Capital One has been one of the fastest-growing over the past few years and has invested a lot of resources towards making its credit card miles more competitive in an industry of many heavyweights. With an intent of improving its travel rewards program, the issuer created a transfer partner option in 2018 which allows cardholders to use their miles against travel charges using the bank’s ‘purchase eraser’ option as well as to generate more value users can transfer the miles to any airlines or partner hotels.
The New Transfer Ratio Program
The improvement in the transfer program by Capital One has been a gradual process. But the decision that came about on Thursday can be a final step towards making its miles program the most optimized by moving the bulk of its remaining partners to the top transfer ratio tier.
Starting from 7th October, the ratio of transfer would be 1:1 in 14 of the 16 Capital One’s airlines which would mean users will get 1000 points for 1000 miles in the corresponding airlines or hotel program. Frequent flyers like Air Canada, Air France, and Emirates Airline Skywards are also becoming a part of this transfer program.
According to CNN Underscored, previously Capital One also included the likes of Jet Blue and Alitalia MileMiglia as transfer partners. But in the recent development of events, the issuer disregarded Jet blue as their transfer partner with effect from October 25, and Alitalia, Italy’s flag-bearing airline went bankrupt and is currently in the process of being dissolved.
With the latest reforms in transfer ratio, Capital One is now in a race with dominants in the industry such as Chase Ultimate Rewards and American Express Membership Rewards which also transfers at a 1:1 ratio. However, they still have one advantage over the former as they have at least one domestic US airline as their partner and Capital One only has international airlines as its partners.
However Capital One takes a bit of advantage with its travel rewards credit cards where users can earn 2 miles for every dollar they spend on the purchases they make which makes the travel rewards by the issuer a bit better. Furthermore, to compete with its competitors the issuer has announced its own airport lounge network two of which have already been announced. Dallas-Fort Worth airport will have the inaugural lounge while the second would be at Dulles Airport, Washington DC both in 2022.
