By signing up for free Cashrewards account and clicking through their links, you can easily save some money on your next online purchase.
Cashrewards helps you earn cashback on your online purchases—including partner airlines, hotels, online travel agents and car rental (as well as with hundreds of other non-travel partners). Here is how it all works.
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Current offer highlights
- Virgin Australia: 2.1/3% cashback on domestic/international flights until 1 April (triple cashback)—stack with triple points promo
- STA Travel: $3.50/7 cashback on domestic/international flights
- Coles: $18 off when you spend $150 or more until 30 June
- Amazon: 5% cashback during all of 2019
- Rentalcars.com: 10% cashback until 29 March
- Accor: 6% cashback until 31 March
- Marriott: 3.5-5% cashback
- UberEats: take $14 off your first order
What is Cashrewards all about?
Cashrewards is a shopping portal, with hundreds of partner retailers. Cashrewards offers a variable amount of cash, payable back to you—which is usually a percentage of the amount you purchase online with one of their partners. This is your ‘cashback’.
Some of my favourite travel retailers on Cashrewards include:
When you create an account with Cashrewards, to earn cashback you must click through to the retailer of your choice—but then you can shop as normal, with the tracking of your purchase to you being made behind the scenes.
The best part is that you are booking direct—there’s usually no difference to your booking if you have clicked through from Cashrewards—meaning you can double dip with the hotel or airline loyalty program alongside the cashback earned.
When you make a purchase, the retailer alerts Cashrewards, who credit your account with them by the appropriate amount in a pending state. It takes often up to a few months for the funds to be released into your account (to allow for returns etc), after which you can request that it gets paid out into your bank account.
Cashrewards have made a video that explains the process:
How to take advantage of cashback offers
Once you are a member, you can refer friends and family to the service. By doing so, you will earn $10 for you and your friend will also earn $10 when they join Cashrewards and make a purchase of at least $20 within 90 days of joining. This promotion is due to end on 17 December 2018 but could be extended.
How cashback portals work
Online retailers often market themselves through many other websites that can earn a commission on any sales generated from customers that they refer—including Point Hacks. It’s nearly 100% how we pay the bills, and consumers don’t pay more for the products or services, with the commissions being paid to the promoting site.
There are now a number of different sites that enable the customer to get something back when they buy online—whether that is points or cash.
Cashrewards seems to be the most effective cashback option in Australia, with the highest number of partners and the most aggressive promotions. When you sign up to the site and click through to an online retailer, you can earn cash back on purchases based on the rate of commission that the retailer pays.
It’s worth noting that this is a similar theory to how points malls work (based on earning points on purchases through clicking their links), where the points mall collects the commissions and uses some of these to purchase points for you.
As you’ll know if you’ve been reading Point Hacks for a while, one of the best ways to get the best value from loyalty programs and offers is to ‘double dip’, or stack earning opportunities.
The good news: Cashrewards lets you double dip with ease.
Online Malls vs Cashback
These are essentially similar business models, but with different branding and rewards back to the consumer—cash vs points—for example, the Qantas Online Mall, or the Velocity estore. There’s no general rule about which will offer the most returns—in some cases points malls do, especially during promotional periods. But cashback sites, and Cashrewards, especially, have a much broader range of retailers on board.
This is especially true when you make travel bookings. Because Cashrewards is an independent business (they are not affiliated to a parent frequent flyer program or airline) it isn’t subject to the preferred partner restrictions or other booking methods that airlines put in place—so you can earn cashback for many car rental providers, hotel chains, online travel agents or direct airline bookings that you won’t find anywhere in frequent flyer online malls.
Note that you can’t use both point-earning online mall or a cashback site—using one will cancel out the other.
How can you integrate this into your loyalty strategy
Receiving cashback on purchases can integrate well into your strategy and be another layer that you stack with your rewards programs.
For example, when travelling I often use Hotels.com for booking accommodation to take advantage of the excellent Hotels.com Rewards program. By doing so, I get an effective 10% bonus by using their rewards program towards a free night.
Using Cashrewards, I can receive 4.8% cashback on anything I spend on top at Hotels.com, giving me an effective 14.8% total benefit. This doesn’t include the points from using a credit card that earns 2 points per dollar like the American Express Platinum Charge or Velocity Platinum—more stacking in action.
For travel, there are many online retailers you can receive cash back on, including hotel aggregators, hotels where you can book directly, airlines, online travel agents, car rental, travel insurance and more.
The best part is, after you have logged in to the Cashrewards website and clicked through to the retailer in question, you book as you normally would using the retailer’s website. Only the one initial step to get used to, then everything is as you would otherwise have done in the past.
Some examples of sites you can use to stack your rewards, with the % cashback on offer, include:
Airlines
- Virgin Australia (0.7% on domestic flights, 1% on international)
- Emirates (1%)
- Etihad (1.6%)
- British Airways (1.4%)
- Qatar Airways (1.4%)
- Air New Zealand (up to 3%)
Hotels
- Hotels.com (5.6% standard cashback, 3% when earning Hotels.com Rewards; can access both through the website and mobile app)
- Booking.com (4%)
- Accor Hotels (4%)
- Marriott Hotels (up to 5%)
Car hire
- Avis (4.9%)
- Europcar (5%)
- Budget (4.9%)
- Rentalcars (8%)
Online Travel Agents
- Expedia (up to 7%)
- STA Travel (0.7% on flights, 3.5% on car hire and 5% on hotels)
How to use your reward benefits
Your rewards come in the best rewards currency—cash. When you cash out your rewards the money is, in my experience, in my account the next day (but they do say it can take up to 5 days).
