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What is Rakuten and How Do You Earn Amex Points?
I think most of you know about Rakuten by now. While you can earn cash back as a rebate on spend for purchases for clicking through a Rakuten link, many/most of us choose to earn American Express membership Rewards points. They simply replace the cash back % with a points multiplier – i.e 10% becomes 10X MR points, greatly increasing the value. For example I value Membership Rewards points myself at 1.7cpp so a 10% offer to Rakuten is like 17% to me…
What you may be sleeping on, however, is their in-store offers. Simply head to Rakuten and on the main page, click the In-Store Cashback tab.
Important: You DO need to activate each offer or it won’t work. They say you need to re0-activate after each use. Often I find I’m still enrolled after a purchase, but sometimes not so it’s good to check after a purchase in-store.
The other thing to know is that you have to have your credit card saved in Rakuten. Similar to how dining programs work, when you have your card stored in Rakuten and activated for “in-store” (there will be a link to activate after adding your card).
To add a card, navigate to Account at top right on desktop and then on the left side bar click credit cards. Add your card and activate and THEN go to the In-Store tab from the homepage to activate the CVS offer I’m about to go into and any other that interest you.
The CVS Deal
Even though you earn Amex points on Rakuten, you do not need to use an Amex card in-store. Any issuer’s card properly added in Rakuten will work.
A Chase Freedom Flex℠ or Chase Freedom Unlimited® card earns 3% back at drugstores.
So you would want to (need to) have one of those Freedom cards as your linked cards and that would be the card you checkout with at CVS.
When combined with today’s in-store offer you will earn:
- 10X American Express Membership Rewards Points AND
- 3X Chase Ultimate Rewards points
Using my valuations of 1.75cpp for Chase points and 1.7cpp for Amex points, this comes out to – wait for it – 22.25% of “effective” return on spend. I’m trying to be very clear it’s 13% by the numbers but if you value transferable points as I do or close, it’s over 20% effectively.
(Note that you do need a Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card or Chase Sapphire Reserve® or Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card to transfer those Chase freedom Flex or Unlimited points to partners else they are only worth 1 cent and the calculation gets lowered.)
So hear me out.
With all of this activated, you can walk into CVS and buy ANYTHING YOU WANT and get 13X in points back.
Sound good? It should…
But one major note: Rakuten does say that one or more same day purchases of $200 or more will be considered fraudulent… so don’t be greedy. The terms also exclude gift cards (it seems this is YMMV).
And if you don’t yet have a Rakuten account, using my referral link will get you an extra 3,000 Membership Rewards points after your first purchase of $30 or more.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card - Best Offer This Year! Earn 100,000 bonus points after you spend $5,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. How to apply for this offer.
Thoughts?
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You can find credit cards that best match your spending habits and bonus categories at Your Best Credit Cards.
New to all of this? My “introduction to miles and points” book, MilesTalk: Live Your Wildest Travel Dreams Using Miles and Points is available on Amazon and at major booksellers.
> Transactions over $200, or multiple transactions exceeding $200 (as determined by Rakuten or merchant in its sole discretion) are considered fraudulent and will not qualify for rewards.