Spend, Earn, Save: A Guide to Online Shopping Portals

Life, liberty and the pursuit of online shopping—the unalienable rights of every American today.

All jokes aside, if you have a computer or a smartphone, chances are you’re no stranger to online shopping.

While you may be familiar with online shopping and some of its perks, you may not know that you can double-dip or even triple-dip on rewards while shopping online. With the help of online shopping portals, each item added to your cart can put you a step closer to travel redemptions.

Online shopping portals are free to use and enable you to earn cash back, points and miles on purchases made with thousands of participating retailers.

And if you connect a rewards credit card with a lucrative points multiplier to your shopping portal, you can stack your rewards, giving you unparalleled returns on every order.

Since these earnings add up, they could well be the difference between being able to make an award booking this year vs. the next year.

In this complete guide to online shopping portals, we will look at how they work and what you can do to maximize your rewards. We’ll also compare shopping portals, so you can find the one best suited to your points and miles strategy.

What Are Online Shopping Portals?

Online shopping portals are platforms you can use to earn extra miles, points or cash back on purchases made with thousands of participating retailers. Eligible purchases are those made with merchants that the shopping portal advertises through its platform.

From there, you can view all of the different retailers and offers available, enabling you to select the one you’re after.

When you select a retailer, you’ll be redirected to their website through the shopping portal. The portal will track this and any consequent purchases you make, as long as you have cookies enabled. You’ll then earn rewards on the subtotal of your purchases (excluding shipping fees and taxes).

Online shopping portals sound too good to be true. How is it that you can boost your rewards by simply starting your search through an online shopping portal instead of directly with the merchant?

Merchants benefit from online shopping portals as they gain greater visibility by having their products advertised. In return, shopping portals receive a commission on every purchase you make with a participating merchant. And you as the consumer receive part of this commission in the form of cash back, points or miles.

There really is no catch when it comes to online shopping portals.

They’re simple, convenient and they earn you bonus rewards without you needing to spend anything more than you already would.

How to Choose the Best Online Shopping Portal

Let’s take a look at how to select the best shopping portals.

1. Research Different Portals

You should begin by researching the different online shopping portals on offer.

When it comes to earning bonus rewards on your purchases, there is a wide range of online shopping portals to choose from.

It’s important to compare online shopping portals to ensure their rewards structure best fits your wider points and miles strategy. You’ll also want to consider the variety and number of participating retailers, ease-of-use and security and privacy of the portal.

Your best bet is to check user reviews for each prospective online shopping portal, to find the one best suited to your strategy.

2. Check Rewards Programs

Not all online shopping portals are created equal. Depending on the type of online shopping portal, the rewards program can vary widely.

Generally speaking, there are four different types of online shopping portals—based on their varying rewards programs—that you can expect to come across:

• Airline online shopping portals
• Hotel online shopping portals
• Credit card online shopping portals
• Cashback online shopping portals

Airline shopping portals enable you to earn bonus miles with a specific airline’s loyalty program on your purchases. You’ll need an account with the airline you want to earn miles with to get started. If your points and miles strategy revolves around earning miles with specific airlines, airline online shopping portals are a great way to earn bonus miles.

Some examples of popular airline shopping portals include:

• Alaska Mileage Plan Shopping
• American AAdvantage eShopping
• British Airways Executive Club eStore
• Delta SkyMiles Shopping
• JetBlue TrueBlue Shopping
• Southwest Rapid Rewards Shopping
• United MileagePlus Shopping

Both JetBlue and United enable you to link rewards offers to your credit card for in-store purchases. Equally, Rapid Rewards points earned through the Southwest shopping portal count toward earning the Southwest Companion Pass.

Hotel shopping portals follow the same model as airline shopping portals. You can earn loyalty points with the specific hotel you want by making purchases through its portal. You’ll need an existing account with the hotel loyalty program to sign up. If you’re looking to earn some extra points toward hotel stays, using a hotel online shopping portal could be just what you need.

Compared to airline shopping portals, there are fewer hotel shopping portals to choose from. The Wyndham Rewards Shopping portal is one example of a hotel shopping portal.

Credit card online shopping portals enable you to earn points or cash back on purchases made through it. Barclays, Capital One, Citi and Chase all have their own shopping portals. To use credit card portals, you need to have an eligible and active rewards credit card with the card issuer, except for Capital One (more on this later).

