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Capital One had a huge and unexpected announcement today. Starting in December, you'll have the option of transferring your Capital One points to one of a dozen different frequent flyer programs, along with the existing option of using them for 1 cent each towards travel purchases. In addition, they introduced new, potentially very valuable, signup bonuses for both the Venture and Spark cards.

With this change, the Capital One Venture card becomes a lot more interesting and the Capital One Spark's signup offer is potentially the most valuable signup bonus of all time.

A new option for your Capital One points: Converting to frequent flyer miles

For years, the main marketing message behind the Capital One Venture Card was that it earned "miles" that you could use on any airline, without any blackout dates. Capital One tried to capitalize on many people's frustrations with trying to redeem frequent flyer miles for award tickets.

But, the Venture Card was really just a 2% cashback card—just one where you could only use the cash to reimburse travel purchases. It wasn't a bad deal, and you didn't need to worry about finding good frequent flyer opportunities. But, unlike real frequent flyer miles, you could never get more than 1 cent of value per point.

All that has changed. Capital One now allows you to convert your frequent flyer miles into actual airline miles.

• Starting in December, the miles you earn from the Capital One Venture and Spark cards can be transferred directly to a number of airline's frequent flyer programs. Capital One miles join Amex's Membership Reward points, Chase's Ultimate Reward points, and Citibank's ThankYou points as a valuable "transferable" reward currency. As of now, you can't transfer points you earn from other Capital One cards. Introduction to 'Transferable' Reward Points.
• You'll receive 1.5 frequent flyer miles for every 2 Capital One miles you transfer. For example if you transfer 2,000 Capital One miles to Air France / KLM's JetBlue program, you'll wind up with 1,500 JetBlue miles.
• If you are going to transfer your points to airline miles, the base earning rate works out to 1.5 real airline miles per dollar (and in your choice of one of a dozen different airline programs). Ultimate Rewards offers the same earning rate with its Freedom Unlimited card, but only if you also have a Sapphire or Ink Preferred card. American Express offers the same earning rate with the Everyday Preferred card, but only if you always make at least 30 transactions per month.
• Capital One's initial set of transfer partners is roughly comparable to Citibank's. They are hoping to continue to expand the set of transfer partners. It is still too early to know how quickly points will transfer, and whether Capital One will offer occasional transfer bonuses.

Star Alliance (United)	SkyTeam (Delta)	Oneworld (American)	Other
Air Canada (Aeroplan)	Air France / KLM (Flying Blue)	Cathay Pacific (Asia Miles)	Jet Blue
Avianca	Alitalia	Qantas	Etihad
EVA Air	Aeromexico	Finnair	Qatar
			Hainan You still retain the option of using your points at 1 cent each (2 cents per dollar spent). If you don't want to mess around with frequent flyer tickets, nothing has changed. You can still use your Capital One miles, at 1 cent each, to offset any travel purchase. This is significantly better than what you can get from nay of the other transferable reward points. </ul> Some significant competition to the Chase Unlimited Combo The combination of the Chase Freedom Unlimited and Sapphire Reserve cards are our normal recommendation of the best credit card to use for your everyday spending. This combination provides the best of both worlds, the ability to get good value from your points with easy redemption options, and the upside of getting more value from your points when you can find a good opportunity to redeem frequent flyer tickets. With the new program, the Capital One program offers the same one-two punch. You can get 2 cents per dollar without any effort. Or you can get 2 - 6 cents per dollar, or even more, when you find good opportunities to transfer your points to an airline program to redeem a frequent flyer ticket. Like the Chase Unlimited combo it allows you to get into the frequent flyer game, while still giving you a good way out. However, at least for now, the Venture card isn't quite as good of an option as the Freedom Unlimited combo. If you are going to cash out your points, you'll get 2.25 cents per dollar from Chase, and only 2 cents per dollar from Capital One. With Chase, you also can sometimes squeak out a bit more when you redeem with Southwest, and you can frequently easily get 3 cents or more per dollar by redeeming for Hyatt hotels. And if you are going to convert to frequent flyer miles, Chase gives you a slightly better set of partners. Chase also has a better "suite" of cards that allow you to earn bonus rewards on a variety of categories. Even after you take advantage of its travel credit, the Chase Unlimited Combo has a higher annual fee. But, it comes with a set of benefits and bonus category reward rates that make that worthwhile. So our recommendation remains unchanged. But, if you strongly prefer having only a single card, the Venture card is probably now your best single option. Get a Great General Purpose Reward Card and Use It for All of Your Spending. New Venture signup bonus As part of its announcement, Capital One is providing an increased signup bonus on the Venture card. You'll get 75,000 "miles" ($5,000 initial spend). That works out to $750 in reimbursed travel expenses, or 56,250 real airline miles (with the new transfer program). The highest ever signup offer of any card Finally, Capital One announced new signup bonuses for the Spark business cards. The Spark Cash card is offering a $500 bonus ($3,000 initial spend) and the Spark Miles cards is offering 50,000 bonus miles ($5,000 initial spend), worth $500 in cash, or 37,500 in transferred airline miles. But, if you spend an additional $45,000 within the first six months ($50,000 total), you'll receive an additional $1,500 bonus with the Spark Cash card or an additional 150,000 mile bonus on the Spark Miles card. If you can hit the signup bonus on the Spark Miles card, you'll receive a total of 200,000 bonus miles (plus 100,000 regular reward miles). This is worth $2,000 in cash. But it can also be converted into 150,000 airline miles in any of the dozen partner programs. Of course, not everyone can generate $50,000 in charges over the first six months. But, if you have a way to increase your spending, above and beyond whatever you need to continue to meet the signup bonuses on new credit cards, this can be extremely lucrative. For example, if you have an opportunity to pay taxes at a fee of 2%, pay bills with Plastiq at a rate of 2.5%, or some other opportunity to generate extra credit card spending at low cost, it would cost $1,000 - $1,250 to qualify for the bonus and earn an additional 100,000 Spark miles. At 1 cent each, the bonus would be worth $3,000. If you can get 2 cents of value per mile on a frequent flyer redemption, you can convert the 300,000 Spark miles to 225,000 frequent flyer miles, worth $4,500. Template:Capital One Announcement/Page