Capital One Spark Miles for Business Review (2020.1 Update: 50k Offer)

     2019-10-24     2023-02-10 4 Comments

Capital One Business Card

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Capital One Spark Miles for Business Review

2020.1 Update: The 200k offer is expired. The current offer is 50k.

2019.10 Update: The Spark Miles card now has a revamped signup bonus of 50k miles after spending $5k in the first 3 months and an additional 150k miles after spending $50k in 6 months. Combined with the 2 miles earned per dollar spent, the first $5k in spend has a 12% rate of return. If you were to max out the $50k in spend, the overall return on spend would be 6%, which is very good.

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Benefits

  1. 50k offer: earn 50,000 Capital One Miles after spending $4,500 in the first 3 months.
  2. Earn 2x Miles on all purchases.
  3. The overall value of Capital One Miles is 1.6 cent/point. See below for a brief introduction.
  4. Up to $100 credit for Global Entry or TSA Precheck application fee.
  5. No foreign transaction fee.

Disadvantages

  1. $95 annual fee, waived for the first year.
  2. Capital One will pull all three major credit bureaus (Experian, TransUnion, Equifax) for one credit card application!
  3. Capital One business credit cards WILL be reported to your personal credit history (most other banks won’t report business credit cards to your personal credit report). Therefore, the balance on this card will affect your personal credit score, and this card will count towards Chase 5/24.

Introduction to Capital One (C1) Miles

  • You can earn C1 Miles with two kinds of cards: Miles earning cards, or cashback earninng cards. Miles earning cards mainly include: Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card, Capital One VentureOne Rewards Credit Card, Capital One Spark Miles for Business. Cashback earning cards mainly include: Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card, Capital One SavorOne Cash Rewards Credit Card, Capital One Quicksilver Cash Rewards Credit Card, Capital One Spark Cash Plus etc.
  • You can move your C1 Miles from one Miles earning card to another Miles earning card at any time, and you can also move your cashback from a cashback earning card to a Miles earning card at any time. However, you can not move your Miles from a Miles earning card to a cashback earning card, therefore cashback is more flexible than Miles in C1's system.
  • C1 Miles never expire. You will lose the C1 Miles on one card if you close the account, but you can prevent losing your C1 Miles by moving the points to another C1 card beforehand.
  • If you have a Miles earning card, C1 Miles can be transferred to some airline miles and hotel points. Some good 1:1 transfer options are: Air Canada (AC) (Star Alliance), Avianca (AV) (Star Alliance), Asia Miles (CX) (Oneworld), British Airways (BA), and Wyndham hotel points, etc. If you use C1 Miles in this way, the value is about 1.6 cents/point.
  • You can redeem your C1 Miles towards travel expense at a fixed ratio 1.0 cent/point. You can also redeem your C1 Miles towards some merchants gift cards at a fixed raiot 1.0 cent/point.
  • You can redeem your C1 Miles towards statement credit at a fixed ratio 0.5 cents/point.
  • In summary, we estimate that C1 Miles are worth about 1.6 cents/point.

Recommended Application Time

  1. We recommend you apply for this card after you have a credit history of at least two years and you are very comfortable with the credit card game.
  2. [1/6 rule] You can only apply for 1 Capital One credit card for every 6 months, including both personal and business credit cards. You will get automatic denial if you violate this rule, but there will be no hard pull.

Summary

The welcome offer is really good. In 2021, Capital One improved its Miles system a lot, which makes this card more valuable. Now that C1 Miles are valued more than 1 cent/point, its everything 2x earning structure is attractive. The earning structure on itself is similar to Citi Double Cash (DC) in the TYP system, and this card has an annual fee, but C1 Miles system has other good cards that have a good earning rate to work together. Note that Capital One will pull all three major credit bureaus (Experian, TransUnion, Equifax) for one credit card application, and it is very difficult to get approved if you have a lot of recent hard pulls.

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Historical Offers Chart

Note: Sometimes there are 50k+150k offer on this card. But the spending requirements after the first 50k are huge, so we don’t treat them as sign-up bonus, we treat them as spending bonus instead.

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