Some gotchas to be aware of
In many cases, there are exclusions on purchases that don’t award any cashback (gift cards/vouchers for example, however, this isn’t set in stone for all retailers). Also, if the store offers a discount code, in many cases this will exclude cashback except for codes listed by Cashrewards. Any exclusions will be disclosed on the Cashrewards website.
Also, Cashrewards uses cookies to track your purchase, and some ad-blocking software breaks these. It’s worth testing and turning any of these off before shopping to make sure you get your cashback.
Many sites (Hotels.com for example) push you to use their mobile app as well—which often won’t earn you any cashback because when you load it you’re not clicking through Cashrewards. Again, check the individual Cashrewards partner terms for each partner if this is a concern.
Summing up
It is super simple to join Cashrewards and look around the site to see what retailers are supported. With regular promotional cashback increases frequently occurring, check the site or subscribe to the newsletter to get the latest cashback offers.
And remember to come back to the site and click through next time you make any purchase online, and start collecting cash back.
I tend to use the 5% off wish cards that CR lets you buy then do an online order via the qantasmall with pickup. earning at least 2 QF points per $ + any woolworths reward points then pay with 5% off gift card that still earns me 3 MR points via Amex Edge card.
At times the QF mall offer 3 to 5 points per $ spend at woolworths. Annoyingly there’s no email, but if you do a weekly shop shouldn’t miss out.
Also please note the catch you can’t book on behalf of people. I got stung with this.
To assist us, we request that you please provide additional documents that include your name listed on the itinerary to help support resolving this enquiry. Please see our terms and conditions page section 2.2.2 stating ‘You must not join nor use the Service on behalf of any other individual, including a family member.’ The previous document we received with your original enquiry listes several individuals other than yourself on the itinerary.
Great info, where I have been let down by cashrewards in the past is the poor tracking and lack of payments. Their tracking is really hit & miss. I’m still waiting on a cashback on a couple of Virgin flights last year, but given the amounts its not worth sweating over. Their customer service is responsive, however responses are only standard templated responses asking for patience.
The example you use for the triple points is a Getaway fare – I think it might be worth checking how many points per mile you get for this class of fare, it may be only .5 points per mile, which would change the value of the deal (but still a good deal).
That’s right. I checked on ITA Matrix and they are in T fare class, earning 0.5 points per mile. So with the promotion, it would be 1.5 points per mile.
In relation to the 3.5% cashback for Virgin flights, be aware that Virgin has a freely available everyday 10% discount for customers of its corporate partners or sponsored organisations, so Cashrewards would be a bad option in those cases. Two examples: Virgin Mobile customers get 10% off everyday if you book through the portal on the Virgin Mobile website, and likewise Australian Chamber Orchestra subscribers if you book through the ACO portal. I’m sure there are other examples. Having a phone on a Virgin Mobile plan effectively means that the phone pays for itself if you use the 10% discount regularly.
Having said that, the 10% discount usually doesn’t apply to sale fares that are already heavily discounted (eg. “Happy Hour” fares), so there’s still a place for Cashrewards in those circumstances.
Hi. CashRewards offers 1.5% back on Apple purchases but mentions in the special terms – “Cashback is issued by Cashrewards, not Apple.”
Does this mean that Apple is not associated with Cash Rewards? How does Cash Rewards offer cash back on Apple purchases if they are not paid by the merchant?
The special terms on Apple products include – “Cashback is issued by Cashrewards, not Apple.” Do you know what this means? Is Apple actually not a participating retailer? How does CashRewards make money in this case?
no mention of the referral program? that’s the best part!
Good post, just got the new Entertainment Book and they have 5% off VA domestic flights. Would love to see a post about them, they seem to have a couple of good airline discounts
one of the best things I find with cashreward is the ability to purchase the Woolworths wish gift cards at a 5% discount which you can then use to buy JB hifi, DJ, MYER and even flightcenter gift cards. Compound with AMEX PT edge now you get THE point 🙂
Thanks for reposting- a real good guide, however 1 question:
Can you stack cashrewards with qantas online mall?
e.g. buying a $200 purchase on ASOS- can you get the $8 cashback and the 600 QF points?
It’s likely not possible as stated on the guide:
“Note that you can’t use both point-earning online mall or a cashback site – using one will cancel out the other.”
Hi
I am new to this so hopefully this is not a dumb question.
If you purchased a Woolworths gift card to buy say David Jones gift cards in store, could you then click through to the DJs store from Cashrewards to stack on another 6% cashback?
Assuming you can use WW gift card instore to purchase DJ gift cards, and then assuming you can pay with gift cards on DJ online, then yes.
Great site to share with all. Have been using Cash Rewards for the last year, have received at least $170 back. Good site to also access discounted Woolworths Gift Cards, most recent offer was up to 5.75% with this being an instant discount. Most other purchases are processed 90 days after completion.
Hi,
First off, great site, lots of info!
Using cashback to book hotels (I.e. cashback –> Accor) do you still have status recognised and points given by Accor?
Never tried it, looks interesting
Cheers
P.S. Off-topic, but apparently Shangri-La is offering status matches to KrisFlyer 🙂
Yes, if you book direct with Accor, it’s no different to if you went to the Accor homepage without going via CashRewards. No loss of points/status for using CashRewards.