Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
Upromise, Swagbucks & MyPoints have just increased the cashback they’re offering when opening a free Varo account to $120.
The Deal
- Earn $120 cashback when opening a Varo account & depositing $25 after clicking through from Swagbucks, Upromise or MyPoints.
- Direct link to offer – Swagbucks
- Direct link to offer – Upromise
- Direct link to offer – MyPoints
Key Terms
Terms below are for the Swagbucks offer; the Upromise & MyPoints offer details are similar:
- SB will not pend. Please allow up to 45 days after completing the transaction for SB to be credited to your account.
- Must create a Varo Bank account through the Swagbucks affiliate link.
- Offer only valid to new Varo Bank users. If you’ve previously installed the Varo Bank App you are ineligible for this promotion.
- You must use the same email address associated with your Swagbucks.com account when opening your account to earn SB.
- Must enter valid sign-up information, SSN, and account funding information to earn SB.
- Must be approved and fund at least $25 earn SB. Fundings under $25 are not eligible to earn SB.
- Offer may only be redeemed once (1) per user.
- This offer is presented to you by Swagbucks on behalf of a third-party merchant or sponsor (“Merchant”). Swagbucks does not endorse (and therefore is not responsible to you for) the Merchant’s views, policies, products or services.
- Have questions? Please contact the Swagbucks Help Center.
- If you are not credited within 45 days of offer completion, you have 14 days to contact the Swagbucks Help Center for further investigation. Help Center tickets submitted after the 14 day grace period are not eligible for further investigation and SB.
Quick Thoughts
I’ve seen offers for Varo on Upromise and Swagbucks before, but they were for lower amounts. At $120, I decided to jump on the offer as I doubt the bonus will get much higher and applied for an account via Swagbucks.
n.b. Swagbucks, Upromise and MyPoints are all owned by Prodege. Although you earn Swagbucks with the Swagbucks offer, those can be redeemed for cash via PayPal and so it’s the same as earning straight cashback. Upromise is ostensibly for saving in a 529 college savings account, but you can set it up so that they send payment to your checking account. There’s therefore no difference between the two sites’ offers; I picked Swagbucks because they occasionally offer discounted gift card deals when redeeming your points that can be slightly profitable for reselling which means you can get slightly better value than 1cpp.
As for the Varo account application, the process was simple, didn’t take much more than five minutes to complete and I was immediately approved. Our personal living situation (address-wise) can sometimes prove problematic for getting new financial accounts approved for companies like this, so the fact that I was instantly approved hopefully means the average person should have no problems.
Note that there are a couple of specific terms for this offer. You have to:
- Sign up with the same email address as that used for your Upromise or Swagbucks account
- Deposit $25+
Unlike some Swagbucks, Upromise and MyPoints offers, even after a successful application the $120 won’t show as immediately pending. It’ll be 45 days before it shows on your account, so I’d set a reminder for 45 days after your application date in case you need to raise a claim. As per the terms of the offer, you only have 14 days after those 45 days to submit a claim, so I’ve set a reminder for Google Calendar to email me in 45 days to check my Swagbucks account and make a claim if necessary. I’ve not had issues with Swagbucks not tracking before and so hopefully a claim will be unnecessary, but with only a 14 days window to make a claim I don’t want to take any chances with $120 on the line.
For me, this offer was a no-brainer. There are no monthly fees and you only have to deposit $25, so it’s an easy $120 profit. With that $120 cashback being earned via a shopping portal rather than as a bank account bonus, I don’t think you’ll receive a 1099.
Even better, Varo has a savings account offering 0.5% interest APY which can be increased to 3% APY. To get that higher rate, you have to meet the following terms:
- Receive total direct deposits of $1,000 or more each qualifying period
- Keep a daily savings balance of $5,000 or less the entire calendar month
- Keep your Bank Account and Savings Account balances above or equal to $0.00 the entire calendar month
Earning 3% on up to $5,000 is a great return on cash savings in the current environment. The only potentially tricky requirement is receiving direct deposits totaling $1,000+ per qualifying period. As always with this type of bank account requirement though, Doctor of Credit is your friend.
The email from Upromise about this offer stated that the $120 cashback rate will end on October 30, 2021 at 11:30pm PT. The Swagbucks site doesn’t state an end date, but I suspect it’ll be the same.
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Is there a reason the swag bucks affiliate link at the top is crossed out? The link still works, and appears to take you to the offer.
Thanks for letting me know. When clicking through it wasn’t showing for me and so I thought Swagbucks must’ve ended the deal. However, it’s showing for me when going to the link in incognito mode, so they must’ve removed it on my Swagbucks account seeing as I actually did this deal through them. I’ll update the post to remove the strikethrough.
Received my 12,000 swagbucks points 11/4 after moving $25 and opening Varo account on 10/25.
Had to do Mypoints for 20k points as SB was only showing $50
Attempting to apply via Swadbucks, offer shows as still active, on final Varo submit screen get “The quota has been exceeded.”
Yet it seems to have created the account anyway. I can log in to Varo and have the account.
That’s weird – hope you get the Swagbucks.
It’s also on mypoints for $126. I may do this one. I’d like to note that some expiration dates they have are “soft” and end up getting extended.
I’d like to see it higher, but at $126 I feel it’s finally worth doing.
How many points is it showing at on MyPoints for you? I’d checked MyPoints when writing this, but it was only showing as 12,000 points for me which seems to be ~$75.
Mypoints is showing at 20,000 points (Varo) in my account. I didn’t know it varied by account.
Interesting – I guess some MyPoints offers must be targeted then, I hadn’t realized that.
Ah, I’m seeing it now on a different page. Thanks for the heads up about this – I’ll add a link to the post.
Yes, hate I did this offer already a while back. I only got $75. I do a lot of offers on Swagbucks/MyPoints & write about them. Thanks. I will share this with my audience. I saw the offer on MyPoints, but not Swagbucks.