Get Cash Back In-Store from Ebates and Upromise

In-Store Cash Back

Aside from earning cash back by shopping through online shopping portals, there are a few sites that offer cash or points for in-store purchases. Many mileage portals offer dining programs for in-store restaurant purchases, for example, and we covered recently that Plenti added a dining program too.

Ebates and Upromise offer cash back for in-store purchases at select retailers.

Here’s the Ebates in-store link and this link should work for Upromise. Both can be found by going to the home page of those sites and clicking on the In-Store tab.

If you like YouTube videos, here’s Ebates’ 1-minute video about their in-store cash back offers.

Available Offers

Ebates

Ebates has a bunch of interesting offers; nothing hugely exciting, but stores that you might be shopping at anyway. These offers will likely change over time, although many of these have been around for a number of months already.

• The Body Shop 4% cash back
• Sephora 4% cash back
• Gap, Banana, Old Navy 2% cash back
• Saks 4% cash back
• J. Crew 2% cash back
• Full list here

Upromise

The Upromise offers are a bit different. In some areas there won’t be anything at all. In other areas, there are tons off offers, all at mom-and-pop shops, not national chains.

Where Upromise really shines is for those who are cardmembers of the Upromise Mastercard. Pfdigest writes about offers such as 5% back at Home Depot, Papa John’s and more.

See these screenshots for some more examples.

Comparison

A key difference between Upromise and Ebates is that Ebates only allows Visa and Amex cards currently, while Upromise only allows Visa or Mastercard.

Theoretically, the Upromise system allows linking Amex and Discover too, but for retailer cash back it seems to always be limited to Visa/MC. Each offer indicates which cards will work with it, and they all say Visa and Mastercard only. Also note that some Upromise offers are targeted for Upromise’s own Mastercard members, not any other cards.

Both programs allow us to link multiple cards. There’s no limit to the number of cards which can be linked with Ebates.

With Ebates, you have to activate/save the offer on the card in order to get cash back, similar to the way you save an Amex Offer on a card. You also have to save the offer on each card separately. With Upromise, you typically don’t have to activate the small-shop offers, but the offers at big chains (these offers are usually available for Upromise Mastercard holder only) need activation.

Stack the Deal

With Ebates, if you use the Ebates credit card, you’ll get an extra 3% on purchases (this works for in-store purchases as well at eligible). Unclear if this works for Upromise too.

Another stacking idea is to order something online through a shopping portal, and select the in-store pickup option available at select stores. Then pay in-store with the Ebates/Upromise card and hopefully get the double-dip that way. (HT: IOE)

Final Thoughts

I found The Body Shop 4% offer interesting since there’s currently an Amex Offer to get $15 off $50 at the Body Shop. Register your card/s to Ebates and you’ll get an extra 4% back – $2 on a $50 purchase.

We’ve also seen in-store Gap Amex Offers (some people bought up a ton of Gap gift cards on those deals), and it’s neat to be able to earn a bit more with Ebates in-store cash back.

It’s truly a pain to register multiple Amex cards and it might not be worth the hassle for everyone. Still, if you’re making large or recurring purchases at one of these merchants, it’s worth registering your card beforehand.

Could also be useful for resellers who do in-store purchases.

Thanks to Taggingmiles for posting about Ebates in-store cash back and to PFdigest for posting about Upromise in-store cash back. If you are new to Ebates, consider using my Ebates referral link to sign up.