How To: Earn Cashback On Travel, Shopping and More With Rakuten (With a possible extra $40 for Christmas!)
I am always advocating that you want to make your money work harder for you. What does that even mean? It is simply looking at ways to maximize your spending such as getting a LOT of points for putting everything on a credit card or what we’ll dig deeper into now: using Rakuten.
Rakuten is a shopping portal that allows you to earn cash back when booking travel, doing your holiday shopping or even opening bank accounts! If you are doing any of these activities, it will be eye opening to see how much money you could be putting back in your pocket!
Is This Legit?
I am sure that the first question that you are wondering: is this even legit? Maybe it seems a little too good to be true or maybe a little sketchy?
Well as you can see that in the short time that I have been on Rakuten, I have already earned almost $1,500 cash back (and remember that I also use the American Airlines shopping portal!) And that this is the amount that has been paid – showing that Rakuten really does work and that I have received the cashback as promised and advertised!
How does it work?
If you’ve never used a cash-back shopping site or are just curious in general, you may be asking yourself how this works so here you go:
- If you are new to Rakuten,you can get $40 for signing up!
- You will then search for the merchant on Rakuten to see if they offer cashback
- Either click on the Rakuten extension and activate the cash-back for the store OR Click on the store to activate cash back on the app*
- Rakuten will add a ‘tracking cookie’ as you make your purchase on the merchant’s site
- Once the purchase is processed and the order information is sent to Rakuten, you will be notified that cash back has been added to your account.
- You get paid by Rakuten every three months for any cashback earned and confirmed
Beautiful Tip: I strongly suggest using the app for your purchases as the tracking is more seamless but if not, you should definitely add the Rakuten extension to Chrome.
Another question you may have what is the cost? There isn’t any as it is free to join and there are no fees to use!
TLDR version: You shop with one small difference being that you do it through Rakuten. They get paid by the store for your business and then pay you in return for shopping through them – this is why the tracking cookie is so important!
How to use Rakuten: Shopping Example
Let’s see take a look at an epic 2023 Black Friday deal I was able to maximize even more by earning cashback through Rakuten
Sam’s Club was selling $500 Southwest Gift Cards for $399 (top photo)
Step 1: for the merchant on Rakuten to see if they offer cashback – in this case, we are looking for Sam’s Club and it is not only on Rakuten but cashback is up to 15%(bottom photo)
Step 2: I take my own advice and use the app, so I click on the store to activate cash back on the app and this is where I can see that the 15% is for new memberships but I can possibly earn 12% on this purchase. I look through the exclusions and gift cards are not listed so we are good to go.
Beautiful Tip: Read through Special Conditions and Exclusions every time! I have seen in the past year, Sam's Club will sometime exclude gift cards from earning cash back
Step 3: Rakuten will add ‘tracking cookie’ to the browser. I shop through the Sam’s Club website but know that Rakuten is tracking the purchase by the ‘Up to 15% Cashback’ indicated at the top of my app. Once my order is complete and I exit from Sam’s Club back to searching on Rakuten, a message will pop up with timeframes
Beautiful Tip: Purchases made through a merchant's app will not be eligible for cash back ie do not use the Sam's Club app to buy the gift cards!
Step 4: Once purchase is processed and order information is sent to Rakuten, you will be notified that cash back has been added to your account. I received this email from Rakuten the morning after my e-gift cards had been emailed to me.
TLDR: I used Rakuten to buy already heavily discounted Southwest gift cards from Sam’s Club with 12% cashback with the net result being that I paid $351.12 for a $500 gift card!
Earn Cashback On Travel!
- Lodging: Booking through Hostelworld, IHG or Marriott
- Airfare: Buying a flight from British Airways, Icelandair or Qatar
- Cruises: Purchasing from Celebrity, MSC or Princess
- Travel Experiences: Using Viator or GetYourGuide to book excursions or tickets
Since there are over 3,500 merchants on Rakuten, there are so many opportunities to earn cash back and perhaps on things you hadn’t considered before.
There Are So Many Other Opportunities To Earn As Well
Some of the products/services that you may not have realized that there’s a chance to earn cashback on:
- Banking and Finance: Opening an account with SoFi or Filing taxes with TaxAct or Signing up for Intuit Quickbooks
- Holiday Gifts, Flowers & Parties: Ordering flowers from FTD / Teleflora or Ordering party supplies from Oriental Trading Company
- Auto & Tires: Ordering tires from Discount Tires online to Buying online from Advance Auto Parts
- Electronics: Getting a camera or lens from Canon to Buying VPN from Surkshark
- Digital Services & Streaming: Taking an online course from Craftsy to Signing up for DirecTV
- Events & Entertainment: Buying concert tickets from Ticketmaster or Livenation
- Subscription Boxes & Services: Trying out a meal delivery service like Blue Apron or Signing up for a box like FabFitFun
- Sports, Outdoors & Fitness: Buying a Peloton bike or tread
- Computers & Tablets: Getting a new computer or phone
Beautiful Tip: Get in the habit of checking Rakuten before making a purchase (or having the extension installed) to ensure that no Cashback opportunities are missed!
You Might Even Be Able To Earn In-Store and Whilst Dining!
Rakuten now offers the ability to earn cashback while shopping in-store with some retailers and the process is super easy since you don’t have to worry about tracking cookies
The big thing to remember is that you have to ADD YOUR OFFERS otherwise you will not get credit for a shopping or dining trip even if the credit card has been offered
Look For Even Higher Cashback Multipliers
If there is not an immediate rush to purchase a good or service, it can be very rewarding to wait until cashback amounts are higher ie instead of 2% for booking transportation through Viator, you wait until the cashback is 15%.
The highest cashback %, I have seen for most merchants in the past 17 months has been on Online Monday (the Monday after US Thanksgiving/Black Friday) but again this only makes sense if there is not an immediate need AKA there’s no worry that something will sell out.!
Beautiful Tip: While not all Mondays, many have cashback specials of double to 10% to 15% so delaying a purchase by a few days can yield very high dividends.
Getting Paid Your Cash Back
So now that we have gone through how to shop through Rakuten and how to maximize your cash back even further, you may be wondering how you will actually get paid for your earned cash back.
Rakuten calls their payouts “Big Fat Checks” and pays out 4 times a year, in three month intervals:
- May 15th
- August 15th
- November 15th
- February 15th
As long as your account balance is over $5.00 you will receive a payment for all cash back and rewards earned and confirmed in the previous earning period.
There are three ways you can get paid out by Rakuten:
- Paper check in the mail
- Paypal direct deposit
- American Express points
Note that your cashback will first be listed as pending and will become confirmed after certain criteria have been met including Rakuten receiving payment from the merchant, the return window has elapsed, etc.
Why You Should Do This
Maximizing your spend is making the money that you were going to spend go even farther. Do
And to alleviate your disappointment that you are now just discovering this: June of 2023 was when I started using any shopping portals so
Beautiful Tip: Do not spend more - use this as a way to earn Cashback on what you were only going to spend money on!
New to Rakuten? Earn $40!
What’s the extra $40 I speak of? Once you spend $40, you’ll get $40 simply for signing up using my link.
***This is their highest bonus and only available until 12/8/24! Make sure to sign up before then as you’ll have 90 days to make at least $40 in purchases – the $40 is IN ADDITION to all of the cashback you will earn on your purchases!