Did you know there are two Capital One Shopping portals to choose from when you’re making an online purchase?
Capital One Shopping (rebate portal)
Link: https://capitaloneshopping.com/
Key feature: Looking at a site may cause the portal to send extra offers your way, plus some days have boosted offers
Key warning: You’ll get paid out in gift cards, not cash
The details
There are some good ways to earn rewards with Capital One. First, consider downloading their browser extension as you might be able to earn bonus credit for doing it. Additionally, refer others to earn some bonus credit after they make a purchase.
That’s great and all, but the real gem for the portal is making the portal think you’re considering a purchase but you’re just not sure you want to buy. Let’s say you want to buy something from Columbia. What you should try doing is first act like you’re shopping around on Columbia, maybe add something to your cart and leave it there. After a day or two, you might get some bonus offers come in. These can be increased rewards or they can be coupons to lower your cost.
That’s really the way to unlock the full potential of the Capital One Shopping portal.
Cash back in the form of gift cards
The “gotcha” of this site is that you won’t get cash back like with other portals. Instead, you’ll get the option to choose from a variety of gift cards. If you’re looking for a travel angle, you can grab a Marriott gift card for as little as $25. In case you’re curious, Amazon isn’t a redemption option.
There are currently 89 merchants available to choose from. Loosely speaking, it’s a subset of the merchants you can earn rewards from on their site. Each merchant has a different minimum threshold to earn rewards. Just click through to their redemption site to find out what’s available.
Capital One Offers (bonus points multipliers)
Link: Log into your Capital One account and scroll to the bottom of the screen to “View all offers” as shown below.
Key feature: Earn bonus miles on your purchases, including some in-store offers, and the occasional boosted offer
Key warning: Watch out for miles offers that differ between searches and manually checking for offers
The details
Capital One Offers provides for some decent bonus point earn rates. You’ll need the help because Capital One credit cards generally just earn 1x or 2x on purchases you normally make. On top of that, you’re not going to earn a lot of points from signing up for credit card bonuses—there just aren’t enough cards and Capital One can be picky.
So, how do you earn a lot of Capital One miles? Shopping via Capital One Offers is one of the best ways to rack up the points. In particular, you’ll want to log in and see the upcoming calendar of higher earn rates. We love it when Viator comes up on the calendar. Viator pricing isn’t necessarily cheaper than booking directly with the vendor, but it might make sense if you can add on a merchant offer on your card plus rake in the portal bonus on top.
However, there’s a quirk to be aware of. If you use the included feature to search for a store, you may find it lists a low earn rate. But manually scroll down to find the store and it can appear with a higher rate. You cannot use Ctrl+F to search for the business name (store names appear as images on the site). Sadly, it’s a little bit of a shame that you have to manually look for a better rate. We still use the search bar to make sure the store is available on Capital One, but it can take a few minutes of scrolling to find it.
FAQ for Capital One portals
Yes and no. For the Capital One Shopping portal, you don’t need to be a Capital One customer. You can benefit even without a banking relationship. But for the Capital One Offers portal, since the rewards are a bonus multiplier to points, you’ll need to have a Capital One credit card.
Only if you are using an in-store offer. Those offers are loaded onto your Capital One credit card, requiring you to use the card in-store when you make your purchase.
If you are making an online purchase, it doesn’t matter what card you use to earn portal rewards. You can make the purchase with any card you have.
Maybe. You’ll need to check the terms of each merchant on the Capital One portals to verify the terms. Some merchants allow it while others do not.
Up to 3 in-store offers can be loaded onto your Capital One card at one time via the Capital One Offers portal.
You can get paid out rather quickly. In our experience, it’s generally faster than what we recall seeing with the average shopping portal. As an example with Viator, we normally don’t expect to see rewards show up with Rakuten until weeks after the date of our activity passed. However, the Capital One Offers portal seems to pay out within weeks of booking, even if it’s before the activity.
That’s great if you want to use those rewards to transfer to partners in the near future!
One portal isn’t inherently better than the other. It can also depend on what you’re looking for. If you specifically want Capital One miles, you’re probably going to be tempted to stick to the Capital One Offers site. And if you prefer getting gift cards, go with the Capital One Shopping portal.
You can get some extra discounts or benefits for the Shopping portal by messing around on the site you want to buy from and we haven’t seen the same from the Offers portal. Thus, by that metric, you could argue that the Shopping portal is superior. But it’s not always a slam dunk.
Yes, officially you can use any coupon offer directly referenced on your site. The Capital One portal might also automatically try a bunch of coupon codes itself to assist you in trying to save some money.
Unofficially, you might also be able to take advantage of special offers in your loyalty account with the merchant. For example, you might have a $5 off coupon at DSW because it’s your birthday. We’ve seen other portals not pay out for using that personal offer, but in this specific example, Capital One did still pay out.
When in doubt, err on the side of not using other offers. But if your overall purchase is small and you view earning the portal rewards as a small bonus, why not try it and see if it works? Be the datapoint you want to see.
Offers vary. Consider using a tool like cashbackmonitor.com to see if other portals are offering a better rate. That site isn’t 100% accurate and it won’t show if there are any overall purchase thresholds available for using the portal, but it’s good as a high-level estimate.
No, sadly not. If you made a purchase with the Shopping portal but prefer points, there’s nothing you can do to convert it into points. Make sure you’re using the right portal before buying. Once you make the purchase, you’re committed to how you earn your rewards.
Returning an item might invalidate your entire purchase from earning rewards. If you’re unsure of whether you’ll cancel or return an item, consider breaking your purchase up into smaller purchases. However, make sure you also check the terms of the merchant to see if there is any restriction from earning the rewards more than once.
Officially, the portals warn you that you might not receive rewards if you choose in-store pickup. We suspect this might vary based on vendor as some might reprocess your purchase when you pick it up, removing the record of your online purchase in the process.
Are you interested in earning extra rewards from Capital One?
Suggested reading:
- Rakuten is a Great Points Generator (Now Including Bilt)
- Did You Know: Free Cash Back on Hotel Stays
- Do You Know When It Is OK To Buy Points?
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