Earn automatic cashback for your purchases with minimal effort and maximum rewards - Airtime Rewards
Many of us use a cashback app or cashback website these days; it's a great way to save a little extra money on your purchases. Most cashback services reward you when you make a purchase at a retailer, via the cashback services app or website, and you'll then receive a cashback amount that's applied to your cashback account, and once you have enough in your cashback account, you can withdraw the balance to either your bank account or PayPal account, or you can choose to receive gift cards that you can spend at your favourite retailers. This type of cashback is called active cashback or earn-as-you-go cashback.
Passive cashback is a little different. Earning passive cashback is the way that Airtime Rewards allows its three million users to earn cash back, and it's pretty simple!
How Airtime Rewards, and Passive Cashback Works
First things first, download Airtime Rewards from the app store, (either Google Play or Apple)
Once you've signed up and registered with Airtime Rewards, you register all your all your Visa and Mastercard credit card and debit card numbers to the mobile app. This is a simple process, you enter your card number and expiry date to the app, for every card you have. |You don't have to register every card if you don't want to, but the more of the cards that you use that you've registered to the app, the more opportunities you have to earn cashback; but I'll explain more about this in just a second.
Alarm bells may be ringing in your head at this point, about the security aspect of an app knowing your card details, but it is very safe to use; your card details are kept secure and encrypted at all times on the Airtime Rewards app!
Why does Airtime Rewards need my credit card and debit card numbers?
The answer to why Airtime Rewards needs your card details is that this cashback service works via automatic tracking. This means Airtime Rewards automatically tracks your spending at a wide range of some 150 retailers that they've partnered with, and every time you spend money with a partnered retailer, and you pay using a linked card (one of the cards that you've registered to the app), Airtime Rewards will see this transaction, and will then reward that purchase with cashback, automatically, to your Airtime Rewards account.
This method of earning cashback is called passive cashback; you don't actually have to do anything; simply spend as you would do normally, and the cashback service will track your spending and will automatically reward you by applying cashback to your Airtime Rewards account. It's probably the most straightforward and easy way to earn cashback!
This means you don't need to make an online purchase by visiting the cashback service app or website before making the purchase as it's automatically tracked, and even better is that it will, in most cases, reward you for shopping at the retailer's physical shop as well. Normally, to earn cashback in-store, you'd need to buy a gift card from a cashback service to spend in the shop; this type of passive cashback means you don't have to do that; you'll just cash back automatically without having to lift a finger!
How is the Airtime Rewards cashback paid?
Airtime Rewards is a little different to regular cashback sites. Once you've got a minimum of £10 of cleared cashback in your account, you can then send that money to your mobile phone provider, and that money is then credited to your mobile phone bill. You can redeem your Airtime Rewards credit to your mobile phone bill in £10 increments, up to a maximum of £30 – so you can claim back £10, £20 or £30 in one go.
Airtime Rewards works with most of the major mobile networks, including O2, Three, EE, giffgaff and Vodafone; however, it doesn't currently work with smaller networks such as Sky Mobile, Voxi, or Tesco Mobile, as examples.
It's a very different way to pay out cashback to its members; only ZipZero offers a similar type of payout service (ZipZero credit is paid to your utility bill company), but it's pretty useful if you use a partnered phone provider as it means that you won't have to pay so much for your mobile phone bill, if you spend money at an Airtime Rewards participating retailer! I have a couple of friends who never pay real cash for their mobile phone bill, Airtime Rewards earns them enough every month to completely cover their mobile phone monthly bill cost, which is great!
Who can you earn cashback from, and how much?
The cashback rates and participating retailers change from time to time. Lots of your favourite brands are on the app, but they can change, so it's always worth taking a look to see who you can earn money from. At the time of writing, major retailers such as the following were available to earn cashback from:
Morrisons, Greggs, Boots, Argos, Thorntons, John Lewis, Waitrose, Wilko.com, Ikea, Funky Pigeon, KFC, O2, Home Bargains, Halfords, F. Hinds, New Look, Clarks, Prezzo, Yo! Sushi, Amazon Fresh, Foot Locker, Krispy Kreme, BrewDog, GBK, Gusto, Giraffe, Harvey Nichols, Honest Burgers, Laithwaites, and many more!
