Your guide to maximizing shopping portals for your online purchases

It seems like just about everything is available online these days, with e-commerce sales making up an increasing share of overall retail purchases. We’ve also seen a notable expansion of curbside pickup services from major merchants over the past couple of years, a great way to grab essential items from your local stores without shipping or delivery fees.

Fortunately, there are many ways to receive extra rewards for your online shopping, including those you pick up at a physical storefront. One of the best — and simplest — ways to accomplish this goal is to leverage online shopping portals for anything and everything you buy online.

Taking this simple step could help you earn thousands of points and miles, especially with the approaching holiday shopping season.

In this guide, I’ll take you through exactly how to use these sites for your online purchases so you can jump-start your earnings on just about everything you buy.

Basics of online shopping portals

Let’s start with a quick overview of what these portals actually do. At the most basic level, shopping portals allow you to earn bonus points, miles or cash back at hundreds of online retailers.

All you need to do is log in to your airline portal of choice. Then, click the store where you want to shop and you will be redirected to the store's website and can shop as normal.

You’re still purchasing the exact same items directly from the merchant, but because you started at the shopping portal, you’ll earn bonus points. However, it generally only applies to the subtotal of your purchase (excluding taxes and shipping fees).

In addition, you’ll still earn points or miles on the actual rewards credit card you use, making this an easy way to double dip.

Related: The best travel rewards credit cards

Here’s a quick example. Let’s say you were planning on buying a holiday gift from Macy’s for a family member.

That item costs $100 if you purchase it directly from macys.com (plus $20 in taxes and shipping). Since you want to maximize your purchase, you plan on using your Citi® Double Cash Card to take advantage of the 2% cash back it offers on purchases (1% when you buy and 1% when you pay your bill).

However, you also notice that Rakuten is offering an additional 5% back at Macy’s. You begin there and click through to macys.com to complete the purchase.

You’ll thus earn the following:

• $120 x 2% cash back on the Citi Double Cash = $2.40.
• $100 x 5% cash back through the portal = $5.

Had you started directly at macys.com, you would’ve missed out on the extra $5 you got through Rakuten — and you’re still getting the exact same item for the exact same price.

How is this possible?

You might be wondering how, exactly, these portals can do this. After all, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. However, there’s no catch here. In exchange for directing you to a specified merchant, the portal will take a cut of any purchase you make from the retailer, and it’ll give you points or miles as a reward. It's a win-win-win situation for all involved; the merchant gets more business, the airline generates more revenue and you get extra rewards.

You may be thinking that an extra $5 here or 300 points there won’t make much of a difference, but if you consistently utilize these portals, you can easily rack up a significant amount of points, miles or cash back in a year. The beauty of this process is that you're earning additional bonuses for things you would’ve bought anyway — an especially savvy move to address some of the cost increases we’ve been seeing.

Related: The best cards for holiday purchases

Types of online shopping portals

Now that you have an idea of how it works, let’s take a quick look at the major types of shopping portals out there. I generally group them into different categories: airlines, credit cards and cash back. However, a 2019 change to one popular portal has created another category that effectively combines the three.

Let’s dive into each one so you can get a flavor of the possibilities.

Airlines

Almost every major carrier has its own online shopping portal, and they all work in very similar ways. While the exact login process may vary slightly, each one will award bonus points or miles based on your purchases across hundreds of retailers. Here’s a handy list of links for the most popular airlines:

• Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan Shopping: Earn bonus miles at over 1,100 retailers.
• American Airlines AAdvantage eShopping: Earn bonus miles at over 1,200 sites.
• British Airways Executive Club eStore: Earn bonus Avios with over 1,100 brands.
• Delta Air Lines SkyMiles Shopping: Earn bonus miles at over 1,000 stores.
• JetBlue Airways TrueBlue Shopping: Earn bonus points at hundreds of stores, and shop in flight for bonus points at Amazon.
• Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Shopping: Earn bonus points at more than 1,100 retailers.
• United Airlines MileagePlus Shopping: Earn bonus miles at over 1,100 stores.

In addition to the standard earning rates these sites offer, many will frequently run bonuses as an added incentive. In many cases, these aren’t based on purchases at a single store but instead cover transactions across all participating merchants over a set period of time.

For example, we’ve seen bonuses launch around the winter holidays, and others can pop up around back-to-school time. Be sure to bookmark our permanent page for these offers.

Finally, some portals will even allow you to link your credit card and earn additional points and miles for in-store shopping — like this set of retailers through United’s site.

Related: The beginners guide to airline shopping portals

Credit cards

Some issuers currently offer their own online shopping portals if you want to stack your credit card earnings:

• Capital One: Capital One Shopping (only cash back, not bonus miles).
• Barclays: Barclaycard RewardsBoost.
• Chase: Chase Ultimate Rewards Shopping.

To utilize any of these, you must have an open, active credit card account that earns points in the bank’s own program.

Remember that Chase allows 1:1 transfers to more than a dozen travel partners. You could be effectively earning Hyatt points, United miles or British Airways Avios by logging in to your Chase account and launching the Ultimate Rewards shopping portal.

