Shop Your Way started its life as Sears’ and Kmart’s rewards program. Over time it has branched out to become more of a general purpose rewards program. It’s possible to earn and redeem Shop Your Way points without ever making any purchases with Sears or Kmart. Shop Your Way points are interesting mostly because it’s possible to redeem Shop Your Way points for merchant gift cards.
Update 12/26/20:
Apple and Walmart gift cards have returned.
Previous Updates:
- Update 11/15/20: Transfers from Citi to Shop Your Way no longer have 20% bonus. Point transfers from Citi are no longer recommended.
- Update 11/9/20: Walmart cards are no longer available.
- Update 11/7/20: Points earned from the Sears Shop Your Way credit card can now be redeemed for gift cards. Hat Tip: Matt. Also: Apple gift cards are no longer available for redemption. Hat Tip: Saul.
- Update 11/4/20: High value gift cards are now available (previously most cards were limited to $30 max). In many cases you can now pick the exact gift card value you want (hat tip: reader Jason). Some merchants have been removed (notably Southwest and Ebay gift cards are no longer available).
Here’s what you need to know about Shop Your Way gift cards..
Basics
- Website: shopyourway.com/giftcards
- Gift card maximimum values vary by merchant. Many cards have $200 or $500 maximum values.
- With some merchants you can select a specific value. For example, with some merchant gift cards, you can enter the exact amount you need such as $193.27. With other merchant gift cards you have to pick from specific denomination options.
- Shop Your Way points are each worth one-tenth of a cent towards rewards. So, to buy a gift card, you need to add three zeros to the end of the dollar amount to figure out how many Shop Your Way points are required. For example, if you want a $30 gift card, it will cost you 30,000 Shop Your Way points.
- Points transfer from Citi ThankYou Rewards nearly instantly (wait a minute or two after initiating the transfer) [Note: One reader initiated a transfer but reports not receiving his points in over a week. That said, all of my transfers have been instantanious]
- Gift cards are emailed nearly instantly. With all of my tests I received my purchased gift cards by email within a few minutes.
- Not all Shop Your Way points work. A couple readers have reported that some Shop Your Way points collected from other means (besides transferring from Citi) were not available to purchase gift cards.
One reader specifically mentioned that this was true of points earned on his Shop Your Way credit card. Now, points earned from the Shop Your Way credit card do work. - Not all gift cards shown are really available. To give an example, I noticed that Audible was available, but the system showed an error anytime I tried to redeem for an Audible gift card.
Useful gift cards
Here are the gift cards that I think are likely to be the most useful to the most people:
- Apple: Choose any value between $10 and $500.
- Crate & Barrel: Choose any value between $25 and $1,000.
- CVS: Choose $5, $25, $50, $100, or $200
eBay: No longer available- GameStop: Choose any value between $5 and $500.
- Lowe’s: Choose any value between $5 and $1,000.
- Office Depot: Choose any value between $5 and $500.
- StubHub: Choose any value between $25 and $500.
- The Home Depot: Choose any value between $25 and $500.
- Walmart: Choose any value between $10 to $500.
Travel Gift Cards
- American Airlines: Choose $100, $250, or $500.
Southwest Airlines: No longer available- Cruise gift cards:
- Carnival: Choose any value between $100 and $1,000
- Celebrity: Choose $100, $250, or $500
- Holland America: Choose any value between $25 and $2,000
- Princess Cruises: Choose any value between $50 and $2,000
- Royal Caribbean: Choose $50, $100, $250, or $500
- Hotel gift cards:
- Expedia Hotel Card: Choose any value between $25 and $500.
- Fairmont: Choose $25, $50, or $100
- Hotels.com: Choose any value between $10 and $2,000.
- Raffles: Choose $25, $50, or $100
- Swissotel: Choose $25, $50, or $100
Food Delivery Gift Cards
- DoorDash: Choose any value between $15 and $200
- GrubHub: Choose any value between $25 and $200
- Seamless: Choose any value between $25 and $200
- Uber Eats: Choose any value between $15 and $500
Many More Gift Cards
I’ve listed above only a selection of gift cards that I suspect may readers will find useful. Visit this site to find many more: shopyourway.com/giftcards
Conclusion
The ability to buy gift cards with Shop Your Way points is valuable for those with Shop Your Way points. With these points, you’re no longer limited to shopping at Sears and Kmart. It used to be the case that most of these gift cards were limited to a maximum $30 value. This severely limited their usefulness with vendors that allow only a small number of gift cards to be used per order. Now, though, most gift cards are available in large denominations.
