Rakuten is a shopping portal that gives you cash back for eligible purchases when going through their app or widget to activate affiliate links.

What is super cool, is that you can get cash back in the form of points, that are then transferred quarterly to American Express once you set up the connection. Bilt is rumored to be coming soon as a transfer partner. If you have an American Express card that earns member rewards points, a Bilt card, or just want to earn cash back – continue reading to see how I have earned enough points back to fly one-way to Europe in a lie-flat business class seat for only 15 minutes of my time!

Rakuten and other cash back portals allow you to start “stacking points” where you earn points from the bank issuer of the card you use, and also from Rakuten. Note – while Rakuten will give you American Express points, you don’t have to use your American Express card to pay for your purchases. I have seen instances where someone will activate a Chase or American Express offer, find a points boost on Rakuten or some comparable cash/points back rewards sight, and then also earn points for their spend on the card they make the purchase with! I would call that a triple-dip, but let’s focus on the double-dip for now 🙂

TBH I slept on this for quite some time, until a friend sent me a referral and encouraged me to just give it a whirl. So I followed her link, downloaded the app and the desktop widget, and now I am hooked. While Rakuten doesn’t work on Amazon, it is super easy to use and the little widget pops up to notify you if you are on a website where a purchase could result in points back awards. Just hit activate and you are all set!

I just went over to Adidas and here a screenshot of the Rakuten pop-up that says right now I can earn up to 15x points!

Just hit “Activate Cash Back” and some behind the scenes spinning takes plan before returning you to the site with the notification that 15x points is activate.

Now I can just shop like normal and any eligible purchases will track with Rakuten. If I make a purchase for $80 a pair of shoes, I would also get 80*15 = 1,200 points deposited in to my Rakuten account, which will transfer for American Express quarterly as long as I have at least 5,000 confirmed points in my account (the minimum threshold for transfers).

Here is an old Adidas purchase I made for $21, which resulted in 420 points! That was a 20x bonus!

Of course you could use Rakuten as cash back rewards instead of points back rewards and get, say 12% back instead of 12x, but since I value my American Express points at more than 1 cent each, getting points back is more bang for my buck!

Now, Rakuten isn’t perfect. There have been one or two items I expected to track, that did not. In both cases, I reached out to customer service and they were quick to address my problems. One time I was happy with the result, the other I was disappointed with. But my one disappointment is far outweighed by the extra points I have earned by my everyday shopping, which only cost me about 15 minutes of set-up time and one click of a button while shopping online.

There are some in-store options where you can add your credit card to an offer and then if you buy in-store you should get points to track, but I have never used this. I have found the UI for in-store offers poor and the in-store selection underwhelming. Good thing I rarely shop in store.

In total, since signing up for Rakuten in August 2024 (15 months ago), I have earned nearly 70,000 additional American Express rewards points! And I have another 5,000 currently pending.

70,000 American Express points is enough to:

• Book a one-way business class flight to Europe in a lie-flat seat!
• Redeem $700 worth of value in the travel portal!
• Fly my best friend one-way to Peru in premium economy!
• Fly my family of four to Arizona in economy for spring break!

To wrap up, the best deals seem to be around holidays. I expect to earn another chunk of points between Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years shopping this year myself.

If you want in, just follow my referral link below and get started with your own cash back boost of between $30 and $50! Yup, you read that right! And if you have an American Express card, you can set up the link between these two accounts and get that paid out as between 3,000 and 5,000 in points!