And while American Express doesn’t exactly have its own shopping portal, there is a way to earn bonus Amex points when shopping online (more on that in a bit).

Cash back

The final category of online shopping portals consists of those offering extra cash back on your purchases. This is a great option for anyone who doesn’t want to bother with the hassle of airline miles or credit card points, and in some instances, you can even earn bonuses for booking hotel reservations through these sites.

That being said, going for cash back also adds complexity, as there are over a dozen competing sites out there.

Some of my favorites include:

• Mr. Rebates.
• Coupon Cactus.
• Extrabux.
• Top Cashback.

Most rates tend to fall in the 1%-5% range, though you could find limited-time specials at select merchants or during certain time windows.

Hybrid option

However, one of the best sites — and the one that I use most frequently — is Rakuten (formerly known as Ebates). This portal traditionally fell squarely into the realm of cash-back earnings.

However, in February 2019, it started allowing new members to opt for American Express Membership Rewards points, an option that expanded to everyone in October 2019. Amex points are earned at a ratio of $0.01 to 1 Membership Reward point, so a merchant offering 1% cash back would instead result in 1 Membership Rewards point per dollar spent.

If you agree with TPG’s most recent valuations — which peg Amex points at 2 cents apiece — opting for Membership Rewards points over cash back effectively doubles your return with Rakuten. It’s a setting I immediately updated as soon as it became available. Since the site works with over 3,500 retailers, I find it among the most expansive online shopping portals. It also has a browser extension that will notify you when a merchant offers a bonus, and it too has in-store offers.

Note that if you’re not a member, you can sign up for Rakuten and earn $40 (or 4,000 Amex points) when you make at least $40 worth of eligible purchases through the portal in your first 90 days (limited-time offer subject to change).

How do I find the best offer?

As you can see, this is a dizzying array of options, and if you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’re not alone.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to quickly sort through them for your next online shopping spree.

Let’s say you’re ready to make a purchase at a specific retailer, but you don’t know which shopping portal to use. You have accounts with virtually every program above, but does that mean you need to manually load each portal to see what bonus you’d earn?

Thankfully you don’t, thanks to the magic of shopping portal aggregators like Cashback Monitor. If you’ve never used it before, I’d encourage you to bookmark it for future reference.

In essence, the site allows you to pull up a specific retailer and see the earning rate you’d get across all applicable shopping portals. This includes all of the above types of portals, allowing you to quickly compare earning rates and determine which portal offers the best return for the individual merchant at which you are shopping.

The site is great for pulling up a specific store and has some advanced features if you create an actual account. This allows you to set your favorite portals and even allows you to set a specific value for each loyalty currency.

The default on the site is 1 cent per point/mile, but if you add the numbers from TPG’s most recent valuations (for example), the site will automatically update the return you’d get on your purchases — like you see in the above screenshot.

Related: Don’t want to miss out on earning bonus points? There’s an extension for that

Important tips and reminders

Accessing online shopping portals is relatively straightforward, but there are a few essential things to keep in mind:

1. You must click through the link on the portal’s site and then make a purchase from the page that pops up. Don’t navigate away and come back later; you may miss out on the bonus.
2. You must make sure that you have cookies enabled in your browser for the retailer’s site. This allows the portal to “track” your purchases and award bonuses accordingly.
3. Only use promotions or promo codes found on the portal; if you use others, the purchase may become ineligible for bonus points/miles.
4. Be sure to read the restrictions for each merchant. Many won’t count gift cards as eligible purchases for bonuses, and others exclude specific products.
5. Remember to use a travel rewards credit card that offers the best earning rate on your purchase. Most of these merchants don’t fall into the traditional bonus categories, so you’ll probably want to stick with a card that’s good for everyday purchases.

That said, you should be able to stack most Amex Offers, Chase Offers and bonuses from American’s SimplyMiles site with rewards through online shopping portals. The vast majority of these offers are based solely on the total amount of your purchase and don’t require any coupon code, so it shouldn’t create any issue.

Related: These Amex Offers will help you save money and make life easier right now

Aside from the bonuses, shopping portals are an excellent option for keeping loyalty accounts active, since spending even a single dollar through a shopping portal can be enough to prevent your points and miles from expiring. That can be a lifesaver if you haven’t banked travel to your account in a while and don’t have a viable option to transfer points in from elsewhere.

Bottom line

Online shopping portals are a fantastic way to earn bonus points, miles or cash back for online purchases at various merchants. Even if you’re only earning an extra mile or two for every dollar you spend, these earnings can quickly add up and go a long way toward redemptions like first-class flights, luxury hotel rooms or even spending money for your next trip.

I recommend Rakuten as the best option, thanks to the flexibility of Amex points and the sheer number of merchants on the site, but explore all of the above options to determine which one would work best for you.

If you haven’t been utilizing these portals, now is a great time to start! Hopefully, this post has given you some guidance on exactly how to do this.

Additional reporting by Ehsan Haque and Chris Dong.