it)

Safeway has been an option for quite a while now and between Safeway, Kroger, and Walmart (which a reader points out can also be used at Sam’s Club), I imagine that many readers could take care of their grocery shopping with gift cards from Capital One Shopping, which is certainly useful for getting closer to full value out of your rewards. Some of the other options add convenience. I don’t know much about Celebrity Cruises gift cards, but I know that Carnival ones can be added to your folio onboard to cover on-board purchases, which might make those an appealing option for those with a Celebrity cruise booking.

It’s possible that some of the above options have been around for a while and I just didn’t notice them, but overall I find quite a few options to be fairly useful for me. The overall gift card redemptions I find most useful include:

• Hotels.com (I used these for our hotel this year in Mauritius)
• DoorDash
• StubHub (this is how I covered Taylor Swift tickets)
• Walmart
• eBay (I don’t shop here often, but often buy something at the holidays)
• Kroger/Safeway (not useful for me personally, but certainly for a lot of people)
• Uber Eats

Note that you can sometimes get some of the above gift cards on sale for less than face value. That’s particularly true of DoorDash and Uber Eats at this time of year. Personally, I don’t often stock up in those sales since I don’t know how long it will be before I need the credit (and in the case of Uber, I have monthly credits coming in and I’m buying a gift card at Staples monthly to use a card benefit). I like the convenience of being able to redeem when I’m more or less ready to use the gift card.

On that note, it’s worth knowing that Capital One Shopping gift card redemptions aren’t always instant. Most of mine have been somewhere between instant and under an hour, but sometimes it can take up to 24 hours to receive your gift card. So it isn’t necessarily something you can redeem for while standing in line at checkout, which is worth knowing.

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