The Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card and the new Capital One Venture X Business $300 travel credit have recently undergone a change from Capital One, and it’s not a good one.

This annual $300 travel credit has been a statement credit for travel arrangements made on the Capital One Travel portal ever since Capital One initially introduced the Venture X card in 2021. Simply make a reservation through the travel website for a ticket, hotel, or rental vehicle, and Capital One will add a statement credit to your account a few days later.

Now that Capital One has altered the statement credit, it now functions as a $300 coupon-like discount on travel arrangements made through the travel site.

By choosing the option to apply the credit at checkout, you can choose to spend this credit entirely for a single transaction or only partially across a number of purchases. As long as your travel credit hasn’t expired, the value of your credit will be reinstated if the travel purchase made with it is canceled.

Although this modification makes the travel credit even easier to spend, it also devalues it for owners of the Venture X and Venture X Business cards for a number of reasons. There will be a decrease in the number of Venture Miles you receive for purchases you make via the Capital One Travel portal because the yearly $300 travel credit is now applied as a coupon. Additionally, if you make purchases through the travel portal in the initial months following the activation of your card, the $300 discount will no longer contribute toward the minimum spending requirement to qualify for a sign-up bonus.

For additional information on what this move really means for owners of Venture X and Venture X Business cards, continue reading.

Earn Less Points When Buying Travel with Capital One

This is painful. Although we typically advise avoiding Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), Capital One has done an excellent job with their travel portal and I found that the prices they are charging for flights and hotels usually match what you’ll find when booking directly.

By offering 5x Venture Miles on flights and 10x Miles on hotels and rental vehicles when booking with your Venture X Card, Capital One further encourages cardholders to use their travel platform. Consequently, if you made a $500 hotel reservation with Capital One Travel, you would have earned 5,000 miles, and you would still be eligible to get your $300 yearly travel credit.

With this modification, your $300 travel credit would be applied to your transaction at checkout, resulting in a final cost of $200 and 2,000 Venture Miles earned for the hotel reservation. You will now earn 3,000 less miles than you would have in the past.

This is equivalent to losing out on an additional $30 worth of travel since Capital One miles can be used to cancel any trip purchase made with your card at a cost of one penny each. Earning less points would be an even bigger blow if you frequently transfer your Capital One miles to travel partners for award bookings.

Credit for Travel Will Not Count Toward Minimum Spend

When you sign up for the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card and spend $4,000 on it within the first three months, you may currently get 75,000 bonus Venture Miles. Therefore, even if you later received a statement credit for $300 of the $500 you spent purchasing a travel through the Capital One Travel platform, the $500 would still count towards your minimum spending criteria. It was a nice bonus.

However, because the $300 travel credit now behaves like a coupon when making a reservation through the Capital One Travel platform, it is no longer considered to be spending. Therefore, in order to receive that substantial bonus, you’ll have to spend even more money.

No Easy Rebate Anymore

It used to be possible to obtain the $300 annual Capital One travel credit without actually traveling because the credit was applied as a statement credit after making a transaction through Capital One Travel.

You might reserve a refundable hotel room for a date months in the future, wait for the $300 travel credit to be credited to your account, and then cancel your reservation to receive a full refund. Without really spending any money or accessing the travel portal, you were able to earn $300 of your annual subscription back using this simple workaround.

To sum up

The yearly $300 travel credit benefit that comes with Capital One’s premium travel rewards credit cards, such as the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card and the Capital One Venture X Business, has undergone some changes. You will now apply that credit as a discount on your booking at checkout rather than receiving it back as a credit on your statement after completing a transaction via the Capital One Travel gateway.

The $300 yearly travel credit from Capital One is still one of the perks that make the personal and corporate Venture X cards some of the best travel rewards cards available, even though that change lessens its worth somewhat.

Topics #Capital One Miles #Capital One Travel Credit #Capital One Venture X #Minimum Spending Requirement #Venture X Rewards Credit Card