Capital One SavorOne Student Cash Rewards Credit Card: The new best student credit card?

The Capital One SavorOne Student Cash Rewards Credit Card is one of the best student credit cards around. It comes packed with features that help give it a leg up over its nearest competition — the Discover it® Student Cash Back and the Bank of America® Customized Cash Rewards Credit Card for Students. The top perks include unlimited bonus categories, broad benefit coverage and minimal fee structure. It even comes with an easy-to-earn, valuable welcome offer — a rarity among starter cards.

With the SavorOne Student, you won’t have to worry about spending limits, seasonal categories or activation periods. Instead, this student card takes some of the biggest everyday categories from each quarter of Discover’s cash back calendar — dining, popular streaming services and grocery stores (excluding superstores like Walmart® and Target®) — and adds entertainment cash back into the mix for an easy-to-use, student-friendly rewards combo.

This simple structure provides excellent value for first-time cardholders to learn the ropes while retaining plenty of long-term value for students who want to eventually upgrade to the nearly identical Capital One SavorOne Cash Rewards Credit Card once they’ve graduated or when their credit score is high enough.

Quick highlights

• Rewards rate: Unlimited 3 percent cash back on dining, entertainment, popular streaming services, and at grocery stores (excluding superstores like Walmart and Target); 5 percent cash back on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel; 8 percent cash back on Capital One Entertainment purchases; 10% cash back on purchases made through Uber & Uber Eats, plus complimentary Uber One membership statement credits through 11/14/2024. Plus 1 percent cash back on all other purchases
• Welcome offer: $50 cash bonus after spending $100 in the first three months
• Annual fee: $0
• Purchase intro APR: N/A
• Balance transfer intro APR: N/A
• Regular APR: 19.74 percent to 29.74 percent (variable)

Current welcome offer

Welcome offers like sign-up bonuses and zero-interest periods aren’t particularly common for student cards. However, the Capital One SavorOne adds to its already impressive value with a $50 cash bonus after spending $100 on purchases within your first three months. Besides being incredibly valuable and easy to earn, it also eclipses its sibling the Journey Student Rewards from Capital One.

Not many issuers offer cash bonuses, and it’s worth noting that the SavorOne Student’s offer is not only one of the few student credit cards that provide cash back, but it also has the potential to outclass welcome offers on other student cards. The Discover it^® Student Cash Back has possibly the largest offer with its Cashback Match^TM program, which matches all cash back earned at the end of your first year, but it takes a year and a far larger spend requirement to earn.

The Chase Freedom® Student credit card provides a $50 cash bonus upon the first purchase made within three months of opening an account — an equal, but a much more obtainable offer. You may also see a few cards with student-oriented offers, like the Deserve® EDU Mastercard for Students and its free year of Amazon Prime Student subscription (a $59 lifetime value) after spending $500 within the first three months of card membership. While these competing offers are enticing, earning a $50 cash bonus for spending $100 in the first three months is an ideal choice for low-budget spenders who want a decent welcome offer.

Rewards rate

If you’re looking for a straightforward, low-maintenance starter card to dip your toes into the rewards pool with, the Capital One SavorOne Student is a prime example. It’s a bonus category cash back card that earns generously in common categories all year without a limit and without enrollment. This gives the card an advantage over the Discover it® Student Cash Back’s quarterly rotating categories, which do earn an impressive 5 percent cash back on up to $1,500 in purchases each quarter (activation required and 1% after). But students who make regular purchases throughout the year in the SavorOne Student card’s boosted categories can also rake in a considerable amount of cash back.

How you earn

You’ll earn 3 percent cash back if you use your card for dining, entertainment, grocery store purchases (excluding superstores like Walmart® and Target®), and popular streaming service purchases, plus a whopping 8 percent cash back on entertainment purchases. The unlimited 1 percent cash back rate for purchases outside your bonus categories isn’t the most rewarding, but it does mean you can earn cash back on textbooks and other academic expenses.

