Earn Extra Rewards by Enrolling in Credit Card Shopping Programs (2021)
Easily Earn Points for Free Travel, Credit Card Reference
Several programs provide extra rewards when you use your credit card to shop at participating merchants. For some of these programs, you simply need to register your card once, and you'll automatically earn extra rewards going forward, without any extra effort.
Our advice is to take a few minutes to sign up for all the set-and-forget programs. You may also want to take advantage of some of the programs that require you to activate individual offers before you use them.
In general, you can register with all these programs to increase the number of retailers where you can earn bonus rewards.
If a retailer participates in multiple programs, you'll typically earn rewards for each one. For example, every time you shop at CVS, you can receive 5% back from Payce and .5% back from Pei, plus whatever rewards you earn from your credit card.
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Pei
Pei is a good "set and forget" option.
- They offer small rewards on a few dozen useful merchants. For example, some typical offers are 1% extra back at Target, .5% extra back at CVS and Walgreens, and .5% back at Trader Joe's.
- While it is easy to extra rewards through your everyday spending, rewards have fairly low caps. Each merchant has its own weekly cap. For example, the Target offer is limited to $1.25 per week ($125 in spending) and the Nordstrom offer is limited to $5 per week ($1,000 in spending).
- While the amount you can earn can be limited, it takes almost no effort to use the service. Once you link your cards, you'll automatically receive extra rewards at the participating merchants.
- Pei also provides perhaps the best collection of local and dining card-linked offers. Typical restaurant offers give you about 5% back and they perhaps the best assortment of participating restaurants. We recommend using it with the credit cards you use for your restaurant spending. Earn Extra Rewards by Enrolling in Credit Card Dining Programs.
Some of the card-linked offer programs, including Pei, work by linking your online banking accounts, rather than linking individual credit cards. For example, rather than entering the credit card number, expiration date, and security code of each of your American Express cards, the app opens up the American Express sign-in page for you to enter your American Express username and password. When your done, all of your American Express cards are automatically added.
If you want, you can then link and unlink individual cards. When you sign up for a new card from a linked bank, it is automatically added to your account.
This is more convenient than linking individual cards, but it does give the shopping program access to information for all your accounts, including checking and investment accounts associated with the same bank.
If the shopping program is following the rules, it doesn't have access to your actual user names and passwords. Your bank controls the sign-in form that is displayed within the app and returns an "access token" that the app uses to access the data in your accounts. But, in the end, you'll still need to trust the applications you are working with.
The Rakuten Platform
Rakuten (Ebates) operates a card-linked shopping program, called "In-Store Cash Back".
- Unlike some other programs, Rakutan's program is not a "Set and Forget" program. You don't just automatically earn rewards whenever you shop with one of your linked cards.
- They have offers with a few dozen major retailers. But their program doesn't usually include any grocery stores, department stores, or other "everyday" merchants. It is mostly stores like Men's Warehouse or Ann Taylor.
- Rakuten also operates in-store shopping programs for several other companies. You aren't supposed to be able to rewards from multiple of these programs for the same purchase. Be careful, sometimes the partner sites don't include every offer that is available on the main site.
- The Google Pay App currently offers a slightly higher cashback rate than Rakuten itself. But this may only last while they are trying to establish their new application.
- Alaska Airlines and United Airlines. With these airline shopping programs, you'll earn miles rather than cash back. You'll typically get 1.5 miles, instead of 2% cash back; 2 or 2.5 miles instead of 3% back, or 3 miles instead of 4% back. In-store offers with these airlines will help you qualify for their occasional shopping portal bonus mile promotions.
- American Airlines SimplyMiles. American Airline's version is a bit of an oddball. It only works with Mastercards (not just AA-branded Mastercards) and it offers rewards on a number of unique merchants.
- Citibank includes the Rakuten offers as part of its Merchant Offers program, alongside the local businesses from the Rewards Network program and a handful of their own offers. Rates are higher even than Google Pay's, but you can only link the offers to some selected Citibank cards.
- Swagbucks is another option that allows you to access the Rakuten offers alongside Swagbuck's other shopping programs.
- While you shouldn't get credit for the same offer added to multiple cards, you can pick and choose which program to use for a particular merchant, by only adding that merchant's offer through a single website. So, you could earn rewards with one merchant through Google Pay, another merchant through Rakuten's own site, and yet another through AA's SimplyMiles (which offers very different offers than the other versions).
You need to activate each offer on their website before it is linked to your card. Once activated, the offer remains linked for about 45 days and you can activate offers with as many merchants as you'd like. Once you earn rewards with a participating merchant, you'll need to revisit the website and reactivate the offer to qualify for rewards on your next visit.
It offers rewards on an often-useful set of merchants that aren't available through the other Rakuten-powered websites. Many of these are in the form of a fixed mileage bonus for a purchase of over a certain amount, such as 1,000 miles for a purchase of $30 or more, rather than as a set number of miles per dollar spent.
If you are willing to make the effort, it is worthwhile to link each of your cards to Rakuten, visit the site every 30-45 days, activate any potentially interesting offers, and earn some extra rewards from your purchases. If you are even more diligent, you can try to remember to return to the site to reactivate any offers you wind up using.
