Within the past few weeks, we’ve written and talked quite a lot about both Nearside Debit and Slide. Nearside is a free, FDIC-insured business banking platform with a Mastercard debit card that offers a generous, unlimited 2.2% cash-back rate on all eligible purchases in 2022. There are no fees and no minimum balances. Slide is an app which sells first-hand gift cards, offering 4%-6% cashback on all the brands available in the app.
By stacking these with Topcashback’s 6% cashback rate on Slide, we can get 14.2% cashback on almost all giftcards sold there(which includes Southwest and American Airlines). That can be increased even further at some retailers by using a second portal before making the final purchase. Yesterday I bought a $250 ticket directly from American Airlines and received $35.50 total cashback while still being able to book directly with American…something I place a premium on right now the frequency of travel disruptions.
Combining Nearside, Topcashback and Slide gives a baseline 14.2% cashback
The Deal
- Get 14.2% cashback on most giftcards sold on the Slide app by funding a Slide account with a Nearside Debit Card and then clicking through Topcashback before buying the gift card.
- Note – DO NOT PREFUND YOUR FIRST PURCHASE with Slide. You get 17% back from TCB on your first gift card purchase with Slide (up to $2000), but prefunding counts as a transaction, reducing the bonus to the normal 6%.
Referral Links
- If you’re new to the Slide app, you can get $5 off each of your first 4 orders when signing up through a referral link (and the person who refers you will also get $5 off each of our next 4 orders as well). Feel free to sign up with one of our links:
Stephen’s Slide referral link.
- If you’re new to Nearside, you can get a $40 welcome bonus on your first $200 deposit when signing-up for a new checking account and making the deposit within 7 days. This stacks with a referral link to get an additional $50 when spending $100 in the first 30 days on the debit card. See here for for more info.
Direct Link to $40 offer WITHOUT $50 referral bonus
The Process (assumes you already have Nearside and Slide)
- Using your Nearside Debit Card, prefund your Slide balance for whatever amount your purchase will be. Cashback = $4.20
- Let’s say we’re buying a $100 hammer at Lowe’s. We’d load $100 from Nearside (using the debit card, not the checking account number) and immediately get $2 back from Slide. Nearside will give us $2.2.
- Slide has a “sliding scale” for cashback on gift cards. They pay 4% cashback if paying at the point of purchase, 5% cashback if pre-funding with a credit card and 6% cashback if pre-funding with a debit card.
- DO NOT PREFUND YOUR FIRST PURCHASE with Slide. You get 17% back from TCB on your first gift card purchase with Slide (up to $2000), but prefunding counts as a transaction, reducing the bonus to the normal 6%.
- Some people have been able to use PayPal Key for this step. This codes as debit, so is fine as well.
2. Go to the Topcashback Slide page on your mobile device and click through to Slide.
3. Buy a $100 Lowe’s gift card on Slide. Cashback = $10 ($6 from TCB, $4 from Slide)
- You can pay directly using the Slide app and clicking through to Lowe’s or just buy the gift card. If you buy a gift card, you will be given a gift card number and pin that is stored on the Slide app and can be used directly on-line or in-store.
So right now, in three steps, we’ve already received $14.20 in cashback on our $100 Lowe’s purchase. But, with some retailers, we can go even further.
4. Check Cashback Monitor for Lowe’s. We see that MaxRebates is offering another 2% when clicking through to Lowe’s.
- You’ll actually see that Ibotta is at 6%, but they want to sell you a gift card as well, so the Lowe’s gift card you already purchased won’t do you any good there.
5. Click through the Max Rebates portal to Lowe’s and buy your ridiculously expensive hammer. Cashback = $2*
- Some portals won’t track if you make your purchase using a gift card. That seems to be few and far between in my experience so far.
Quick Thoughts
Stacking makes me a little giddy and this is a good one that I’ve found myself coming back to more and more. The combination of the 14.2% baseline cashback, a pretty good array of retailers at Slide and the simplicity of the whole process from beginning to end makes it a winner for me.
