Anyone who follows my blog will know that I love a bit of cashback... in fact, I love a lot of cashback!
So I was looking at ways to find better cashback rates and suddenly realised that the answer had been in front of me the whole time! The answer was combining pre-pay cashback with traditional cashback services.
To understand what I mean by this, we first need to understand the difference between the two types of cashback.
Pre-Pay cashback works by purchasing a gift card from the retailer you wish to purchase from. So if I wanted to make a £100 purchase from Argos, as an example, I will buy a £100 gift card for Argos from a cashback service offering cashback on gift cards, such as KarmaCashback, TopCashback or Quidco.
With this method, I earn my cashback when purchasing the gift card, which is paid to my cashback account more or less immediately, rather than having to wait for the cashback in the traditional manner. I can then use my gift card as my payment method on the retailer's website or in-store immediately.
The traditional cashback technique requires me to go to the app or website of the cashback service I have decided to use, look for Argos as a retailer option, and then click on the link, taking me to the Argos website. From there, I would make my purchase, which the cashback provider will track, and then in a few weeks, I will receive my cashback to my cashback account, which I can then withdraw or spend. This cashback isn't instant, but that's not the end of the world!
So back to my initial thought, how could I make more cashback, and the method is pretty simple!
Let's use Argos again as my example. I want to spend £100 in Argos, so I go to a Pre-Pay cashback site to buy a £100 Argos gift card. I've chosen KarmaCashback as it was offering the highest gift card purchase cashback rate as I was writing this post at 4% - (TopCashback was offering 3.4% cashback and Quidco 1% cashback)
So I purchase a £100 gift card via the site, earning £4 cashback. This cashback hits my KarmaCashback account within about 1 minute, and I immediately have my £100 Argos card to spend. I can use my cashback to buy something else, withdraw it, or leave it there until I need it. The gift card arrives within seconds, and I can use that immediately to make my Argos purchase.
So here's my cunning trick, I then head over to TopCashback and use its traditional cashback method to go to the Argos website, as normal, to make my purchase and use my recently acquired £100 gift card to make my purchase. I will then receive cashback to my TopCashback account as usual.
Depending on what I decided to purchase, I could earn between 1% and 8% cashback on my purchase, as below:
Looking at the cashback rates, and depending on what I purchased, I would therefore earn an additional £1 to £8 on my purchase, which, when combined with the cashback I got for buying the Argos gift card, I received either £5 or £12 on my £100 purchase!
Sneaky right!
It won't work with every retailer, as not all retailers offer cashback on gift cards or traditional cashback, but it does mean that you can grab as much as possible from the retailers that offer both types of cashback options!
The Pre-Pay option is also handy for retailers you usually can't normally get cashback on, such as the supermarket. If you are going into a supermarket, rather than having it delivered (which may get you cashback), you can buy a gift card for your supermarket shop and earn cashback on the purchase. As an example, KarmaCashback were offering:
2.8% cashback on an Asda Gift Card
2.1% cashback on a Tesco Gift Card
2.8% cashback on a Sainsbury's Gift Card
2.8% cashback on a Morrisons Gift Card
2.1% cashback on an Amazon Gift Card (Amazon offer the Amazon Fresh food grocery delivery service)
So if you know you are going to spend £100 on your food shop (very easy to do), you can earn up to £2.80 cashback by purchasing a gift card for your chosen supermarket. If you paid by debit/credit card in the store, you are unlikely to earn any cashback at all from, apart from the odd deal such as the 1% cashback from Chase, so you are £2.80 better off. Do this every time you make a supermarket or supermarket fuel purchase, and that cashback will start to add up! Maybe keep that cashback in your cashback account and then use it for Christmas, possibly meaning you could get your Christmas lunch for free or money off buying gifts! Anyway you look at it, it's free money!
I've put together a video showing how buying from a Pre-Pay cashback site works. I've used KarmaCashback to purchase a £100 Amazon gift card. I've then used this gift card to place a grocery order from Amazon Fresh and earned £2.10 cashback on my purchase, which all helps, especially as I usually receive no cashback buying groceries from Amazon!
All information is correct as of the 21st of May 2022
Cashback links:
If you haven't already signed up with the three Cashback services I mentioned in the post, you can do this via the links below. These links may earn you additional cashback/referral bonuses, depending on what offers are available when you click the links, as they do change from time to time, but they will be the best offers available!
The Penny Pincher may make a commission on referral links, which is used to help pay our website costs.