Capital One Spark Cash Plus Review (2023.7 Update: $1,200 Offer) – US Credit Card Guide

2023.7 Update: The new offer is $1,200, and its spending requirement is $30k in 3 months. It’s equivalent to extra 4% cashback. The spending requirement is huge so it is only suitable for those who has a lot of spending.

2022.3 Update: The previous offer is expired. The current offer is $500+$500 (the latter part requires $50k spending and it’s completely not worth it).

2022.1 Update: The new offer is $500+$2,500 (the latter part requires $50k spending).

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Benefits

1. $1,200 offer: earn $1,200 cashback after spending $30,000 in the first 3 months.
2. Earn 2% cashback on all purchases.
3. If you have a Capital One Miles earning card (such as Capital One Venture), then you can transfer your cashback to Miles and improve its potential value.
4. This card is a charge card, meaning: it has no preset credit limit, and you need to pay in full every month.
5. $200 annual bonus: earn an annual $200 cash bonus every membership year if you spend $200,000 or more.
6. No foreign transaction fee.

Disadvantages

1. $150 annual fee, NOT 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

This card replaced Capital One Spark Cash, but its annual fee is higher. It is a charge card, and it is very rare to see a charge card issued by a bank other than AmEx. I don’t think it is useful to most people, but if your spending is so huge that any card with a finite credit limit is not enough, then this card may be a good choice for you.

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Historical Offers Chart

Note: Sometimes there are $500+$700 offer on this card. But the spending requirements after the first $500 are huge, so we don’t treat them as sign-up bonus, we treat them as spending bonus instead.

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