Credit card online shopping portals enable you to earn transferable points, giving you greater flexibility compared to using a cashback shopping portal or airline/hotel shopping portal. For example, the bonus Ultimate Rewards points you earn on purchases made through Chase Ultimate Rewards Shopping can be transferred to any of Chase’s 14 hotel or airline transfer partners.

Lastly, cashback shopping portals enable you to earn bonus cash back on the purchases you make through them. These online shopping portals are ideal if you want simple rewards. Instead of earning redeemable miles or points, you’ll simply have the cost of your purchases effectively reduced through cashback offers.

It’s also worth mentioning that hybrid online shopping portals such as Rakuten enable you to choose between earning cash back or credit card points. In the case of Rakuten, you can opt to earn American Express Membership Rewards points on all of your purchases.

Choosing the correct rewards program is key to maximizing the value of online shopping portals. In fact, it’s one of the main deciding factors when it comes to choosing an online shopping portal.

3. Consider Retailer Selection

Having access to the best rewards offers is no use if you can’t use them for merchants with whom you wish to shop.

Ensure that your prospective online shopping portal offers a wide range of retailers with whom you will actually shop.

For example, TopCashback boasts more than 7,000 retailers while Rakuten offers 3,500. In comparison, many airline portals offer just over 1,000 merchants.

4. User-Friendly Interface

Although not as crucial as the rewards program and number of participating retailers, choosing an online shopping portal with a user-friendly interface makes your online shopping experience a whole lot smoother.

This makes it more likely that you’ll always go through the portal when shopping online, ensuring that you’ll never miss out on another deal.

Customizable search filters, personalized recommendations, offer alerts and browser extensions all make the online shopping process smoother and potentially more lucrative.

5. Security and Privacy

Even with credit card zero liability protection offered by the best credit cards, the online shopping portal you use must be secure.

Protecting your data through encryption is key to your security.

Check user reviews or any external audits to confirm the security of the platform.

Maximizing Rewards with Online Shopping Portals

Just because you’ve signed up with an online shopping portal, it doesn’t mean you’ll automatically start earning points and cash back.

Here are some of the best ways to earn points for shopping online.

1. Stack Rewards

Reward stacking is the immensely satisfying process of combining numerous point or cashback multipliers on a single purchase.

Let’s say you connect a card that earns 1.5% cash back on everyday purchases to an online shopping portal. The portal offers 2% cash back with the retailer from whom you wish to make a purchase. That means you’ll earn a total of 3.5% cash back on your final purchase.

Stacking your rewards can be incredibly lucrative and is easy to do. Not to mention, it doesn’t cost you anything extra.

You can also combine Amex Offers and Chase Offers with rewards earned through shopping portals to double-dip into your earnings.

Reward stacking is an essential component of maximizing online shopping portals. Connect one of the best cashback credit cards to an online shopping portal and watch your earnings accumulate.

2. Timing Purchases

Just like with card welcome bonuses and applications, timing your purchases is crucial to getting the maximum value out of shopping portals.

Limited-time offers, holiday promotions and seasonal sales can enable you to reap even more value out of your purchases.

If you know you have large purchases coming up, holding off for potential offers—such as Black Friday—could enable you to triple- or even quad-dip on your earnings.

3. Utilize Bonus Points Opportunities

In addition to timing your purchases, you can maximize your earnings with shopping portals by taking advantage of bonus point opportunities.

Many online shopping portals offer a bonus when you refer a friend and they make a minimum purchase.

You can also earn bonus points from writing reviews and completing surveys, depending on the shopping portal you use.

These are easy ways to accumulate points or cash back that can add up to significant earnings over a year.

4. Explore Partner Offers

Aside from the bonus rewards, one of the benefits of online shopping portals is that they show you offers across thousands of merchants.

This enables you to compare the advantages of buying a certain product with one merchant over the other, which you may not otherwise consider.

Shopping portals enable you to find exclusive discounts, deals on shipping and any other additional offers run by specific merchants.

Take your time when browsing through your shopping portal so that you can find the best offer available.

5. Stay Updated

Thousands of bonus offers with thousands of merchants are no good if you don’t make use of them. It’s easy to miss out on a limited-time, promotional or seasonal offer.

For this reason, you should consider subscribing to your shopping portal’s newsletter, following them on social media and enabling notifications on their app.

That way, the likelihood of you missing out on a once-in-a-lifetime bonus offer is much lower.

Comparing the Best Online Shopping Portals

Let’s now compare some of the best online shopping portals, to see which one best fits your goals.

