Capital One Shopping pulls many good gift card redemption options

Capital One Shopping is a public shopping portal (no Capital One credit card required) that offers rewards dollars that can only be redeemed for gift cards to select merchants. Over time, they have offered some broadly useful merchants like Walmart, Kroger, Safeway/Albertsons/Vons/etc, DoorDash, GrubHub, and Uber Eats among others. Sadly, none of the merchants in that sentence are available anymore (each having been removed at different times, some returning for a time and disappearing again). While I have long been willing to mostly look past the limitation of only being able to redeem rewards for gift cards, it’s been really frustrating to see high turnover in the redemption options over time.

Quick Thoughts

A reader reached out today to say that they thought that ebay gift cards had been removed as a redemption option. Thankfully, that doesn’t appear to be correct (I still see ebay among the gift card redemption options), but it was nonetheless a good reminder to publish a post about which options have been removed and which remain.

For many, redemption options like Kroger, Safeway, and Walmart made the utility of the rewards earned through Capital One Shopping almost as good as cash. Portal rewards are never quite the same as cash given the delay in payouts and if you’re using gift cards at Kroger or Safeway, you’re missing out on earning a bonus category for that spend. Still, given the monster payouts frequently offered by Capital One Shopping, it has been easy enough to overlook the limitation of gift cards.

However, given the loss of popular redemption options noted in the first paragraph, some readers might think twice about whether they want to collect portal rewards through Capital One Shopping given the uncertainty of redemption options.

Personally, I’m still happy to use Capital One Shopping. Just yesterday, I got offers like 35.5% back at Get Your Guide, up to 36% back at Expedia (usually good for tours and activities), 40% back at Klook, 15% back at Vrbo, 25% back at Agoda, 15.5% back at IHG, and many more. The payouts tend to be enough higher than what I see elsewhere that I’m confident I will get enough value out of the rewards even with a more limited set of redemption partners. However, that won’t necessarily work out for everyone.

Out of the redemption options available at the time of writing, I would say that the most broadly useful and/or relevant to travel are:

• ebay
• Lowe’s
• Home Depot
• Instacart
• Hotels.com
• Celebrity Cruises

Personally, I’m still happy to redeem for Hotels.com and I’ll surely have occasional uses with other merchants. For instance, I buy stuff from L.L. Bean from time to time and don’t otherwise see their gift cards discounted. I’ll buy a holiday gift from Bass Pro Shops now and then, etc. Still, you’ll want to more closely track the redemption options if you don’t find the gift card options as useful.

Here is a full list of available gift card redemptions at the time of writing.

• REI
• Expedia Global Hotel Card
• Shutterfly
• Home Chef
• 1800Flowers
• Etsy
• StubHub
• The Container Store
• Lowe’s
• Home Depot
• Omaha Steaks
• The Children’s Place
• Carter’s / Oshkosh B’Gosh
• Groupon
• Office Depot / Office Max
• Allbirds
• Columbia
• Lands’ End
• Ulta Beauty
• Macy’s
• Vistoria’s Secret
• Cabela’s
• Boscov’s
• Ace Hardware
• Soma
• Instacart
• PetSmart
• NFL Shop
• MLB Shop
• Nordstrom Rack
• Unfer Armour
• Chico’s
• Hanna Anderson
• Zappos
• Hulu
• Athleta
• Advance Auto
• White House Black Market
• Chewy
• Staples
• CVS
• Bass Pro Shops
• Michaels
• DSW
• GAP
• Adidas
• Sephora
• ebay
• American Eagle
• L.L. Bean
• Callaway
• Banana Republic
• Hotels.com
• Barnes & Noble
• Kohl’s
• Old Navy
• Saks Fifth Avenue
• H&M
• SiriusXM
• TJ Maxx / Marshalls / Home Goods / Sierra / Home Sense
• Stitch Fix
• Celebrity Cruises
• Sling
• Petco
• Belk
• Lane Bryant
• Asos

The post Capital One Shopping pulls many good gift card redemption options appeared first on Frequent Miler. Frequent Miler may receive compensation from CHASE. American Express, Capital One, or other partners.