Online Shopping Portals: Maximizing Your Rewards and Savings

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• Online shopping portals allow consumers to earn bonus rewards for online purchases.
• Shoppers can “double dip” on rewards using a rewards credit card through an online shopping portal.
• Shopping portals typically offer rewards in the form of cash back, airline miles, or hotel points.

If you don’t use a shopping portal when you shop online, you’re forfeiting cash, airline miles, hotel points, and bank points that could easily fund your next vacation.

What are online shopping portals?

An online shopping portal is a website that offers bonus rewards for shopping through its affiliate link. Rewards can include cash back, airline miles, hotel points, and various other loyalty “currencies.”

Shopping portals offer a powerful way to supercharge your rewards on money you’d spend anyway. They’re easy to use and don’t alter your shopping experience. 

Here’s everything you need to know about shopping portals including how to use them, tricks to maximizing them, and pitfalls to avoid.

How do shopping portals work? 

You can access thousands of merchants worldwide through shopping portals, from major retailers such as Best Buy and Apple to small brands with just a few locations. Dozens of companies offer shopping portals including Southwest, Delta, Capital One, Rakuten, and Mr. Rebates.

You can use a tool such as Cashback Monitor to quickly evaluate various shopping portals for the best reward rate on an upcoming purchase. 

Finding the right shopping portal

The right shopping portal may vary from store to store and even from time to time. Many portals offer elevated rates during peak shopping times, such as the weeks leading up to the end-of-year holiday season, or offer bonus returns during special promotional periods. 

Many airlines offer proprietary shopping portals. These are great ways to rack up bonus miles and points from the comfort of your couch.

Here are some popular shopping portals from travel programs:

Many travel-unrelated shopping portals pay you in cash back, such as:

Some credit card issuers like Chase, Citi, and Barclays have their own versions of shopping portals, which require you to log into your account to use them. With these portals, you can earn bonus bank points or cash back.

With all these options, it can be hard to discern where to find the biggest return for your shopping. Shopping portal bonuses are always changing, after all. Here’s how to stay on top of the best deals. 

Creating an account and linking payment methods

You’ll need an account for every shopping portal you use in order to track your purchases and payouts. You’ll need to sign up with an email address and password, and you’ll need to input a payment method such as PayPal in order to cash out your rewards. Some portals allow you to redeem your rewards in the form of gift cards to popular retailers such as Amazon or Starbucks. 

Making purchases through portals

Once you find the retailer you want to shop within the merchant directory, you’ll be taken to the official store website. For the most part, you won’t notice any difference during your shopping; the prices are the same, and the merchant code won’t change when the purchase is posted to your credit card.

Each shopping portal offers a unique payout scheme for making purchases. For example:

• You may earn a fixed number of points per dollar you spend, unique for each merchant (for example, 5x points with Macy’s versus 2x points with Apple)
• You may receive a few thousand points for enrolling in a food or media subscription
• You may receive 1,000+ bonus points if it’s your first time using a particular shopping portal

Some portals also publish promotions that reward you for spending a certain amount of money, such as $20 back for spending $100. 

Some people have a favorite portal or two, and stick with them regardless of the reward rate. But savvy consumers know to shop around for the best discounts or promotional payouts on every online purchase. Here are some tips for maximizing your earning opportunities.

Tips for increasing rewards

Shopping portal aggregators allow you to view all the shopping portal deals in one place. This can save literally hours for those who shop online with regularity.

Cashback Monitor is one of the best aggregators to use, although some shoppers also use Evreward or Cashbackholic.

Cashback Monitor quickly showcases the most viewed stores, the retailers offering the highest returns that day, and offers a comprehensive search tool that helps you find any retailer that offers shopping portal rewards. 

Enter the name of the retailer you plan to use, and Cashback Monitor will display every shopping portal that works with that particular store, as well as the current rate and form of return. Results are organized by reward category: 

• Cash back
• Travel miles/points
• Credit card points
• Other reward points

While the website orders its list of portals by return rate, you can rearrange this list to reflect your personal value of each reward currency. If you value American Airlines miles twice as highly as Southwest points, for example, you can ask Cashback Monitor to list American Airlines miles before Southwest even if a shopping portal offers 4 American Airlines miles vs. 7 Southwest points per dollar. 

