Is Rakuten worth signing up for?

Cash back websites like Rakuten, Swagbucks and Great Canadian Rebates are nothing new—some have existed for at least 20 years. Still, their claims of giving online shoppers cold, hard cash for making purchases at Amazon, Indigo and hundreds of other stores might give some savvy buyers pause. Are these claims actually true? Can you earn money just for shopping online? The short answer is yes, though all of them come with caveats, including relatively small payouts, slow payout schedules and fluctuating rewards. Here, we’ll take a closer look at Rakuten, as it’s one of the most popular and largest cash back websites out there.

Who is Rakuten?

In 2014, Rakuten, a Japanese-based internet service company, purchased cash back website Ebates, which was itself founded in 1999 and became available to Canadians in 2012. In 2019, the site changed its name to Rakuten without making changes to its users’ accounts. (Users continue to accumulate cash back in the same way, but now they’re under the Rakuten name.) Since then, Rakuten.ca has become one of the most well-known cash back websites in Canada. It claims to have about 5 million members on Rakuten.ca, and says it has doled out more than $70 million to these users since 2012. It has partnerships with over 750 stores such as Banana Republic, FedEx and HelloFresh. Bridget Casey, a personal finance blogger at MoneyAfterGraduation.com, is one of those users. She started using Rakuten (then Ebates) as a student in 2013, and has since earned about $1,400 total on purchases. That’s not a lot of money, but she barely had to do anything to get it. And members can earn that cash on top of any credit card rewards they’re already earning. “The big pro is that it’s just so easy to use,” says Casey. “There are literally no steps. It’s actually the easiest money I earn.”

How Rakuten.ca works

Signing up for Rakuten is free; you just need an email address or a Facebook account. From there, search Rakuten.ca for a specific store or browse via a category, such as pets or drugstores. Once you find a store and a deal you like, click the link to go to that store’s website to make the purchase. That’s it. You don’t need a code or anything else, as Rakuten uses cookies to track your activity and make sure you get the right deal. You can avoid going through Rakuten.ca to make purchases if you install the Rakuten Express browser extension. It’s one of Rakuten’s best features, says Enoch Omololu, a personal finance blogger at SavvyNewCanadians.com. “I often forget about visiting Rakuten.ca when I’m looking to make a purchase online,” he says. “Their cash back button, however, pops up to alert me whenever cash back offers are available on any page I visit on my computer.” Rakuten makes money by getting a commission from stores when users make a purchase. Instead of keeping all of that money, Rakuten shares it with users in the form of those cash back rewards.

How to get paid

Whether you use Rakuten.ca or the browser extension, Rakuten will track your purchases and deposit the cash into your Rakuten account, often within a few days. You can choose to receive your cash back by cheque or PayPal, or you can redeem it in the form of an electronic Amazon gift card. Another way to earn money is by using Rakuten’s referral program. If someone you refer signs up for Rakuten and makes a qualifying purchase, you’ll both earn a reward. The reward amounts do vary, but they can add up, especially when there are extra bonuses in play. “Instead of the usual $5 per referral, you could easily get $10 to $25 for every friend or family that signs up using your referral link,” says Omololu. Rakuten also offers coupons, deals and promo codes on Rakuten.ca. These change often, but if you combine them with cash back offers, it can all add up to significant savings.

What are some drawbacks of using Rakuten for cash back?

Payout schedule

One of the biggest complaints with Rakuten and other cash back sites is that it can take months to get your money. With Rakuten, expect to get paid, at most, four times per year—February 15, May 15, August 15 and November 15—and that’s only if you’ve accumulated at least $5.01.

Fluctuating rewards

The cash back values on Rakuten often change day to day per store. That’s okay for Bridget Casey: “Because I’ve been using it for so long, I know that Lululemon, for example, will go up to 18%, so I will hold off on a purchase and wait a few days or weeks until that happens.” But if you need to make a purchase right away, you might miss out on maximizing your cash.

Read the fine print

Another potential con with Rakuten is that all of the products at a particular store might not qualify for cash back. A recent 5% cash back offer at Amazon.ca, for instance, didn’t include Kindle devices, gift cards or Amazon subscriptions.

Small payouts

The advertising and marketing around cash back sites like Rakuten may imply that you’ll make significant amounts of money. You won’t. While some cash back values can increase to over 10%, most are under 5%. At 5%, that translates to $100 cash back per $2,000 spent.

So, is Rakuten worth it?

That all depends on how you use it. Rakuten isn’t a scam, though, and it’s easy to sign up for and easy to use. And because Rakuten has partnerships with more than 750 stores, chances are you’ll get cash back for a purchase you were planning on making anyway. Plus, when you add in those referral bonuses, coupons and promo codes, it could add up to significant savings, especially if you can wait until a cash back value hits its peak. How those savings compare to other programs like rewards credit cards, however, isn’t easy to pin down because the deals on Rakuten change so often. All of which is to say you have to be a pretty savvy shopper to truly maximize everything that Rakuten offers. And even then, don’t expect to quit your day job.

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Comments Cancel reply

MGirvan says:

March 3, 2021 at 10:23 pm

I imagine that you would save more money by shopping around. It is entirely possible to find sellers online who aren’t with Rakuten and who sell for less or are open to offers. The reason these networks work is because the sellers are only losing an amount of money they are willing to part with so they will exempt products if needed or only approve products with full blown profit margins that can absorb the commissions to Rakuten.

I will bet the best prices are almost never to be found through Rakuten. Buying during sales periods like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, following Christmas, or when seasonal refreshes are happening will yield the best price.

If you’re going to shop all the time anyway and are not trying to find the best price then Rakuten seems like a good idea, but this reminds me of a few sage sayings. For example, if it seems too good to be true it probably is or the house always wins comes to mind.

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R.Gabrielle Berry says:

April 25, 2021 at 7:54 am

All I used my KOBO for was to download eBooks from my library. Then, one day, I went to charge my kobo, and guess what: there was a whole lot of Rakuten crap between me and my ebooks. I tried to get the Rakuten “technical experts” to remove the crap, and leave me the way I was. I feel this should be my right: my equipment, my right on how I chose to use it. PLS fix this!!!
Nothing has been done to correct this (yet).

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Amy Schlabach says:

May 17, 2021 at 3:45 pm

I tried Rakuten, I did a big order on shein and it still shows pending weeks after I ordered my stuff then I did a $10 order and got a few cents back I guess they dont want to shell out the money for big purchases Ha! and they were having a special, $40 for you and $40 for the person you signed up. I signed up multiple people and guess what! My money would appear for a while then dissolve into thin air for me and the people I referred. It was a total scam. Maybe if it was still Ebates it would actually work!

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