In response to my post this morning about the ascending value of Capital One’s rewards program, a reader commented to note a couple of fascinating data points indicating that cash back rewards earned on the Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card can be combined with Capital One Venture Rewards miles and transferred to airline and hotel partners. Digging deeper into the data points, it looks like this might also be possible with Quicksilver rewards and now based on my own investigation I think it is also possible to convert Capital One Spark Cash Business Credit Card rewards to Capital One miles (Update: Dave at Miles Talk has previously written a post indicating that it is indeed possible to transfer from Spark Cash to miles). Extrapolating further, I think it should be possible to earn 3x airline miles per dollar spent on dining and entertainment with no annual fees if this all works (see more below). We have reached out to Capital One looking for official comment and haven’t heard back, but if these data points are accurate, it means the ability to earn 3-4x airline miles for dining and entertainment either without an annual fee or with a reasonable fee and the potential to combine welcome bonuses from multiple Capital One credit cards to accumulate more airline miles when transferred first to the Venture or VentureOne card. Note that we still have some question marks here and this may not work for all cardholders.
In response to this morning’s post, reader Kent pointed out a couple of fascinating data points:
“Furthermore, there are 2 personal cards that earn Capital One miles (only one of which has a worthwhile bonus and ongoing return for spend)”
I assume you mean the Venture and VentureOne. Apparently though, one can transfer Savor (and presumably SavorOne) rewards to Venture miles at 1:1.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CreditCards/comments/mgkz0h/fu_sapphire_vs_venture_savor/
https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Venture-Savor-combo/td-p/5439100
Checking into the data points, the original poster in that thread from the MyFico forums confirms that they have converted cash back rewards from the Savor card to the Venture card. First, mr_suave said this (bolding is mine):
Yes, this is certainly a good earning rate none the less. 2% on everything while earning 4% on restaurants/entertainment on Savor that can then be transferred to the “miles equivalent” on the Venture. The ability to convert Savor cash to Venture miles is straightforward as well. You just simply look for Share my rewards that can be found in Rewards cash tab. You can convert/transfer Savor cash to your eligible accounts or someone else’s. I believe eligible accounts are Quicksilver and Venture accounts.
At the time of that comment, he hadn’t yet done it. However, he went on to make the conversion successfully:
Note the time and date stamp: that data point is almost two and a half years old, so this is not a new development. And apparently, it may not be limited to the Savor card:
Why is this so exciting?
This is very exciting for several reasons:
- Capital One offers a couple of cards that earn excellent category bonuses on dining. It may be possible to earn 3x airline miles on dining and entertainment with no annual fees.
- It may be possible to convert welcome bonuses from cash back cards (including those earned on the business side) into miles. YMMV, but more on why I think this is likely possible below.
To the first point, the Capital One SavorOne Cash Rewards Credit Card has no annual fee and earns 3% back on dining and entertainment, which means 3x miles per dollar that if rewards convert 1:1 to the Venture or VentureOne cards as indicated above.
The Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card has a $95 annual fee and earns 4% back on dining and entertainment, which means 4x miles per dollar spent if rewards convert 1:1 to the Venture or VentureOne cards as indicated above.
Remember that both the Venture and VentureOne cards convert to airline and hotel partners at the same ratios. Now that Capital One miles convert 1:1 to several key partners and have picked up some key transfer partners like Turkish and British Airways, I argued this morning that their program is quickly ascending.
Someone who wants to earn airline miles for dining and entertainment purchases could theoretically pair the SavorOne card with the VentureOne card and earn 3x on dining and entertainment without an annual fee and convert 1:1 to partners like Avianca LifeMiles, Wyndham, Asia Miles, and more. That’s awesome.
While the Savor card has a $95 annual fee, some cardholders may be grandfathered in to a version that has no annual fee, which means that at least some people may be able to earn 4x on dining and entertainment without an annual fee. Even for those who pay the $95 fee, that may well be worth it if you spend a lot on dining and entertainment.
Furthermore, since Capital One allows you to combine rewards with other cardholders, it may be possible for a Savor cardholder to share their rewards with another cardholder who has the Venture or VentureOne card.
And that’s not all. Remember that the key Capital One weakness I noted in this morning’s post is that there are not many ways to earn Capital One miles from new card bonuses or category bonuses. If this is true, it would open up additional new card bonuses and category bonuses from the other Capital One credit cards. In fact, it may even open up earning and sharing between the business and personal sides.
For instance, my wife has the Capital One Spark Cash Business credit card. She also has both the Venture and VentureOne cards. If she goes to her Spark Cash account and clicks to “View Rewards? and then “Move Rewards” to one of her own accounts, this is what she sees in the drop-down menu:
I had seen this in the past and (I think incorrectly) assumed it meant that she could only transfer rewards between the Venture and VentureOne accounts. However, when she goes to her Venture account and chooses to move rewards to one of her own accounts, this is what she sees:
Note that it says her Spark Cash card is not eligible. In other words, she can’t convert Venture miles to her Spark Cash card. However, in the opposite direction, it does not indicate that her Venture accounts are not eligible — leading me to believe that converting cash back earned on a Spark Cash card to miles would work. If she hadn’t cashed out her Spark Cash rewards for a check yesterday, we would have tested this out. However, it appears to me very likely that it would work. That’s huge because we sometimes see very big bonuses on the Spark side — being able to convert a $1,000 or $2,000 Spark Cash bonus into 100K or 200K miles would be huge. Furthermore, spending on the Spark Cash would make more sense than spending on a Venture card because the Spark Cash card would give the flexibility of redeeming rewards for straight cash (not only to reimburse travel purchases) or convert to miles. As my wife has a Spark Cash card with a lower grandfathered annual fee, it would also be cheaper for us to maintain a Spark Cash and VentureOne card.
