Capital One Now Requires Waiting 48 Months Between Welcome Bonuses

In a shift from the previous policy, Capital One has introduced new rules concerning eligibility for its card welcome bonuses. Thanks to Travel Freely for pointing this out.

New rules

According to the revised rules, welcome bonuses will now be given exclusively to those who:

1. Do not currently possess the card they are applying for.
2. Have not earned a welcome bonus on the card they’re applying for within the past 48 months.

For those interested, the precise wording of the new rule is as follows:

“Existing or previous cardmembers are not eligible for this product if they have received a new cardmember bonus for this product in the past 48 months.”

Cards affected by the rule change

I’ve checked out the fine print on a bunch of Capital One cards, and I found the following have been affected by the rule change:

• Venture X Rewards
• Venture Rewards
• Quicksilver Rewards
• Savor Rewards
• SavorOne Rewards
• VentureOne Rewards

Exceptions to the Rule

As far as I can tell, the only notable Capital One cards that don’t contain the new 48-month rule for bonuses are the Spark cards, including the Spark 2% Cash Plus and the Spark 2X Miles cards.

Conclusion

This change is a bummer: Capital One’s decision to extend the time between card ownership and re-eligibility for welcome bonuses will make it harder to earn as many Capital One miles and will affect a significant portion of Capital One’s offerings have been affected by the rule change.