Journey Student Credit Card from Capital One Review

Who is the Journey Student Credit Card for? 

While not exclusively available only to students, the Journey Student Credit Card from Capital One is a great choice for any high school or college student looking to get a headstart in building a strong credit score. With no annual fee, the Journey Student card is a great card to get comfortable with managing your expenses. 

Rewards + perks 

While the Journey Student card may not have a welcome offer, it does offer more meaningful and practical perks for students. 

Benefits for students

Perhaps one of the most rewarding features of the card is the ability to access a higher credit line after demonstrating punctual payments consistently. More specifically, Journey Student cardholders have the ability to request a higher credit line after they have paid back their first 5 monthly bills on time. Moreover, apart from earning 1% cash back on all purchases, the card further rewards consistently punctual payments by offering an additional 0.25% in cash back for every month in which payments are made on time. This is a great feature for students, as it rewards punctuality and instills financial discipline. 

Safety measures and reputability 

Capital One’s Journey Student card also reports payments to three established credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion), ensuring that your credit score is being built on reputable grounds. Capital One also provides its cardholders with the ability to track their credit score via their CreditWise app. Not only does this app enable you to have unlimited access to your credit score, but it also alerts you of any danger to your personal information, by scouring the internet - even the dark web - to ensure that your social security number and email address are not being used fraudulently. You can then utilize the Capital one app to lock your card. Most importantly, if your card is used for fraudulent purposes, you will not be charged for any of those transactions. 

Travel perks

This card is also a great pick for students who are frequent travelers. Apart from offering zero foreign transaction costs, the Journey Student card also provides 24-hour travel assistance, which entails getting your card replaced after it has been stolen. You can also enjoy travel accident insurance, which helps any loss that you may face when you use your Journey Student card to book a fare. If you rent an eligible vehicle with the Journey card, you can utilize the auto rental collision damage waiver to cover any costs that may arise from damage caused by collision or theft. 

No annual fee

With absolutely no annual fee, this card lifts the burden of having to worry about whether you are spending enough on the card. This card is more focused on helping students get more comfortable with building their own credit scores and providing support on improving it. Furthermore, the simple cash back policy on all purchases ensures that you can spend without limitations in choice and don’t have to restrict yourself to certain categories to reap any benefits. 

Cautions 

While the card is certainly a great choice for students, there are a few features of the Journey card that may not suit your financial needs. In particular, the rewards rate offered by the Journey card, even after considering its bonus cash back rate for punctual payments, is below the industry standard of 1.5%. Therefore, if you looking for a card primarily for its rewards rate, then this may not be the ideal card for you. 

Moreover, since the Journey Student card does not offer an introductory APR and has a fairly high regular APR, there may be better cards on the market if you are worried about these aspects. Lastly, you will need to have some credit requirements to obtain this card. If you do not have a pre-existing credit score or are an international student without a Social Security Number, then you have to look around for other options.

Conclusion

This card is a great introduction to a student who is striving to build a strong credit score. With its many safety tools, travel perks, and incentives to make punctual payments, the Journey Student Credit Card from Capital One is a front runner in the student credit card market. As long as you have some form of credit requirements and are not too particular about the high APR, the Journey student card is a great choice for a student credit card.