Check the app, as some retailers, such as Morrisons, will only pay you cashback for orders placed online, others only for transactions you've made in-store, others both in-store and online!
The percentage of cashback will vary, sometimes on a daily basis, as deals chop and change frequently, often due to competition from other cashback services. As an example, picked at random, Waitrose was offering 3% cashback for both online and instore purchases, Greggs is offering 3% cashback, or 5% if you spend £7 or more between 4pm and 6pm , Clarks were offering 5% cashback, both in-store and online and Morrisons was 1% for an online order of less than £90, or 6.5% for and order of £90 or more.
As I said, cashback amounts and retailers change frequently, so check the app for new retailers and the latest offers.
As with all these types of cashback schemes, the cashback is not payable immediately. There is a pending period where the cashback shows on the app as tracked, while Airtime Rewards waits for their retail partners to confirm the purchases. This can be up to 90 days, so it's not instant. It might seem like a long time, but the reasoning behind this is that often, you'll find that the pending time more or less coincides with the return period of the retailer. If a retailer has a 60-day return policy, they won't pay you cashback until you can't return the goods anymore; otherwise, a customer may make a purchase, get paid cashback and then return the goods, and then the retailer is out of pocket as they've paid cashback and have had the goods returned and as the customer has been refunded, the customer has made a profit, and the retailers made a loss, so its not the cashback service being slow, its for a reason!
Your account will show you your pending transactions and the transaction status, and this will tell you how many days are left before your transaction has been confirmed and the money has been allocated to your Airtime Rewards account. Once your account has enough funds, you can set up a payment to your network provider.
Maximising Cashback:
Stacking Cashback: You might get lucky and find that your cashback stacks with other cashback services. For example, you might make a purchase through TopCashback and then pay via your debit card. You'll then get your cashback from TopCashback and may also find that you've earned cashback from Airtime Rewards as well! This is never guaranteed, but it does happen!
Avoiding Inactivity: Keep your account active by interacting with it regularly. Link any new cards promptly to avoid missing out on potential cashback; I know I've forgotten a few times and missed out on earning cashback, so try and make it routine to add a new card/replacement card to your app when you get it!
Bonus Opportunities:
Referrals: Utilise the 'Share & Earn' section to share your unique code. When a referred person signs up and spends within a week, both parties earn up to £1.50 bonus credit. You can also refer your friends and family, so they'll start to earn cashback, and you'll earn a referral bonus for your time, so it's a win-win situation.
Challenges: Participate in limited-time challenges to earn bonus cashback by completing specific spending tasks. For example, you might opt in tore if you make five purchases of over £5 in a month, you'll earn a £1.50 bonus. This kind of challenge normally runs every month and is a good way to earn some extra rewards.
3. Promotions: Keep an eye on limited-time promo codes and promotions on Twitter or within the app, offering additional bonuses for specific actions. An example would be a flash promo code for a weekend, where a limited number of people will be able to enter the promo code into the promo code section of the app, and those customers may be able to get a bonus if they spend X amount during the promotion time.
4. Gift cards: So, in the same way as Cheddar and JamDoughnut, you can earn cashback by purchasing a gift card from Airtime Rewards. You can find this option in the more section of the app. In this section you'll see the 'Want to earn more rewards' option, if you click on that you'll then see the gift cards option. The gift cards usually offer 4% cashback, but you need to make sure you pay for the gift card using a card registered with Airtime Rewards, and the cashback will normally be credited to your Airtime Rewards account within 5 days. The 4% rate is often the highest gift card rate for certain retailers, from all the gift card cashback platforms, so well worth checking out! The gift card purchases usually count towards your monthly challenges as well.
Airtime Rewards stands as a hassle-free, no-brainer solution for earning cashback on your everyday household shopping. Once you've set it up, you dont need to worry about entering fiddly codes or having to buy gift cards or go to cashback apps or websites, you can just sit back, spend as normal and watch the cash roll in, so long as you buy from partner retail stores! Feel free to use our referral promo code Q8FWLDQB for an additional bonus to kickstart your cashback journey!