The Offer
- Pepper app is offering 10% off an Instacart e-gift card purchase.
You can do this deal only once and buy a gift card with a denomination of between $25 and $750. Like always, you’ll get 5% back instantly toward a future purchase on all Pepper purchases.
The Fine Print
- Valid 6/29 – 7/2/24
Our Verdict
Pepper always gives back 5% instantly toward your next purchase with their Pepper points system. New Pepper members who sign up using a referral link get 10% back for their first 15 days (half instantly available and the bonus half comes later). With this Instacart deal you’ll end up getting similar t0 15% off, and new Pepper members with end up with like 20% off.
Pepper has been on fire lately with some nice deals: Lowe’s at 10% back, then Uber at 15% back, then Amazon at 10% back, then Airbnb 10% back, and now Instacart at 10% instant discount. This Instacart deal is limited to one use with a $750 limit.
Use your Amex Business Gold to earn 4x if it’s one of your top two categories or use a card with a bonus for Online Shopping. Or just use your regular daily driver credit card.
We’ve written before how Costco.com and Samsclub.com are also offering 20% off Instacart gift cards.
My thanks if you enter my signup code 584255 during the initial signup process. No referral links or references in the comments below, please.
Seems Pepper quietly dropped Walmart over the weekend. That’s a big disappointment, as all the other gift cards can be had elsewhere for greater than 5% discount.
I still see Walmart on the app
That’s interesting. I bought a Walmart gc last week then it fell off my app entirely. Guess they limit you for the higher value retailers to one gift card. Hope it will return again soon.
I’m excited whenever I see both Instacart and Pepper! Let’s ignore the naysayers
Every day or two I see posts on this Pepper thing, but never excited about any. Can someone teach me why Pepper is of your interest?
The past few deals have been quite good, especially the Amazon which was excellent. I don’t post most of their deals which are for things like Spa and similar. I used to just add the deals as updates to our original review, the past few I found interesting enough to post separately.
Overall lots of people find Pepper interesting for the 10% everywhere signup bonus and also for the consistent 5% everywhere back, even on top brands. Take Amazon, as an example, if previously we got 5% back on Amazon, we can now get 5% + regular credit card points (4x if you have Amex biz gold).
Personally, I’ve gotten many referral bonuses from Pepper – thanks to all who signed up using my code!
I see your points, thanks! Maybe personally I have lower valuation for gift cards, because Citi Deals give 20%~100% off on Amazon/Walmart/Target/… and are enough for smaller spenders in 2-player mode like me, or by stacking Costco 20% off and CSR Pay yourself back on Instacart/Uber/Doordash/… gift card; so very few gift cards worth >80% of its face value TO ME except Visa/Mastercard/AMEX GC.
The part you might be forgetting is that when you redeem your Citi TY points for gift cards, you’re working from a 1:1 base value. E.g. 1,000 points is a $10 gift card. 20% discount means 800 points for $10. Great.
But, your underlying TY points are they themselves worth a lot more by transferring to partners for travel redemptions and such. In this way, they’re often valued closer to 2c per point (or 800 points for about $16 of value)—even better when Citi offers a transfer bonus to a partner airline program, you can get closer to 3c per point. Getting a 20% discount on your GCs is effectively getting 1.25c per point; certainly not terrible—but you can see why most people just entirely bypass the thought of using their transferable points on gift cards. The same applies to the AMEX MR and Chase UR (PYB is nice to have as an option, but that 25% bonus is just the same 1.25c you’re talking about with the Citi discounted GCs).
GC deals like this on Pepper are all the better because you can earn extra points with that 4x Biz Gold bonus spend (or with a BoA online shopping card at 3x)—on top of the 5 or 10% discount. Ideally, you’re just using the GCs in place of base spend you’d make anyway, though—not just throwing money out the door for no reason! 😉
—though I do want to hear about your “100% off” GC deals 🙂
Thanks to your and Chuck’s explanation, now I understand Pepper better and confirm that I get enough better deals elsewhere, but totally understand there may be big spenders that benefit from Pepper.
I know the Citi Daily Deals you are talking about. The 100% off ones are only ever $5 giftcards, unless you have seen otherwise? And it never lets me buy the discounted ones when I need to enter a credit card, because it gives an error message. You never have this error?
Yes but I’m managing multiple players in my family, so stocking up is fast.
You must use the Diamond/Simplicity card. You can save the card once and only enter the 3-digit PIN.
Citi IT is shit, but improving
Chuck, both Pepper and Instacart are exciting. Please keep posting. I did use your code