Online Shopping Portals: Maximizing Your Rewards and Savings

19.03.2024 - 18:29 / insider.com / Airlines

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Do you shop online with even mild regularity? If you aren't using online shopping portals, you're forfeiting cash, airline miles, hotel points, and bank points that could very well springboard your next vacation.

Using shopping portals is one of the most powerful steps you can take to immediately improve your rewards earnings. It's easy to do, and it doesn't alter the shopping experience in any way. Shopping portals are extremely low-hanging fruit that pay off in a big way.

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

An online shopping portal is a website that gives you bonus rewards simply for beginning your shopping with them.

You can access thousands of merchants through shopping portals. Once you find the store you want in 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 posts to your credit card.

The only thing to note is that occasionally a shopping portal will specify that you can't use a store coupon or promo code at checkout. If you find this in the shopping portal's fine print, you'll have to do the math to see which route will save you the most money.

Each shopping portal offers its own unique payout for making purchases. For example:

Some portals also publish promotions that reward you for spending a specified amount of money.

The vast majority of airlines — and a few hotels — have their own proprietary shopping portals. This is a great way to rack up bonus miles and points from your couch.

Here are some popular shopping portals from travel programs:

There are also many travel-unrelated shopping portals that 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. 

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.

Examples of shopping portal