It’s always good to check the merchant’s category code if you’re not sure what counts as eligible streaming services or entertainment purchases. Here are more details on how Capital One defines these two types of purchases:

How you redeem

Capital One’s rewards program is remarkably easy to handle through your online account or the Capital One mobile app. Although you can’t receive cash back as a direct deposit to your bank account (perhaps the simplest form of cash rewards), Capital One is among few issuers that provides an automated redemption process. You can set your rewards to redeem after you’ve built up a certain amount of cash back (either $25, $50, $200, $500 or $1,500) or at a selected date each year in the form of:

• A statement credit
• A mailed check
• A credit on prior purchases
• A gift card
• Checkout payments through Amazon.com and PayPal

You can access redemption options in your online account or through the mobile app, but you can’t set up automatic rewards through the app. There is no minimum cash back balance needed to redeem unless you choose an automatic cash rewards redemption threshold.

Your student SavorOne rewards work like other cash back programs, earning a percentage back of each dollar spent. For example, if you ring up $100 at the grocery store, you’ll snag $3 back since you earn 3 cents per dollar in that category.

The Capital One SavorOne Student Cash Rewards Credit Card erupted straight out of the gate as not only the best Capital One student card but one of the best credit cards for college students overall. Unless you spend enough to maximize the Discover it® Student Cash Back’s rotating cash back categories, the SavorOne Student is likely the most rewarding option.

Part of this value stems from how easy it is to maintain since there are hardly any costs to watch for and it provides an automated redemption process. However, the SavorOne Student card is also a worthy longer-term investment considering its automatic review for a higher credit line after only six months and a remarkable similarity to the full-fledged Capital One SavorOne card.

Granted, you may be better off with a card with a lower APR if you may need to carry a balance from time to time (depending on the variable APR you qualify for), but the SavorOne Student card is well worth it for students that want a low-cost, effortless cash back card they can hold onto until graduating to a traditional rewards card.

As far as student cards go, the SavorOne Student card is packed with an extraordinary roster of features. Card issuers don’t usually invest in additional perks on cards primarily meant to build credit, but this card carries benefits equivalent to a no-annual-fee credit card for prime credit. Although you won’t find any typical student-centric perks, the valuable assortment of account, travel and shopping protections inspires more than enough peace of mind for students.

Protections and price protections

Although extended warranty coverage is a standard purchase protection, the student SavorOne credit card’s plan goes beyond the norm. Instead of the usual one-year extension on three-to-five-year manufacturer warranties, your warranty is automatically doubled (Terms, conditions and exclusions apply. Refer to your Guide to Benefits for more details). Plus, any eligible purchases are covered by price protection — an under-the-radar perk that reimburses you the difference if your item’s price drops within 120 days of purchase.

Account security

Two of the more exclusive benefits that Capital One offers to keep your account secure are its CreditWise and virtual credit card number features. CreditWise is a free credit monitoring service that alerts you of any suspicious credit report changes and social security number leaks on the dark web, which is comprehensive for a free issuer-based service. To make sure certain sites don’t get your account information in the first place, Capital One’s Eno browser extension can generate unique card numbers for each online merchant instead of providing them with your real card number. This extra wall of security is becoming rare since few major issuers still offer virtual card numbers, but it can be a worthwhile safeguard for students who frequently shop online.

Automatic account review for a higher credit line after six months

Automatic account reviews are an often underrated benefit when you’re building credit as a student. After only six months, Capital One will inspect your account activity for positive credit habits like on-time, in-full payments and keeping a low balance. If they recognize you as a reliable cardholder, the issuer may increase your credit line — meaning it’ll be even easier to improve your credit score since a higher credit limit can help keep your credit utilization ratio lower.

Capital One is one of the best issuers for quick credit line upgrades since its automatic review period typically starts sooner than other issuers. For example, Discover’s student cards offer a credit line  review after graduation by calling in to update information on file, while the Chase Freedom Student’s review period starts at 10 months if you’ve made at least five on-time payments.

Travel features

Although they’re standard credit card network perks, you can drive easier knowing the SavorOne Student card protects eligible rental vehicles against damage and theft with MasterRental® Coverage (by paying with your card), along with protecting you via its 24-hour Master RoadAssist® Service (fees apply).

