Nick just covered the great deal on gift cards sold on Raise as you can earn 20% cashback when clicking through from TopCashback.
There appears to have been some confusion regarding which cards qualify for the 20% cashback, primarily due to the somewhat unclear wording used by TopCashback. One issue is that TopCashback mentions the following term:
Gift Card Listings will receive no cashback.
This doesn’t mean that buying gift cards listed on Raise is excluded, it means listing gift cards for sale on Raise is excluded from earning cashback. In other words, if you buy a second hand gift card on Raise today, you’ll earn 20% cashback. If you list a card for sale, you’ll earn nothing (other than what you’d normally earn after Raise takes their cut.
‘Cash Back Gift Cards’ versus ‘Discount Gift Cards’
The other confusing element of this deal is that Raise now sells two different types of gift cards – ‘Cash Back’ and ‘Discount’. For example, if you search for Airbnb gift cards, this’ll be what you see.
The main difference between the two is that ‘Cash Back’ gift cards are first-hand (i.e. brand new) gift cards, while ‘Discount’ cards are second-hand (i.e. pre-owned) gift cards. What confuses things a little further is that ‘Cash Back Gift Cards’ used to be known as ‘Raise Pay’ which worked a little like MyGiftCardsPlus, MPX, etc.
Looking at the listings above, buying a ‘Cash Back’ Airbnb gift card would seem to be the better deal as it offers 2% in rewards. In addition to that, it’s a first-hand gift card and so there’s less risk than buying a ‘Discount’ second-hand gift card.
The important thing to be aware of though is that because ‘Cash Back’ cards are first-hand gift cards, they won’t earn cashback through shopping portals.
‘Discount’ cards are second-hand cards that Raise takes a commission on when they’re sold, similar to how eBay takes commission when you sell an item on there. That commission appears to be how Raise can encourage purchases by offering cashback through shopping portals. In the case of TopCashback’s 20% rate, they’ll be making a loss seeing as their cut isn’t that large, which is presumably why that increased rate is only available today.
In other words, if you want to earn 20% cashback on Raise purchases today, you have to buy one of the ‘Discount’ gift cards, not the ‘Cash Back’ ones.
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Anyone check to see if the 20% looks like it’ll come through?
This explanation makes my head hurt.
Pretty sure it’s $10 off $50, which counts as 20%. But it’s not $200 off $1000.
Same Macy’s question. I bought a $500 gift card for $475. I’m assuming I’ll get $95 from Top Cash Back and can use this e-gift card code by going back through a cash back site to triple dip?
I’m not certain if Macy’s purchases with a gift card would definitely track or not – if they do, that’s a sweet deal.
I did it. The terms don’t exclude paying with a gift card. Will update if it tracks.
Both Raise purchases have tracked.
If I bought Macy’s at a 5% discount but I earned Raise cash, does that mean it’s not discount?
Very confused.
You’d have either earned cash back or gained a discount – I don’t think you get both. Looking at the Raise listing for Macy’s, it looks like you can get either a 5% discount or 3% cashback. How much Raise cash did you earn?
Looks like none although it displayed an amount I would earn. Definitely got 5% off.
Who’d choose 3% back over 5% off?
No transaction notification from Topcashback. I’ve also emailed Raise to clarify if what I bought is eligible.
Sooo confusing.
I didn’t get a notification either.
am I right in thinking that Airbnb GCs can’t be combined? There was a post few months ago by you guys or another blog on Boarding Area about how hard it is to use Airbnb GCs
They’re fairly straightforward if you know what to do. You can’t combine them in the way that you can combine Hotels.com gift cards into one card, but you can load multiple cards to your account and pay for one reservation with them. I’ve spent ~$15k on Airbnb over the last couple of years and all of it’s been paid for with discounted Raise gift cards.
Just make sure you load the cards to your account before making a reservation.
thanks!
My Royal Caribbean “Discount Gift Card” I purchased says it’s actually a “voucher”. Please don’t tell me there’s some fine print out there that differentiates between vouchers and gift cards and therefore not eligible for cashback either : )
Stephen, thanks for staying on top of this to clear up all the confusion! Not sure if you had a hand in it or if there was an overwhelming response that even Top Cashback had to change their wording to make things clear.
Can you clarify on the bulk seller exclusion… How can we tell what cards are sold by bulk sellers?
To be honest, I’m not 100% sure about this. I take it to mean that bulk sellers themselves won’t earn the 20% cashback.
I hope you’re correct about this. Otherwise it’s a crapshoot.
[…] Update: See this post for more about the difference between ‘Cash Back’ and ‘Discount’ cards listed on Raise. […]
The stores listed this morning on TCB are no longer listed. We thinking this means any discounted cards will earn the 20%?
Yep – I think TCB realized that it was confusing listing some brands given that the 20% was available on all brands.
this seems cray cray
Fill yer boots!
How’s Airbnb GC even eligible for this 20%? It’s not listed and they specifically listed few brands
It looks like they’ve removed those listed cards now as the cashback wasn’t restricted to only those brands.
Nice!