To set up preferences like this, you’ll have to create a Cashback Monitor account (it’s free).

Use browser extensions

Internet browser extensions are an excellent way to save money when shopping online. These extensions notify you if a product you’re viewing qualifies for rewards through a shopping portal. If you install multiple extensions, you may receive a series of handy pop-ups whenever an item qualifies.

The most popular extensions include:

Rakuten is a unique portal that allows shoppers to choose between earning cash back or Amex Membership Rewards points (1 cent = 1 point). If a store is offering 8% back via Rakuten, for example, you can earn up to 8 Amex points per dollar instead of 8 cents per dollar. Since Business Insider values Amex points at 1.8 cents each toward travel, that 8% return is worth closer to around 14.4% on every dollar you spend.

If you know the best ways to use Amex Membership Rewards points, choosing to earn points instead of cash is the way to go.

Combining portals with credit card rewards

Stacking credit card rewards with portal discounts and promotions can help you save big on your shopping.

The rewards you earn through online shopping portals are completely separate from those you’ll earn from other bonus opportunities, such as a rewards credit card. If you use a good credit card in addition to a shopping portal, you’ll earn points, miles, or cash back from your credit card in addition to the shopping portal bonus.

For example, if you buy a laptop at Staples through the Wyndham Rewards shopping portal with your Ink Business Cash® Credit Card, you’ll receive:

• 9 Wyndham points per dollar for shopping through the portal (offer current at the time of post writing)
• 5 Chase Ultimate Rewards points per dollar (5% back) for using your Ink Business Cash at Staples (the card earns 5x points at office supply stores*)

That’s quite a points haul — effectively 14 points per dollar. A reasonably priced laptop will likely earn you more than 10,000 points.

You can add another level to shopping portals by incorporating additional bonuses such as Amex Offers. Amex Offers are targeted statement credits or bonus points that trigger when you enroll your card and spend at select merchants. For example, The Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express occasionally offers select cardholders 10% back at Dell, up to a total of $1,500.

If you have this offer on your card and choose to buy a $500 computer monitor from Dell via the American Airlines shopping portal, you can earn:

• 1,000 American Airlines miles (2 miles per dollar for using the American Airlines shopping portal)
• $50 statement credit (10% back on my Dell purchase with Amex Offers)
• 1,000 Amex Membership Rewards points (2 points per dollar spent on The Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express)

Thus, you’ll earn 2,000 points and a $50 rebate on that monitor simply by triple-stacking these three deals. 

Look for holiday promotions

Throughout the year, but especially around the holidays, shopping portals issue promotions incentivizing you to spend specific dollar amounts with them. They’re often tiered — something like:

• Spend $250, earn 500 bonus points
• Spend $500, earn 1,000 bonus points
• Spend $750, earn 3,000 bonus points

If you’re going to be making purchases anyway, it’s worth perusing your favorite shopping portal to see if they’ve got an active promotion like this.

In-store purchases

If you’re the kind of person who will scratch and claw for every extra point, you can also use shopping portals in-store. If you see something you like, simply log onto your favorite shopping portal, make your purchase, and choose in-store pickup. Many stores prepare your order in about an hour — but this strategy is only worth it if you’ll be hanging around the store for a while.

Avoiding common pitfalls

Not all purchases qualify

Read the portal’s fine print before you check out. Some items are exempt from earning bonus rewards (cash equivalents such as gift cards are commonly ineligible for earning shopping portal rewards).  

Ad blockers may stop up your earnings

A shopping portal works by directing you to your desired merchant and then tracking your activity until checkout. Ad blockers often prevent shopping portals from tracking you, meaning the portal won’t have a record of your purchase — and you’ll get no rewards.

Fortunately, many portals will warn you that your ad blocker is preventing them from tracking you, allowing you to temporarily disable it before checkout.

Some promotions disqualify your order

If you enter a promo code or coupon code at checkout, this will sometimes disqualify you from earning shopping portal rewards. It’s not a rule — you can sometimes get away with it — but unless the savings outweighs the bonus points, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

You may need to clear your cart before shopping through a portal

Some retailers are stricter than others, stating that you may not earn a bonus if you only click through the shopping portal once you’ve filled up your online shopping cart. Make sure you always read the fine print for each portal and each retailer before clicking through, since terms and conditions change all the time. 

Shopping portal frequently asked questions