How to Maximize Rewards When Online Shopping

by Zac Hood | Oct 27, 2025 | Credit Card Strategy
How to Use Shopping Portals

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Update November 2025: Right now, Rakuten has an amazing offer where you’ll receive $50 for signing up and making your first qualifying purchase. According to Rakuten’s site: “To qualify for a Referral Sign-up Bonus, you must be a new member and place qualifying orders totaling a minimum of $50 within 90 days of becoming a member. You must be located in the 50 United States or D.C. to qualify. Offer may be modified or cancelled anytime.”

(No time to read the full article? Here’s a quick summary on maximizing rewards with online shopping: Check out CashbackMonitor.com to compare shopping portal payouts; Join Rakuten with a special referral link and get easy money for joining. Then start racking up cash back with no extra effort; Join your favorite airline’s shopping portal (see below); and, maximize your spending by getting a new credit card with a big sign-up bonus.)

At Travel Freely, our goal is simple: help you earn the most rewards in the least amount of time.

For beginners, there’s one incredibly easy way to earn extra cash back or loyalty rewards with hardly any extra effort: online shopping portals. This will allow you to earn rewards for shopping you were doing online anyways.

That said, shopping portals won’t move the needle like a new credit card signup bonus. Those bonuses are still the fastest path to big wins (think $500+ in value from a single card). But with a simple system, you can still pick up thousands of extra points a year through portals and bonus categories with almost no extra effort.

How do shopping portals work?

For the most part, all shopping portals work in the same manner — you start at your desired portal, search for your store you are looking to shop at, and then you’re taken directly to the merchant’s website. You then continue your shopping as if you went directly to the store’s website first. Your purchase is tracked in the background, allowing you to earn points, miles or cash back (depending on the shopping portal used) for your purchase.

Let’s say you are looking to make a purchase at Macys.com, as an example. Instead of going straight to the store’s website first, you’ll want to first go to your shopping portal of choice. If the portal is offering 5% cash back and you make a $100 purchase, you’ll end up earning an extra $5 bonus. Or, if you’re in a portal offering points and miles instead, that’ll earn you an extra 500 bonus rewards

Many of the best portals — such as Rakuten and airline shopping portals — now have browser extensions, allowing you to skip the first step completely and go straight to your online store.

And remember, this is cash or rewards you earn are on top of any points you earn with your credit card.

Cash Back Shopping Portals

These portals are not affiliated with rewards programs. You earn cash back for purchases you make.

Probably the most well known cash back portal is Rakuten. It’s really easy to use, and even has its own Chrome browser extension to let you know automatically if you could earn cash back. With Rakuten, you’ll be paid out quarterly and you must earn at least $5.01 to be paid out (or it’ll roll over to the next quarter). If you’re interested in signing up, here’s a referral link that will get you extra bonus money.

Rakuten also partners with Bilt and American Express, allowing you to earn rewards within those two programs — instead of cash back. However, you must link your accounts and swap your earning preference prior to your purchase. For earning Bilt points, you do not need to have a Bilt credit card, just a Bilt account (which is free and available to everyone). To earn American Express points, you must have a Membership Rewards earning credit card. You can learn more here: Earning Bilt points with Rakuten; Earning Membership Reward points with Rakuten

Another popular cash back option is TopCashBack.com. It works similar to Rakuten with it’s cash back offering, but you can cash out at any point you’d like. Or, you can opt for a merchant gift card, such as Walmart or Best Buy, which typically gives you a 2% to 5% bonus on the cash back earned. 

Airline Shopping Portals

These portals will earn points and miles towards a specific loyalty program.

Each major airline program also has their own shopping portal — many which are run by the same company. To simplify your earnings, choose the airlines that you use most, and look at the value this portal could bring. Most of these airlines now have a Chrome browser extension that will automatically tell you if you could earn rewards when you’re shopping at a store’s site. Every so often — especially around the holidays — these portals offer bonus offers where if you spend a certain amount of money, you’ll earn an increased bonus amount.

Here’s a list of many of the airline-specific portals:

Note that the Southwest Rapid Rewards Shopping portal is one of the best since the points earned count towards the coveted Southwest Companion Pass. Just note if the airline is offering a bonus promotion where you earn a fixed number of miles, those points will not count as qualifying points.

Flexible Rewards Shopping Portals

Rove Miles

Before we get into program-specific shopping portals, there’s one shopping portal that claims to be the first universal airline mile: Rove Miles.

This is a brand new platform that just debuted earlier this year. For more information on it, Frequent Miler has a blog post all about Rove Miles, how to use them, and why they might be valuable.

Capital One Shopping

Capital One has a shopping portal that leads to good deals. You also don’t have to have a Capital One credit card, which means all shoppers can use their portal. Keep in mind that you must redeem your earnings as gift cards, which might not be ideal for everyone.

Chase Ultimate Rewards Mall

When you shop at the Shop Through Chase portal, you can earn valuable Chase points known as Chase Ultimate Rewards. Keep in mind that you’ll need to use the credit card associated with that account in order to earn the bonus points. If you have a Chase Sapphire Preferred®Card or Chase Sapphire Reserve®, this might be the portal for you.

For more about the best overall card for beginners, read Why We Love the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

In Summary

There’s no reason not to use an online shopping portal when shopping online. And if you don’t want to put in too much effort, just stick to one portal for all your shopping needs. It truly just takes an extra minute and you’ll be surprised to see how quickly your earnings can add it. This is an easy, hassle-free system to earn additional cash or rewards. And if you want our recommendation, Rakuten is the top rated portal worth giving a try.

If you’re not quite sure, take a quick at the site Cashback Monitor — a site that summarizes all available offers for both Cash Back portals and Rewards portals. You can search by store to see what portal has the best offer. Keep in mind that some offers can be misleading because they may not offer their highest deal for all items.

Final point: I strongly recommend getting a new credit card with a great signup bonus. When you knock out your minimum spending requirement, you’ll be looking at an easy 40,000 to 60,000 points bonus with far less effort spent. If you’re not sure where to start, the best overall card is the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. The easiest to use and redeem for beginners is the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card. Then, add the card to your Travel Freely dashboard and forget about your deadlines. You’ll get email reminders for your bonus deadline and your annual fees.

(New Increased Offer!) 6 Reasons Why We Love the Chase Sapphire Preferred®

Why the Capital One Venture Cards are Great for Beginner Free Travelers