Keep in mind that you can sign up for multiple online shopping portals and use a cashback aggregator—such as Cashback Monitor—to compare offers between portals. That way, you’ll be able to select the best shopping portal for each purchase you make, maximizing your earnings every time.

1. Rakuten

Formerly known as Ebates, Rakuten is one of the most popular online shopping portals available.

It’s easy to sign up and free of charge. You can connect an eligible Amex, Visa or Mastercard credit card and start earning cash back from the get-go. Rakuten offers more than 3,500 participating merchants with whom you can earn rewards.

One of the unique aspects of Rakuten is that you can opt to earn either cash back or Amex Membership Rewards points.

Considering that Amex doesn’t have its own shopping portal, this makes Rakuten highly valuable for earning bonus Membership Rewards points on your purchases.

Additionally, Rakuten enables you to earn in-store cash back by pre-activating an in-store offer on your eligible linked credit card.

Rakuten has competitive cashback offers that outsize those of competing online shopping portals, such as PayPal Rewards.

You’ll receive your rewards quarterly as long as you have a minimum cashback balance of $5.01 or 501 Amex points, either through PayPal or check if you’ve chosen to earn cash back, or directly deposited into your Amex account if you’ve opted to earn Membership Rewards points.

2. Mr. Rebates

Mr. Rebates is another solid choice for an online shopping portal.

It offers cashback rewards from more than 3,000 merchants. It’s completely free to sign up and link a credit card.

While it doesn’t offer in-store cashback offers like Rakuten, it does offer a browser extension to make online shopping simpler.

You can choose to be paid either via PayPal, Venmo, check or with an Amazon gift card. Unlike Rakuten, payments will be issued typically within one to three days with a maximum processing time of 14 days. However, you’ll need a minimum cashback balance of $10.

3. TopCashback

When it comes to lucrative cashback offers, TopCashback tends to beat both Rakuten and Mr. Rebates.

You can earn cash back at more than 7,000 stores in the U.S.

You’ll be eligible for payouts as soon as your cashback balance reaches $0.01 and you can be paid using PayPal, bank transfer or through gift cards with popular brands, from Disney and Walmart, to Amazon and Target.

However, payout times can be long as TopCashback waits for the merchant’s return policy to expire before issuing you your rewards. Likewise, referral bonuses tend to be lower with TopCashback compared to other platforms.

4. Shop Through Chase Portal

The Chase shopping portal allows cardholders of select Sapphire®, Freedom® or Ink® products to earn bonus Ultimate Rewards points on purchases with participating retailers.

You can earn between 1X and 15X Ultimate Rewards points on purchases with more than 500 retailers.

Your points will post to your account within 15 to 60 days of your purchase.

Keep in mind that co-branded Chase cards are ineligible for use with Shop Through Chase.

5. Barclays Rewardsboost

For Barclays cardholders, you can access the Barclays Rewardsboost shopping portal, enabling you to earn extra points with more than 1,000 participating stores.

Rewards are posted to your Barclays account within 45 days of your purchase.

6. Citi Bonus Cash Center

The Citi Bonus Cash Center can earn you cash back with hundreds of merchants.

You’ll need to have an eligible Citi cashback card to access Citi’s online shopping portal. That means cards that earn Citi ThankYou points are ineligible.

Keep in mind that the Citi Bonus Cash Center is separate from Citi Shop, which is a browser extension that enables you to search for discounts and offers with over 5,000 merchants.

7. Capital One Shopping

The Capital One Shopping portal is unique for a credit card issuer online shopping portal.

Unlike with other card issuer shopping portals, you don’t need to be a Capital One cardholder to access and use the portal.

The Capital One Shopping portal functions similarly to Citi Shop, in that it searches for offers and discounts with more than 30,000 merchants. However, it also enables you to earn Capital One Shopping credits with a wide range of these merchants.

Capital One Shopping credits are expressed as cash back but the key difference is that you aren’t able to withdraw your earnings from the Capital One Shopping portal. Instead, you have to redeem them for e-gift cards with participating merchants.

This is a slight disadvantage, as you can’t redeem your earnings toward travel purchases or transfer them to credit card airline and hotel partners.

Earn Rewards & Save Money

Making your money go as far as possible with every purchase—big or small—is a key principle of any worthwhile points and miles strategy.

Online shopping portals are a useful tool to have in your inventory to maximize and squeeze every possible drop of rewards out of every purchase you make.

Whether you’re after cash back, credit card points, airline or hotel miles, there’s a shopping portal for every type of rewards enthusiast.