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Shopping portal Rakuten is offering most people 15% back / 15x Membership Rewards points per dollar spent at many stores today. Some users have been targeted for an even-better 20% back / 20x Membership Rewards points per dollar spent at some popular stores. In my account, I’m seeing 15x on Dell and Saks, 20x on Viator, and many others that may be of interest.
The Deal
- Shopping portal Rakuten is offering increased rates at many stores through Monday night, 5/6/24
- Direct link to this deal
If you’re new to Rakuten
If you’re new to Rakuten, there is a current referral promotion to get $30 back when you sign up and spend $30 or more within 90 days. Feel free to use one of our referral links with our thanks.Tim’s Referral Link
Greg’s Referral Link
Stephen’s Referral Link
Nick’s Referral Link
For more detail about setting your earning preference with Rakuten, see Rakuten (formerly Ebates): now change from cash back to Membership Rewards points.
Key Terms
- Increased payouts scheduled to be offered through 5/6/24
Quick Thoughts
As noted at the top, the publicly-available rate here is 15% or 15 Membership Rewards points per dollar spent. That’s a great return at stores like Dell or Saks Fifth Avenue, particularly if you have credit card credits to use at those stores.
I see some 20x / 20% offers in my account listed as a “VIP” offer, including Viator. I’m of two minds about Viator, but I had been meaning to look up a couple of specific things for upcoming trips and this will push me to take a closer look since I value Amex Membership Rewards points at more than 1c per point.
Rates like 20x at Carters and Lego are also big enough to get me to take a look today (whether or not I ultimately buy).
As always, be sure to shop around as you may find better rates for some stores through other portals. Use a tool like cashbackmonitor.com to check payouts across various portals. Also be sure to check portal terms carefully. For example, Dell sometimes offers different payouts by category, though today it seems to be 15X in all categories. However, hotels dot com is showing up to 15X and as it turns out that payout is only available in three or four hotel markets.
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it might be good until may 13?
I had exact same thought. I read Nick’s post and raced to book some tours on Viator which was offering 20% cashback. However, I didn’t actually pull the trigger until after midnight, so I thought I was out of luck. But then Rakuten’s website is showing higher cashback rates for the entire week – “big give week”? I don’t see it anywhere on the site saying that it ends on 5/6. Rather, it looks like it starts on 5/6.
See the screen shot in the post — the banner says “Ends Monday night” on the ride side of the graphic. Looks like the 20% rates expired last night.
Re: after midnight, keep in mind that Rakuten is headquartered in California, so rates don’t change at midnight Eastern time.
Thanks Nick. It looks like those “Ends Monday night” rates were for the VIPs. They indeed ended and now Viator is showing 15% which is still not bad and is better than their usual 2%. I presume that those 15% rates will stay for the rest of the big week.
Halfway through the week and it does indeed look like many of these stores are still at 15X.
Ah yeah Dell is back down to 5x today
Be careful when you use cashbackmonitor. They might not have updated it by the time you look. For example, earlier they showed 7% for Nike at Rakuten, which was fine with me, then as soon as i click on the link to get to Rakuten, the latter page showed 15%, which then got bumped up to 20% when I logged in.