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Walmart GCs actually returned a few days before Christmas, noticed them earlier in the week.
Thanks! I’ve removed my bah-humbug comments from the post.
[…] Update 12/26/20: Apple & Walmart cards available again. Hat tip to FM […]
[…] Update 12/26/20: Apple & Walmart cards available again. Hat tip to FM […]
How to use the egift card. All I received was 16 digit number and 4 digit pin
This was the ONLY way to get any value out of my ThankYou points during the pandemic. I can’t believe they not only didn’t give us warning about dropping it from 12 points to 10, but didn’t notify us at all.
[…] Hat Tip: Reader Miz […]
The TYP to SWYR transfer rate is now 1TYP=10SWYR (down from 12 SWYR), which basically means the sweat part of party is over.
No!!!!
Let’s stop posting about nice things.
I signed up for this site, but still can not get (find) my account number, it does not show up. I received the e-mail link to confirm my account, they e-mailed me back saying my account was verified and I am all set – but my account number still does not show up. The only thing that shows up when I click my profile at the top right is “Get Rewarded for every purchase” then “Join or Activate” – which I did at least 3 times. I logged out and back in, a few times as well – even waited 1 hour. Tried changing my IP address too. Anyone else having this issue?
Try this:
You might have to try various browsers to get that to work though
I think I figured out the problem I only have a VoIP number. So it would not let me validate my number. I cross checked my account by logging into the sears.com shop your points website, since it is linked with shopyourway.com, and my profile data is on both sites. I can log into my account (on both sites, and it even says “Hello Jeff”, however…it still will NOT send me a validation e-mail and says “user not active.” So my thinking is….if you have a VoIP number, you can not use ShopYourPoints 🙁
LOL that Walmart has completely been removed. Its like the ceo said, “Holy crap, folks are using our points for value and we never intended this!”
Greg, there really needs to be a disclaimer somewhere in this post warning that SYW can & will remove any useful gift cards at any time with no notice.
I would hate to see a reader read this guide thinking that a particular retailer’s gift cards are still available, go convert Citi TYPs to SYW points only to find a specific GC is now gone.
Case in point, I tried to alert in the comments of the ‘Shop Your Way points are…worth something?’ post 10 days ago that Walmart was probably the next to get axed. Sure enough, today it seems to have been removed.
If you don’t check the GC you want is actually offered before transferring thats on you. That would be like transferring points to an airline before even looking at flights.
Transfers are near instant so if you are speculatively transferring TYP to SYW then thats a risk you are deciding to take.
This is different situation than transferring points to an airline, SYW Raise is actively trying to take away useful GCs as people redeem too many of them. Often these errors/glitches and removals happen mid-day, later on in the day, and even on the weekends.
I haven’t been burned myself but I think it’s only a matter of time before SYW Raise burns someone in the few seconds/minute between checking the site, going to transfer TYPs, and then discovering the retailer GC has been removed.
Do you have proof they are intentionally pulling popular gift cards or are you just speculating? It could be that they only have so much $$ worth walmart gift cards, and since they are popular they are the first to get depleted.
What more proof do you need now that Citi has devalued the transfer ratio to SYW from 1 to 12 to 1 to 10…
I’m sure they must have added those new walmart and apple GCs by mistake…. b/c conspiracy
Now Walmart is gone too. 🙁
I predicted this would happen 10 days ago:
https://frequentmiler.com/redeem-shop-your-way-points-for-gift-cards/#comment-2304711
Apple, Google seem to be gone, too.
Bummer. Thanks. Updated.
FYIs it looks like the SYW points from the Sears SYW card can now be redeemed for GCs.
I tried few months back and it said I had 0 redeemable points, but I log in now and it shows i have 10734 points to use one gift cards. Even better, when I clicked on $20 gamestop card it says “10,734 points + $9.27” at the bottom
Thanks. Updated.
Do you need a Premier or Prestige card to redeem for these? I plan to first close my Premier card, check the Citi website to see how many of my points will expire, and redeem that quantity for these gift cards.
I know Walmart GCs can be used at Sam’s Club, and I presume these Walmart GCs are no different.
No, you don’t need a Premier or Prestige for this. You could just call or online chat with Citi to ask how many points are tied to your Premier card.
I assume the same about Walmart/Sams Club
Pretty sure you have only 30 or 60 days to use your entire balance of TY points after closing your card account.
Maybe missing something, or maybe cause I don’t yet have any SWYP in my account, but I only see the low denomination options.
You have to click into one of the gift cards to see that the values available are much higher than shown on the home page.