There are an almost infinite amount of possibiities to stacking cash back portals, some will be even better than this combination depending on offers and retailers. It’s worth exploring a bit to see what other superstacks are out there…just be sure to let us know when you find one! 😉
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Great post and comments… Thanks!
No doubt a great play for specific situations, and when one values cash-back over miles/points. Isn’t there a choice here not fully discussed? An opportunity cost, or similar, a comparison to have made? None of these transactions earn miles/points, the earnings side is a fixed 14.2% and the redemption side is built in – cash-back is a single linear calculation. The option is to earn miles/points, which is not a linear calculation, they are earned on the purchase side, and on the use side they are dynamic meaning they can have value from about $0.01 to $0.25 and even higher. A $100 Lowes purchase would easily earn 2X on the CC side, sometimes boosted to 3X by the CC; buying the GC through UnitedX, you’re earning the typical 0.5X but regularly can earn 1X and one time I received 5X. Buying the $100 item through a shopping portal is 1X on Lowes, and often that $100 is a tipping point to 3X to 10X more during shopping bonuses. So on the acquisition side, you should never be below 3.5X and commonly could be 5X or more. Converted to miles, using those miles, our common value is 15X, for a combined 18.5X or higher, much higher. Then there is the resources consideration – one needs to be feeding miles and points into the bank to have them there ready to go when great travel for free opportunities rise up – rebates, discounts, and such, b/c that’s what cash-back is, doesn’t provide free travel, it only provides a rebate, no different than a coupon at a grocery store. Except for the AA GC example to buy cash domestic travel where travel insurance isn’t an issue, and there are few portal gains to be had, I don’t see this path worth incorporating into efforts to travel for free.
Here’s what I do:
Preload Slide with $100 with my US Bank Altitude Reserve to get $4.50 back with card and $1 from Slide.
Get $6 back from TCB for buying $100 Lowes on Slide.
Get $4 back from Slide for purchase of $100 Lowes.
Buy 20% off lowe’s coupon from savendeals. com for $3.
Use cashback portal for $2 back.
Buy $100 of hardware from Lowes and get $20 off the purchase with coupon (minus $3 for cost of coupon).
$4.50 from US Bank
$5 from Slide
$6 from TCB
$2 from portal
That’s $34.50 off $100.
Well I hope you’re re-selling that tool, and the one like it to make money. One can only need so many tools. The value of these things is in scaling them to come out ahead.
I’m building a house, so I’m actually buying stuff I need.
That’s a good one, Frank! Incorporating the Lowe’s coupons sure makes a dent, doesn’t it?
Reducing cost by 34.5% is outstanding, however, building material costs skyrocketed since the pandemic started, so this helps take the sting out of it.
TOTAL NINJA MOVES!
Much respect! We’re not worthy!
Aren’t you worried that USB will shut you down?
I’ve been working on the house for almost a year. I don’t buy $20k a day or a month or anything, it’s normal organic spending, albeit a fair amount buying gift cards. I also use apple pay / USB for lots of other purchases. No problems.
I see a lot of discussion about buying gift card on Slide app, but I don’t see how to do that. I can shop online at Lowe’s through app, but gift card links don’t work (Android). Am I missing something?
When you select “Pay Now” as opposed to “Shop Online,” you’re really buying a gift card for whichever amount you select
Thanks! Does buying a gift card in that way work to qualify for the topcashback first purchase bonus?
You bet it does. Up to $2000.
But again, Don’t Prefund the first purchase
Any angle to buying visa GCs with the GCs purchased through slide? If so, which are the winners here? Unless I’m reselling GCs, I rarely value specific merchant GCs at more than 80% of their value anyway.
Do you have any concern about not getting the travel insurance protection from using (certain) credit cards?
That’s a great question CJ. In this instance with AA, not really as these are domestic flights for work. If it was an award flight or international (or both), I’d always use the CSR.