Compare the Features and Benefits of Capital One QuicksilverOne Cash Rewards Credit Card and
Citi Strata Elite℠

The Capital One QuicksilverOne Cash Rewards Credit Card is similar to the Capital One Quicksilver Cash Rewards Credit Card with a few main exceptions.

• The Capital One QuicksilverOne Cash Rewards credit card requires a credit score of only around 600, while the The Capital One Quicksilver Cash is looking for a FICO around 700.
• The Capital One QuicksilverOne does not offer any car rental CDW / LDW coverage.
• The Capital One QuicksilverOne charges a $39 annual fee whereas the Quicksilver has no annual fee.
• The Capital One QuicksilverOne Cash Rewards credit card does not have any introductory 0% APR offers or 0% intro balance transfers while the Quicksilver offers both.
• The Quicksilver offers a higher credit line.
• You can expect to be automatically considered for a credit limit increase for your Capital One QuicksilverOne Cash Rewards credit card after 6 months if you are making on-time payments.

With QuicksilverOne, you will never pay any foreign transaction fees, and you’ll earn 1.5% cash back on all eligible purchases. If you book travel via the Capital One Travel portal, you’ll earn 5% on hotels, vacation rentals, and rental cars (1.5% if booked outside of Capital One Travel).

PRO TIP:

If you have another credit card which earns Capital One Miles, like the Venture X, Venture, VentureOne, or Spark Miles for Business, you can transfer your cash from your QuicksilverOne Cash Rewards credit card to those cards, where they become Capital One Miles – transferable to airline and hotel partners. $10 = 1,000 Miles.

Here’s a list of Capital One Miles airline and hotel transfer partners

The Citi Strata Elite℠ is a premium level card that will make a ton of sense for some, and not as much for others.

If you already tend to book using travel portals (this could be Expedia, Booking.com, or Agoda, for example), then you are in luck as the 6X on airfare and 12X on hotels, car rentals and experiences when booking via the Citi Travel portal is massive. The Citi Travel portal is powered by Agoda so it will look familiar.

You can get the annual fee back, and then some, based on how easy the credits are for you to use (i.e. are you spending where you wouldn’t have already or just shifting spend?). If you book via travel portals anyway, the $300 hotel credit will be an easy one. And that’s just over half the annual fee alone.

If you value AA Admiral’s Club passes and would have paid $79 a pop, then that actually takes care of the rest of the annual fee. And that $200 annual Splurge credit isn’t too hard to use either – you can use it (on up to two of these merchants maximum, per year) at 1stDibs, American Airlines (exclusions apply), Best Buy^®, Future Personal Training, and Live Nation (exclusions apply).

Or you might use that $200 ($100 each half year) Blacklane credit. And of course if you don’t already have Priority Pass via another premium card, then there is definite value there as well.

So there are several ways to recoup the annual fees.

You’ll also get the best transfer rates (1:1 in most cases) to Citi’s wide range of airline and hotel partners that now includes American Airlines AAdvantage®, which is a huge win for Citi in that it was previously lacking a US airline partner beyond JetBlue.

But the crux of this card, in our opinion, comes down to those 6X and 12X multipliers for booking via the Citi Travel portal. If you do, you’ll really clean up earning ThankYou points. If you don’t, you may want to look at a card like the Chase Sapphire Reserve® which gives 4X points on airfare and hotels booked directly.