Barclays announced recently that it would be expanding its Simple Earn card-linked offer program. This is a feature that works in a somewhat similar way to Amex Offers, Chase Offers, Citi Offers, etc.
This is now available on at least some cards, although finding your offers could be made much easier than it’s currently set up.
My wife received an email a couple of weeks ago advising that she’d be getting access to Simple Earn offers on her Wyndham Earner Plus card soon. Then yesterday she received an email with a link to view the offers.
This was a unique link for her card, so it’s not a publicly available link and it didn’t require logging in to her account. When logging in to our Barclays accounts to see if there was a way of accessing the offers that way, I couldn’t find anything; not even on her targeted card. The only way to view the offers therefore appears to be with the direct link that gets emailed to you, similar to how Chase Offers worked early on.
There are two types of Simple Earn offers based on what she’s been targeted with so far. Some offers are card-linked offers where you can make a purchase in-store for some retailers and online for others. A large portion of those card-linked offers are for various gas stations around the country like Cumberland Farms, Turkey Hill, Fastrac, etc.
Before you get too excited, there doesn’t appear to be much of interest for using these offers for in-store gift card purchases. For starters, some of the gas station offers specifically state they’re for ‘At-Pump Only’.
The spending limits aren’t set very high either. For example, quite a few of the 5% gas offers are capped at $1.75 cashback each.
There’s a second type of offer too. Those are listed as ‘Click Shop Now To Earn’. These seem to be akin to the majority of Bank of America’s card-linked BankAmeriDeals nowadays. I don’t believe that these are card-linked offers per se. Instead, these offers work more like a shopping portal as you have to use their specific affiliate link.
Because you have to click the ‘Shop Now To Earn’ link, they don’t stack with regular shopping portals. Shopping portals normally offer better rewards than the rates on offer via Simple Earn, so unless you spot something particularly good, finding the best rate via Cashback Monitor or Savewise will usually be better.
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I have been getting these on my old sock-drawered Arrivals card for nearly a year. My other Barclays cards (Aviator, Hawaiian) so far haven’t been targeted.
Better than a sharp stick in the eye. I’ll bet some would probably like these card-linked offers to award points as opposed to cash back (a la Rakuten or Capital One offers).