Your card’s complimentary 24/7 concierge service can also lend a hand when it comes to dining, entertainment or travel. The service representatives can help out with anything from booking dinner reservations to buying a last-minute anniversary gift.

The SavorOne Student cash back card carries an impressively low number of fees, but it isn’t the best choice if you need to carry a balance for any reason. The purchase and balance transfer APR can range from 19.74 percent to 29.74 percent (variable), which can either be a relatively low rate or swing to a high rate that isn’t a good APR. Even though it’s a vast improvement over the previously sky-high 26.99 percent (variable) that every cardholder was stuck with, try to avoid carrying a balance. Interest charges can add up quickly, costing you more than you earn in rewards and possibly making it harder to pay off your debt.

Like most student cards, the SavorOne Student doesn’t have an intro APR offer. The Discover it® Student Cash Back is one of the rare student cards that gives you a six-month promotional period to avoid interest charges: 0 percent on purchases and 10.99 percent on balance transfers (then a standard variable APR of 17.74 percent to 26.74 percent applies for purchases and balance transfers). But if you already have a starter card and you want to transfer your balance to Capital One, you’ll be able to dodge a balance transfer fee ($0 at the Transfer APR).

The SavorOne Student card’s other fees are fairly typical for a student card. You won’t have to worry about paying an annual fee, any foreign transaction fees (typically 3 percent) or a penalty APR, although there is a late payment fee of up to $40 if you do miss a payment.

Capital One SavorOne Student Cash Rewards vs. Capital One Quicksilver Student Cash Rewards

Hands down, the Capital One SavorOne Student card is one of the best student credit cards currently available when it comes to ongoing rewards — if not the best. It trounces the other two Capital One student cards, even the sibling Capital One Quicksilver Student Cash Rewards Credit Card that essentially made the Capital One Journey card obsolete. Using our yearly rewards formula based on the average $15,900 annual spend determined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average consumer with the SavorOne Student card can earn almost $368 per year, while they would earn only about $250 annually with the Quicksilver Student card at its 1.5 percent flat-rate cash back.

Granted, both the SavorOne and Quicksilver student cards now provide the same welcome offer and 5 percent cash back rate for Capital One Travel hotel and rental car bookings, the SavorOne’s bonus categories are likely to be more lucrative for the typical student — unless non-category expenses like utilities, books and rent are your biggest expenses.

Capital One SavorOne Student Cash Rewards vs. Discover it® Student Cash Back

The Discover it® Student Cash Back actually beats the SavorOne Student in terms of rewards with an average of $390 per year — as long as you manage to maximize the spending limit for its rotating categories rewards. The trouble is, it may be difficult to maximize these two cards’ bonus categories on a student budget, and the SavorOne Student card’s unlimited rewards structure more than makes up for the extra $29 the Discover it® Student Cash Back earns on average since it’s much easier to manage.

However, the SavorOne Student card may not be the optimal choice depending on the benefits you’ll use or whether you may need to carry a balance. It isn’t the lowest-cost student card, but it does protect you against foreign transaction fees, penalty APRs, and a balance transfer fee while other student cards may not. The Discover it® Student Cash Back is the only other rival card to waive foreign transaction fees and a penalty APR, but it goes one step further by waiving your first late payment fee as a brilliant safety net for students getting used to credit card payments (Late Payment: None the first time you pay late. After that, up to $41).

Best cards to pair with the Capital One SavorOne Student Cash Rewards

Building credit and upgrading from a student card after graduation should be your chief priority instead of maximizing your rewards spending. However, the SavorOne Student’s sibling card — the Capital One Quicksilver Student — would be one of the best partner cards on account of its flat-rate cash back. That way, you could earn boosted rewards on big expenses outside your categories like textbooks, student fees, rent and other bills.

For Capital One products listed on this page, some of the above benefits are provided by Visa® or Mastercard® and may vary by product. See the respective Guide to Benefits for details, as terms and exclusions apply.