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Plenty of us rely on online shopping for our purchases. Whether we're booking travel, buying groceries, or getting gifts, you can get nearly everything on the internet. Buying things online is also a great way to maximize the rewards you're earning. While you can (and absolutely should) be using a credit card that earns points for your purchases, you also can use shopping portals to double-dip on your earnings.
There are many different shopping portals out there, including ones that'll let you earn Amex points (Rakuten) or American Airlines elite status (AAdvantage eShopping). However, Capital One has also launched its own shopping portal — and it's doing something vastly more interesting than the rest. Let's take a look at how Capital One Shopping works, how to maximize it, and whether it beats out the competition.
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What Are Shopping Portals?
If you do any online shopping, you should be using a shopping portal at all times. There are a million different versions out there, allowing you to earn cash back, airline miles, transferable points, and more. They're free to use and can earn you significant rewards on your purchases, especially if you time them correctly.
The way it works is this: You find something you want to buy online. Before buying, you navigate to a shopping portal, such as Capital One Shopping. You click through the link on the portal's website, which sends you back to the website you were already shopping at. Then, you complete your purchase, the portal tracks your spending, and you earn rewards based on how much you've spent. In essence, you're selling your purchase history to the site in return for rewards.
Cashback Monitor is a great site for picking out which shopping portals offer the best bonuses, but it's not a fail-safe. This is especially true of Capital One Shopping, which will offer personalized rewards based on your shopping habits.
Registering for Capital One Shopping
Joining Capital One Shopping is free and easy. You'll need to provide some personal information, such as your email address and name, but it doesn't require much else. You don't even need to have a Capital One credit card to use the portal (unlike portals such as Chase).
Capital One Shopping is also offering a reward for those who install its extension using referrals. Depending on which referral you use, you can get up to $40 cash back after installing the extension and shopping with it for 90 days. If you need a referral link, using ours will support the AwardWallet Blog!
If you're not interested in installing an extension to your browser, you can use the Capital One Shopping website to track your purchases.
How To Use Capital One Shopping
Using Capital One Shopping will differ, depending on whether or not you've installed the extension. If you have it, whenever you navigate to an eligible site, the extension will automatically pop up.
Once you've activated your shopping trip, Capital One will automatically track your purchase and award cash back once the waiting period expires.
If you don't have the extension, head to Capital One Shopping's website, where you can type in the name of the company that you're shopping with.
Once you've clicked through, Capital One will begin tracking your purchase. That's it!
Maximizing Capital One Shopping
So far, we've discussed how to use Capital One Shopping like any other shopping portal. However, if you've taken a look at the screenshots above, you've probably noticed a discrepancy when it comes to comparing cash back. In the first screenshot, using the extension, you can clearly see that Capital One is offering 3.5% cash back on purchases with Viator.
But when you go through the website, you can see that there's actually an offer for 8.5% cash back. To make this even more confusing, Capital One is also offering 10.5% cash back via the front page of its site.
Why so many different options? As we noted earlier, Capital One tracks your shopping habits. Unlike other shopping portals, Capital One gives you personalized offers based on what you're doing in your browser. In our case, Capital One knows that we do a lot of travel searches, so it's providing elevated offers for a travel company.
This can be used to your advantage. Not only will Capital One give you different offers based on how you're looking (which means it always behooves you to be thorough as you click through), but it'll also send you emails with exclusive options.
That's how you end up with offers like 20% cash back at Viator and 21% back at Tripadvisor:
It's also how you get targeted for emails offering you 18% cash back at Hyatt hotels:
It can feel pretty invasive knowing that Capital One is watching all your internet history and sending you offers based on what websites you browse. For us, we ended up installing the extension on a secondary browser (Chrome) which we only used when shopping — with the idea that we wanted Capital One to track the information.
Related: Capital One's Best Transfer Partners
Redeeming Capital One Shopping Rewards
Capital One Shopping allows you to earn cash back on your purchases, but that doesn't mean you receive it in the form of actual cash back. Instead, you'll be able to use the cash for a variety of gift cards. These include:
- Callaway.
- Land's End.
- L.L. Bean.
- Omaha Steaks.
- Macy's.
- Advanced Auto Parts.
- Columbia.
- Express.
- Office Depot/ Office Max.
- Shutterfly.
- Under Armour.
- Adidas.
- Cabella's.
- Gap.
- Nike.
- Stitch Fix.
- 1-800-Flowers.
- Boscor's.
- Fandango.
- Expedia Group.
- CDC Foundation.
- Xbox.
- Athleta.
- Bass Pro Shops.
- DSW.
- H&M.
- Old Navy.
- American Eagle.
- Hotels.com.
- Sak's Fifth Avenue.
Capital One Shopping vs. Competitors
Shopping portals are a dime a dozen, and Capital One Shopping is just one of them. So how does it compare to the others?
The answer: Pretty well, but it depends on what you value. No other shopping portal provides ridiculous returns such as 18% back at Hyatt. In fact, no other shopping portal even gives you cash back at Hyatt on most days. That in itself makes it incredibly valuable.
Its weakness lies in its earnings. Take Rakuten for example, which allows you to earn American Express Membership Rewards, rather than cash back, on your purchases. Recent AwardWallet user redemptions peg the average value of an Amex point at 1.95¢ each. That means earning 5% back through Rakuten provides over a 10% return.
Other shopping portals, such as the American Airlines portal, allow you to earn airline miles plus Loyalty Points. Earn enough Loyalty Points, and you'll earn American Airlines elite status.
Finally, Capital One is also weaker when it comes to straight cash-back-earning portals since the only way to redeem your rewards is via gift cards. Other sites will actually send you money as a check or a deposit to your account.
That being said, Capital One Shopping can and does offer much higher rewards than other programs — and in some cases, it does so where no one else will. There's huge value to be had in that.
Bottom Line
Capital One Shopping is an outlier among shopping portals. Although it rewards you with cash back rather than points, the sums it gives you tend to exceed other options. However, redemption options are limited to gift cards, which may not be useful for everyone. Before choosing any one shopping portal, make sure you evaluate options to figure out which one is the best fit for your purchases.
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