Payce
Payce offers more lucrative cashback percentages for a nice assortment of major major retailers—but many stores have low monthly cashback limits. Typical offers are around 5% back on stores like Home Depot, Staples, and CVS. But many of these stores limit your cashback to $5 per month ($100 in spending).
You'll need to "activate" each offer in your account, before it will be applied to your credit card spending. Credit card numbers are added directly. And unlike most of the other app, Payce can simply be used through its website.
Other 3rd party programs
Dosh
Dosh is primarily a dining program that runs on Reward Network. But, it also offers rewards at a few additional partners. The main interest in this app is that they give 2% cashback at Office Depot (subject to a $10 per day cap).
Bumped
Like the Rakuten platform, Bumped provides rewards on a set of national brands, but not any "everyday" merchants. Also like Rakuten, you'll need to activate each offer before it can be used.
Their twist is that instead of earning cash back, you earn fractional shares of stock. That means that you'll actually be opening a real brokerage account with Bumped. But, there are no ongoing maintenance fees, no fees to sell your fractional shares, and no fees to transfer cash out to your bank account.
There is a reward limit of $250 per brand per year and $50 for any individual purchase.
Collinson (jetBlue & Caesars)
Collinson is another company that operates an in-store card-linked offer system via multiple websites. You can access their offers either through jetBlue or the Caesars Rewards Marketplace. Offers are available at a couple of dozen merchants, including Lowe's and the Gap family of brands. JetBlue tends to offer 3 points per dollar. Caesar's is more variable, typically ranging from 1 to 5x points.
Special “offers” from credit card companies
Most of the major credit card companies give their cardholders access to special offers and discounts.
- Amex Offers. Amex Offers is the most talked about and probably the best of these programs. This is mostly the result that many of their offers allow you to save significant amounts of money—more than most of the offers from the other programs.
- Credit card company programs run by Cardlytics. Most of the shopping offers programs run by the other credit card companies are operated behind the scenes by a company called Cardlytics. That means that you'll often see the same offer on multiple sites. For example, if you read about an interesting offer from Chase Offers, there is a decent change it will be available from BankAmeriDeals. Since each of these programs is limited to the credit card company's own credit cards, it isn't possible to double-dip. You can only use one card to make the purchase.
The programs from the larger credit card companies are listed below, but offers are also available from cards from several smaller banks.
- Chase Offers. Chase's offers work just like Amex's Offers. Once they are activated for a specific card, you simply use that card to make a qualifying purchase and and'll get a rebate on your statement. As with American Express, you'll have different offers on different cards. Chase makes fewer offers available than Amex and more of them are targeted to specific customers.
- Visa Offers. The Visa program provides a changing set of offers that you typically redeem using a promotional code or by mentioning the offer.
- BankAmeriDeals. Bank of America’s program is actually operated by the same company that operates Chase's offers. However, with Bank of America, you'll have a set of offers that work across all your eligible Bank of America cards. As with Amex and Chase, once activated, they are automatically applied when you use any of your Bank of America cards.
- Wells Fargo Deals. Wells Fargo has recently added cash-back deals for at least some of their personal credit cards. Expect more offers for Wells Fargo's Amex cards.
- Citi Merchant Offers. Perhaps in an effort to catch up to the other major credit companies, Citibank's program primarily consists of offers from other card-linked platforms. The bulk of its shopping offers are from Rakuten and the bulk of its local offers are from Reward Network. They do include some of their own offers, many of which are for various types of travel purchases, alongside the offers available through these other platforms.
- FlexPerks Offers. U.S. Bank provides a limited set of special offers to its cardholders.
To take advantage of an offer you need to log into your account online and activate each individual offer you might want to use from the ever-changing set of available offers. Amex Offers can only be available on specific Amex cards and are sometimes personally targeted, so not everyone has access to the same set of offers. If an offer shows up on multiple cards, you can only add it to one. Though an authorized cardholder might be able to add it as well.
Many offers are in the form of “Spend $x, get $y back”. But there are also “x% off your entire order” offers, and opportunities to earn bonus Membership Rewards points on your entire purchase. Once activated, you’ll automatically receive the offer the next time you use your card at that merchant.
Programs from small business cards
Each of the major credit card networks operates a special discount program for holders of their small business cards. Simply enroll your card and you’ll automatically get the rewards, whenever you use your card at a participating retailer. You should take a minute to enroll each of your business cards in the corresponding program.
- Visa SavingsEdge. Offers a variety of discounts, mostly on travel and business services, such as Wyndham (5%), MailChimp (5%), and Chevron (2%). Promotional offers are sometimes available, such as 10% back from Office Depot, which require individual activation.
- Amex Offers for Business. Amex used to operate a small business program called the "OPEN" Savings program, but they have consolidated that with their regular Amex Offers program. Business cards will be targeted for a number of lucrative business oriented offers, such as 10% back on up to $1,000 in purchases at Staples.
- Mastercard Easy Savings. You'll get discounts of 1-5% on a some business services plus 4% back, whenever you user your Business MasterCard at one of more than 14,000 restaurants, including many chain restaurants.
