[Update 5/27/20: Credit cards will no longer be accepted as payment starting June 10, 2020. Debit Visa and Mastercard only.]
Ibotta has launched an early access selection for an upcoming Pay with Ibotta feature which offers cashback on all purchases. It looks pretty similar to MPX whereby – instead of paying at a retailer with your credit card directly – you pay Ibotta and they generate a gift card for the exact amount of your purchase.
Essentially, it’s a glorified way of buying a gift card which should work for both in-store payments and online payments. The key benefit of these systems is that they generate a gift card instantly for the exact amount you need (e.g. $27.98), unlike the standard gift card seller who sells even denominations and often has delayed delivery.
See this comment for a list of currently available retailers and their cashback rates.
We maintain a list of Complete List of Methods to Buy Gift Cards with Discounts and Bonus Rewards which includes MPX and other discount methods, but there really aren’t many straightforward options like MPX. It’ll be nice if this works with a broad selection of retailers and good cashback rates. I like seeing additional options, and it’s especially nice to see a cashback option instead of the United miles option that MPX offers.
Pay with Ibotta is not currently available for everyone. You can input your email address to get a headsup when it’s available for you. If anyone gets access, let us know your impressions. [Update 3/10/19: I’m seeing this live now in my Ibotta app by going to Account > Payments. Lots more gift cards available now as well including 3% at Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Gamestop, and many more.]
Hat tip to reader N.
Ibotta Pay (buying merchant giftcards through the app) no longer qualifies as online shopping for BofA Cash Rewards (on my Mastercard). It worked on the 14th (and before), but no longer works as of the 25th.
Purchasing at Home Depot with Pay with Ibotta codes as “cash check and misc,” so I’m not sure if why will count towards min spend.
I use ibotta regularly, would never give them my credit card but ibotta pay does allow me to use Apple Pay. Each use counts as a rebate so it can be used to get bonuses. Most users had, maybe still have, an ibotta pay bonus of $5 when you use it 3 times (first time doesn’t count). Also helpful is that they’re just gift cards so you can do them at any time and for any amount. If I’m short a couple rebates, I buy a few $1-$2 Walmart gift cards. Best to use these at self checkout by selecting gift card as payment prior to using the scanner on each one. Cashiers are clueless in most locations.
I am expecting some eGift cards from Swagbucks later this week.
I will be adding them to my Walmart account.
Then using Walmart Pay at the register or shopping online.
Still not touching Ibotta.
Will Pay with Ibotta work to purchase in-store gift cards? For example, I’m thinking 5% back on a $200 giftofcollege.com gift card at Barnes & Noble would be a great way to chip away at student loans.
If gift cards work, it’ll work. If they don’t, it won’t.
interested in this, as I get them from HEB and use amex gold for 4x points, but that is a huge hassle as HEB is out of town for me. Keep me posted
Walmart was added (only 1% though)
Not much, but better than Raise’s .5%.
For me the big win for using it at WM is that I should get 5.25% from Bofa on my Cash Rewards card that I have Online Shopping as the 3/5.25% category. I don’t spend a lot there and forgot to use it when I was there the other day but I’m going to try it today.
Update – worked for me at Walmart. I used self-scan and had the cashier come over (she needed to anyway to approve a coupon). She initially scanned the gift card code before going into payment mode and it was going to sell me a card. She voided the whole order and we started over again. This time we went to payment mode, selected WM gift card and scanned the Ibotta barcode and it worked. The cashier actually used Ibotta but was not familiar with the “Pay with Ibotta” feature. Of course, I spend under $2 so I got a big 2c back from Ibotta, but I’ll get the 5.25% from BofA.
Ibotta no longer takes credit cards, so this whole deal is dead (as mentioned at the top of the post).
Thanks!
I did see some fine print somewhere about each retailer having their own max on purchase of a gift card code. Trying to find out what it is for Lowe’s. Haven’t heard back from Ibotta yet.
What credit card category do Pay with Ibotta purchases show up as? Is it like MPX, where it gets whatever category the gift card was for, e.g., if I buy a Home Depot gift card through Pay with Ibotta it’d be treated as home improvement? Or is it always some generic category that probably doesn’t get bonus points on any CC? In that case, is it treated as “online shopping” for BofA Cash Rewards?
I have used it at Lowe’s and Old Navy; both coded as online shopping on my cash rewards card. Excited to verify this is still the case at Walmart.
I bought a CVS gift card in Pay with Ibotta, and it did NOT count as drug store on BofA Cash Rewards. So it seems that it won’t count as the underlying category, but it would count as online shopping.