It’s possible that this won’t work for everyone
I do not personally have a Savor or Quicksilver card in my household, so I can’t test this theory with other cards (I will test with the Spark Cash as soon as cash rewards post from today’s purchases). Capital One has been known to grandfather certain features on certain cards (like my ability to get 1.4cpp with my VentureOne card by redeeming for a $900 Marriott, Fairmont, or Raffles gift card). So it is possible that this feature won’t work for everyone — at this point we don’t know for sure.
I’ll also note that I previously had a Capital One credit card that earned 1.5% cash back (see: Turning a Capital One lemon into Lemonade) — mine was not a Quicksilver card but rather some nondescript Capital One card that charged an annual fee — and I am 85% certain that I was not able to combine rewards from that card with my VentureOne (as I wrote about in that post, I converted that card to a Venture card).
If you have a Quicksilver, Savor, or Spark Cash card and a Venture or Venture One card in your household, please share any relevant data points in the comments regarding your ability to move rewards. In order to move rewards, go to your Capital One card account and click “View Rewards” under your card name in the top left of the card account.
Then select “move rewards”.
If you want to move rewards to someone else’s account, you’ll need to call the number on the back of your card and provide the card number of the person to which you are moving rewards.
Bottom line
If it is indeed possible to convert rewards earned on Capital One cash back to miles on a Venture or VentureOne card, this would be huge news for those looking to accumulate miles with bonus categories or welcome bonuses. For those who don’t yet have Capital One cards, it’s worth a mention that Capital One has long been a difficult approval for anyone with many credit cards open. However, Greg recently got approved and we’ve had a few success reports from readers. That could be totally anecdotal or it could be that they have eased up some – YMMV.
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Nevermind, please delete.
I called Cap1 to transfer cash back rewards from my Spark Cash to a Venture X on which I am an authorized user and was told it could not be done.
When logged into the Spark Cash account online, clicking on the button “Move Rewards” gives me a message saying “You don’t have any other Capital One accounts.”
You can’t do it yourself online. You can only move rewards online between accounts on which you are the primary cardholder.
However, you can move rewards to any other primary cardholder.
I think it sounds like you tried to move rewards from your card (where you are the primary cardholder) to a card in your name that is an AU card on someone else’s account. You can’t do that.
Instead, move rewards from your Spark Cash to the primary cardholder on that Venture X account. It doesn’t matter whether or not you are an authorized user — that wouldn’t even come up in the conversation.
For example, my wife moves rewards from her Spark Cash card to my Venture card. Neither of us is an authorized user on the other person’s card — she just calls up and says she wants to move rewards from her Spark Cash to another cardholder and gives them her Spark Cash card number and my Venture card number and that’s it.
Thanks, I successfully transferred cash back to my wife’s (primary cardholder) Venture X card.
[…] like the Capital One Savor card into Venture Miles. This is still not 100% confirmed but multiple sources have indicated that this is true. The reason this would be a big deal is that it opens up the […]
I called Capital One this morning and they confirmed that you can move cash back to miles, but not the other way around.
This has been possible for at least two years. I’m not sure why it’s getting reported as if it’s brand new.
C1 cards have been solid for a long time and the fact that they are often crapped on by community groupthink is kind of outdated.
Did you see the quotes in the post from 2018? I made it clear that it isn’t new, but was news to me (and based on the reaction to the post, it was news to many other folks as well whether or not the functionality itself was new). We all knew you could move miles to miles, but being able to move cash back to miles was the piece that wasn’t widely known.
Wasn’t just you. I saw a few other sources presenting as if it was a change C1 just made.
[…] Huge if true: Convert Capital One cash back to miles by moving rewards by Frequent Miler. […]
[…] program even with cash back earned from several other credit cards. The information comes from Frequent Miler and Miles Talk. The cash back rewards earned on the Capital One Savor, SavorOne, Capital One […]
I have a VentureOne and a Spark Cash Select for Business (both converted from the respective annual fee cards years ago). The cards have separate logins with Capital One, one for personal and one for business. The separate logins seem to create an issue with transferring rewards. When logged into either account, if I click “Move Rewards” > “One of my accounts”, I get the error message: “You don’t have any other Capital One accounts.” If I click “Move Rewards” > “Someone else’s Capital One account”, I get the error message: “We’re working on making this something you can do online, for now, please call the number on the back of your card.” I have not yet called the number to try to do this because I don’t have any rewards accrued in my Spark Cash Select account, so I’m not sure if this option would work for this case.
