Capital One Raises the Bar with the new Miles Plus Platinum MasterCard

Do Canadian's need another travel rewards card option? At this point in time there are so many choices for credit cards that offer travel rewards one wonders if there is room for more. Well Capital One® is banking garnering new cardholders and taking some away from other credit card companies with their new Miles Plus Platinum MasterCard.

What makes this card stand out from the others? The rate of return on the rewards. The card offers 2 Miles per dollar spent and this feature really offers a good return once you reach the 60,000 mile level. The reason for this is any ticket or travel that costs $600.01 or more you redeem the miles at a 1:1 ratio, so the return is 2%. Most other travel cards only offer 1 to 1.7% return excluding airline mileage cards where returns can be as great as 10% if you spend hundreds of thousands on your card each year, but for the majority of Canadians this is not the case. See our Travel Anywhere chart to see how this card compares to the direct competition

The Miles Plus Platinum MasterCard is also one a few cards that allows you to book your travel through any travel provider and redeem your miles as a credit against your statement for that travel.

Other items to note is that this card has a $99 annual fee for the primary card but all supplementary cards are free and when you are approved for the card you receive 5,000 bonus miles after your first purchase. It comes a full suite of Platinum Card benefits you would expect with an annual fee card (see below).

The only downfall we may see is that this card is not offered by one of the big banks and it may go missed or not receive the recognition it should as the card has raised the bar for reward levels on non-airline affiliated credit cards.

This card is no longer available, it has been replaced with the Capital One® Aspire Travel™ World MasterCard®