Ibotta Pay codes as an mcc 6540 CNP transaction. 6540 is for purchase/reloads of stored value cards at non-financial institutions and moreover it is also considered a “high-risk mcc” transaction. Since it is a CNP transaction, yes, by default, BofA considers Ibotta Pay purchases as “online shopping” purchases, but recently it’s been added to an exception list, at least for the MC variant of the Cash Rewards card.
And yes, L3 was reported.
Why would anyone use this? If I returned something, I am assuming I would be stuck with another gift card, and I would give up any and all protections a credit card offers. Not worth the few extra cents in cash back, IMHO.
The basic issue is that most of those retailers, maybe except for REI and Lowes, are just purveyors of overpriced junk. Quality vendors are much less likely to have to do all these bizarro discounting.
that’s correct. I wouldn’t buy anything you need purchase or return protection warranty with a gift card. it’s mainly good for restaurants, fast food, and cheap items that you don’t have to worry about returns for.
Watch out for ibotta they will deactivate your account for no reason at all and keep your money
Been using it for about 18 months, over $1200 received, no issues. As with any of these apps, cash out as soon as you hit the minimum.
I had a problem with them unlinking my Paypal account for no reason.
No notice. Nothing.
I had been a customer for over 12 months and had transferred to Paypal multiple times.
When I tried to re-link “too many” times to Paypal, my account was locked.
From what I can tell, it was a problem on their end.
My Paypal account and password was just fine.
After 9 calendar days, Ibotta got around to unlocking my account after I submitted a support ticket.
Even after the unocking, I still could not link up to my Paypal account.
I was tried twice and gave up.
I did not want to have my account locked again.
I linked to Venmo which I do not use and got my $23.13 out.
This linking to Paypal has to be done on their terrible app which crashes and hangs a lot.
You cannot link on their website.
No more Ibotta.
Don’t trust them.
.
I don’t doubt you had an issue. I know when they unlinked all the PayPal accounts I had to relink as well. I didn’t have an issue but I understand some people did, for my spouses account I only cash out as gift cards so that one didn’t have any issues during that time. Obviously, if I had the same issues you did, I’d feel the same way.
Sorry you’re having problems but the app works fine for me. And I’m not sure how you could link Paypal outside of their app. Many of us use it on a regular basis to get great deals on groceries. If you’re just using it for the occasional deal posted here, probably not worth using it if you have problems.
Also, as I posted in another thread you complained in, having to use Venmo isn’t that big of a deal. You can easily transfer money to your bank from there just as you can from Paypal. If the only option other than Paypal was to get a gift card, that would be a big deal.
I don’t link to bank account to Paypal or Venmo. Not going to happen. Not after Paypal double-dipped to bank account causing a overdraft.
I despise Paypal as much as Ibotta. I only use Paypal because many people in the animal rescue community use it. Venmo isn’t used much in the animal rescue community so it is completely useless to me.
Luckily one animal sanctuary I support has a Venmo account.
Just a quick question involving the paypal issue…
I know my paypal was unlinked because of some mass error they had on their end for not renewing their license or ability to use paypal… I couldn’t relink my paypal, until after several tries I looked online, and saw that someone said to uninstall Ibotta, then reinstall.
Did you try uninstalling then reinstalling?
That fixed my problem. Something in the cache involving an old Paypal certificate didn’t allow a lot of users to relink paypal. So uninstalling and reinstalling makes sense.
I just saw this question.
Yes, I un-installed Ibotta app and then re-installed their app back in January 2019 when I was having problems. And I still could not link Paypal.
Nothing on their website at the time that they were having problems with Paypal. It certainly wasn’t common knowledge.
This lack of transparency is a no-go for me.
Anyway, I stopped using Ibotta.
Their app may have improved, but I would not know.
They generally have a reason for deactivating although they do make mistakes. Very important to cash out as soon as you get to $20.
I was selected for this from ibotta, wondered how it was going to work. You explained it much better than they did 🙂
Thank you for that.
How many retailers are available? And perhaps you can give us a sampling of the cashback rates?
Full list with percentages:
AMC Theatres (4%)
Banana Republic (6%)
Bath & Body Works (4%)
BBW (4%)
Burger King (4%)
Cabela’s (4%)
Chili’s (4%)
Chipolte (2%)
Dominos (5%)
Gap (6%)
IHOP (4%)
JCPenney (3%)
Lowes (3%)
Old Navy (4%)
Olive Garden (2%)
Peet’s Coffee (5%)
REI (5%)
Red Lobster (2%)
Red Robin (5%)
Regal (5%)
ULTA (5%)
It almost looks like you can add different cards for different retails as there is an add payment method for each retailer. What I am curious to know is who the credit card charge will be from. I was going to test out with Lowes this week with my business Amex.
It’s a way for retailers not to have to accept credit cards with 4% categories…
Thanks
Celia! Pretty small list for now.
The good thing is that it codes as 3% under CIP.
Any updates?