Wow — I hope they bring back the $2,000/200,000 mile bonuses on the spark cards again at the end of this year like the last couple of years.
Worthwhile if you already are sitting on those Cap1 cards, but otherwise none of their products are worth a 5/24 slot or credit inquiry IMO even in light of this potential benefit. Cap1 easily ranks near the bottom of my priority list (just below Barclays). Too many better products out there, including just about every other business card that doesn’t count against 5/24 like Cap1.
New Spark Cash accounts don’t count against 5/24 anymore.
I totally disagree. That’s fine, we can have different opinions. But in my opinion, uncapped 2x Avianca, Asia Miles, Etihad, Qantas, and Wyndham on purchases that would otherwise go unbonused is better than anything Chase has for everyday spend. Then add 1.5x Turkish and Aeroplan and you’ve easily got Chase’s “everywhere else” card (CFU) beaten without even considering the ability to also make those same rewards an effective 2% cash back. Capital One has all of Citi’s best transfer partners and adds Wyndham and Avios for excellent redemptions via Vacasa.
I don’t disagree that there are better cards on the market for specific purchases, but I disagree about none of their products being worth a 5/24 slow and I also disagree with their being “too many” better products. Finally, the Capital One Spark Card stopped reporting to personal bureaus for new accounts a year or more ago I think, so the Spark Cash doesn’t count against 5/24 (but I believe that Spark Miles still does).
This is community groupthink- not objective and kind of just wrong. C1 cards are competitive and very compelling for some spend profiles.
Capone has some sort of rule similar to chase. I think Capone is 6/24 or maybe even lower. Greg never elaborated on his x/24 status when he got approved; he mentioned that he got a certain number of new cards in the past 24 months but obviously if those cards are business cards that don’t report to the credit bureaus then they don’t matter. Anyways the bottom line is that no one should expect to be approved for a Capone card if their x/24 number is higher than 6.
I don’t know Greg’s 5/24 count, but Greg isn’t the only person who has been approved. I obviously have no way of knowing who will be approved and who won’t, but anecdotal reports indicate that it is at least easier than it has been in the past so I don’t think either of us knows who should expect or not expect to be approved. All of Greg’s past experience had led him to believe he’d never be approved, but he was obviously wrong. I’d say it’s at least worth continuing to monitor reports as a lot has clearly been changing at Capital One.
Nick, if I already have a Cap1 card opened years ago, is it a good idea to put some regular spend (maybe a few hundred or so) on it in the two or three months leading up to a new application? I do think folks without any Cap1 cards may be at an advantage of being approved even if they already had several cards with other issuers. But this is based on way out-of-date data points I am vaguely recalling from my ailing memory.
I have been unsuccessful in locating very recent data points showing the success rate of applicants (and their x/24 new personal card status and/or x/6 or x/12 inquiry status and/or whether they already had at least Cap1 card).
I don’t know as though there is any need to put spend on your existing cards. My wife had both the Venture and Venture One cards open when she opened a Spark Cash a couple of years ago. She had put no spend at all on the VentureOne in a long time (in fact, as I type this I am reminded that we need to find that card and put a purchase on it before they close it for inactivity) and I don’t think we had put much spend on the Venture card for a while at that point if I remember correctly. I don’t think that spending on your current card will hurt, I’m just not aware of data points that would suggest that it makes a difference.
I was at 5/24 when I applied. Now I’m at 6/24.
And note that I was under 5/24 (3/24) when I applied and was rejected for the same Venture card deal in September.
Greg, would you be willing to share how many hard inquiries you had at the time of application (x/6 and/or x/12) when you were at last successful in getting a Cap 1 card?
Looks like you were at 9 inquiries over the past 24 months from what you share in the comments of this post:
https://frequentmiler.com/finally-approved-by-capital-one/
Given your recent Venture card approval (and Richard Kerr’s, as disclosed on Pizzaman’s pod), I may try to apply again.
But the X factor is that neither of you had Cap1 cards when you applied, whereas I have had a little used Quicksilver for years. I guess I’ll put some spend on it for two or three months and then apply. I can PC to the Venture, but this post makes me think i shouldn’t do that.
I was well under 5/24 and applied for Business Miles card. I already have and use the Cash card with lots of spend on it (+1m). Denied, called recon line several times and was told some BS about me not saying I wish to close Cash card for this one. Told them I wanted both and they said nothing they could do as I was denied but feel free to apply again.
What are Cap One rules for getting a bonus again? I already took advantage of a signup offer for Venture miles some time back
Cap1 rules are deny you into submission and then laugh at all the hard inquiries on all 3 of your credit reports.
Cap1’s program isn’t exciting because you have to pass up on a bunch of other great deals to get eligible. It’s laughable to think someone’s going to go get 3, 4, or 5 signup bonuses signing up for a bunch of Cap1 cards.
Still despise ’em forever.
😀
I was able to move cashback from my age old journey card to my venture card for miles 1:1.
That’s awesome! You just answered my question!
Works for quicksilver to venture transfer as well.
Can confirm. I was just able to convert cash rewards from Savor to Spark Miles. The transfer was instant at $1 converted to 100 miles
Awesome!