How to offset manufactured spending fees with iBotta

If you’re on the lookout for ways to offset manufactured spending fees, there’s a new app that helps you do that: iBotta. iBotta is sort of like a coupon app that pays out rewards when you buy specific products at participating merchants. Participating merchants include CVS, Best Buy, Safeway, Amazon, Target and (drumroll)…Walmart!

The app lists products at each merchant that qualify for a rebate. For example, you can earn $0.50 cash back on a pack of Challenge Butter from Safeway, $1 cash back on laundry detergent at CVS, and even bigger payouts on electronics at Best Buy. These aren’t massive savings, but if you’re buying these items anyway, it adds up.

But back to Walmart: The reason Walmart so significant is because of iBotta’s Any Item rebate. iBotta offers $0.50 cash back for any receipt you submit to them – regardless of what you’ve purchased. That works out great for gift card churners because it means you get $0.50 back on your money order purchases!

Considering a money order fee is $0.70 per $1,000 these $0.50 savings can add up quite a bit. Here’s how it works:

1. Add the item you’ve purchased to My Rebates. If you’re submitting a money order receipt, click on “Any Item” on the top menu bar.

2. Click “Redeem” on the bottom, center of the app.

3. Scan the QR code at the bottom of your receipt when prompted.

4. Get the Any Item rebate added to your account within 24 hours.

Think of it this way: If you purchase $100,000 worth of money orders, you’ll pay $70 in money order fees. But if you manage to get $0.50 off each one, your out-of-pocket cost drops to just $20! That may not seem significant, but if you’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on money orders every year, it adds up.

In fact, using Any Item rebates work out well for pretty much…any item. If you’re buying Visa gift cards at Safeway, money orders at Krogers, or merchant gift cards at Office Max, you can submit your receipt and get the $0.50 Any Item rebate.

It’s important to note that Any Item receipt entries are limited to one “per period.” In my experience, that usually means one per day. So even if you’re splitting your money order purchases for maximum savings, you won’t be able to submit more than one receipt every 24 hours.

However, this is good news for people who buy money orders in small quantities, since they can submit their receipts over several days. For everyone else, this is even more incentive to get friends and family involved. How? If you have five Walmart money order receipts to submit, you can hand them off to your spouse, kids, relatives, friends – whoever – in order to maximize your savings.

Get four people to join iBotta and submit Walmart receipts for you and you can save $900 per year in money order fees!

iBotta has over 300 participating retailers offering rebates on purchases. Rebates may be fixed or percentage based. For example, you can get 10% cash back at Krispy Kreme (dangerous, I know) or Boxed.com. Rewards aren’t limited to retail merchants – iBotta also partners with travel OTA’s. You can earn 4% cash back at Hotels.com or Booking.com. Even HotelTonight offers 3% cash back through iBotta.

Once you’ve accrued at least $20 worth of cash, you can redeem it for merchant gift cards or PayPal and Venmo payments. When you sign-up for iBotta with a referral link, you’re eligible for $10 welcome bonus, which gets you closer to the $20 threshold. Please note, Any Item receipts don’t qualify for the $10 bonus.

However, chances are you’re going to hit that requirement at one of the 300 retailers and the thousands of qualifying items most of us are likely to buy. If you refer other people, you’ll earn rewards based on their activities too. This is a great opportunity to get your family and friends involved in earning tons of cash back.

Anyway, if you’re not using iBotta to offset gift card churning fees, you need to. Whether it’s gift card or money order purchases, iBotta can help significantly reduce manufactured spending fees.

HT: @deppilf

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